By Gaurav Terdal
NEW DELHI (India CSR): India is home to the world’s largest livestock population, with more than 535 million animals supporting the livelihoods of over 70 percent of rural households. For small and marginal farmers, livestock is often the most reliable and liquid asset they possess, generating regular income that supports daily expenses, nutrition, and household resilience. Unlike crop agriculture, which remains exposed to seasonality, climate variability, and delayed returns, livestock provides steady cash flows that help families manage uncertainty and absorb financial shocks.
In rural India, animal health is more than a welfare concern; it is a form of economic infrastructure. When livestock fall ill due to preventable causes, household income is hit almost immediately as milk yields drop, costs rise, and families are pushed toward distress borrowing or asset sales. Preventive livestock healthcare, through vaccination, deworming, nutritional guidance, and early disease detection, helps protect productivity before losses occur, a need that has grown with rising climate and financial stress. Yet despite its clear economic value, veterinary care remains largely reactive, with emergency treatment, limited access, and weak continuity of care continuing to undermine outcomes.
Addressing these challenges requires delivery models that move beyond episodic treatment and focus instead on prevention, follow-up, and scale. Over the past few years, a small but growing number of structured interventions have shown how preventive livestock healthcare can be effectively delivered and sustained through consistent processes, local engagement, and long-term commitment. One such example can be seen in the approach adopted by SMFG India Credit, which has deliberately shifted its livestock interventions from emergency response to early and sustained care.
The Pashu Vikas Day initiative by SMFG India Credit focuses on routine health check-ups, vaccination, deworming, nutritional guidance, and farmer awareness, delivered through structured protocols and partnerships with veterinary professionals. Embedded within existing rural networks, it enables consistency and follow-up rather than one-time engagement, showing how preventive care can function as a system rather than a standalone activity. Implemented annually across multiple locations, the initiative is built around standardised service delivery, veterinary due diligence, and documentation, allowing preventive livestock healthcare to be coordinated effectively across geographies. Its steady expansion, from 71,500 cattle covered across 355 branches in 2019 to nearly 1.5 lakh cattle across 500 branches in 2025, underscores the operational feasibility of delivering preventive care at scale through sustained engagement and process discipline.
Such interventions also sit naturally within broader ESG frameworks. Preventive livestock healthcare contributes directly to livelihood resilience, income stability, food and nutrition security, and gender equity, given the central role women play in livestock management. From an environmental perspective, healthier animals improve productivity efficiency and reduce avoidable losses. From a governance standpoint, structured delivery, transparency, and accountability are essential to achieving consistent outcomes. Together, these dimensions align closely with evolving global sustainability expectations that emphasise long-term value creation over short-term impact.
The growing recognition of preventive livestock healthcare as a serious development intervention is reflected in independent validation as well. In recent years, large-scale initiatives in this space have received national and international recognition, including registration by the World Book of Records, and a Guinness World Record for conducting the largest cattle welfare lesson. Such recognition reinforces the credibility of preventive livestock healthcare as a scalable and replicable model, rather than a niche or episodic CSR activity.
As India’s rural economy faces increasing climate volatility and income uncertainty, livestock health can no longer remain peripheral to development planning. What is now required is a shift in emphasis, from proving that preventive veterinary care works to embedding it more systematically within rural development efforts.
The next phase calls for broader participation. Policymakers, development institutions, financial service providers, and corporates with deep rural footprints must collectively move from episodic treatment toward preventive systems that prioritise early intervention, awareness, and continuity of care. Embedding livestock health within mainstream development and ESG strategies offers a powerful opportunity to strengthen rural resilience while delivering durable economic and social value. Investing in preventive livestock healthcare is no longer a matter of goodwill; it is a strategic imperative for inclusive and sustainable growth.
About the Author
Gaurav Terdal, CHRO, SMFG India Credit.
(India CSR)
