India opens bovine insemination centres at border posts

In a unique initiative aimed to boost milk availability in the hinterlands of Assam, India has opened artificial veterinary insemination centres right inside its remote border posts along Bhutan which normally house armed paramilitary troops.
Six posts of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) have been marked for creating required infrastructure to host the 'artificial insemination and veterinary first aid centres' with a motive of not only boosting milk production in the frontier North Eastern state of the country but also help in the economic uplift of the local population.
The chosen Border Out Posts (BOPs)-- Kalipur at Gaidan Chowk, Paharpur at Rangia, Bhutan Khuti at Howly, Bishnupur and Kumarshali at Bongaigaon and one security post at Kokrajhar-- have a strong strength of SSB men who not only have their communications control rooms in these facilities but border patrols also start and culminate from these locations.

All these border guarding units are located in far-flung forested areas along the Bhutan border which are rich in cattle population but these locations do not have any infrastructure of the state government for starting these much-needed veterinary centres.
The SSB, which was raised in 1963 in the wake of the Chinese aggression, has operationalised these centres to mark its golden jubilee of establishment this year, making this a first of its kind initiative at any of country's border locations.
"Assam is a wonderful green cover state with a lot of fodder so we decided to take on the project. We do a lot of civic welfare work and this project, we thought, would bring purpose and meaning to peoples lives in border areas. Two centres at our BOPs are already operational and another four would start soon," SSB Inspector General (Operations and Intelligence), at its headquarters in Delhi, Somesh Goyal told PTI.

Goyal, who is the brain behind the initiative, said a total of Rs 24 lakh has been earmarked for the project with Rs 4 lakh kept for each of the six BOPs where these centres are being created.
"These cattle breeding centres are coming up at locations where there is only SSB and no one else. These are interior areas," he said.