A Raika leader tasting camel milk ice-cream at Pushkar, Rajasthan. Photo: Camel Charisma
Netha Raika emails photos of himself to the US. The slight twenty five year-old is seeking a match: not for matrimony – he’s a newlywed and recent father himself – but for a defender for his people. From his 70-family village near Bilara in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, Netha sends pictures of the Raika, one of the world’s most treasured camel cultures, to people across the US. Netha’s photos are a kind of lifestyle SOS.
The irony of his dilemma is that just as the Western world is starting to value cultures like the Raika, thanks to emerging data on the medicinal quality of camel milk, they and other Indian pastoralists are caught in a legal bind. The Indian camel milk market is estimated at some Rs. 3024M (around US 45 million), yet India is losing its camels, with only 8,000 pastoralist families now owning the animals.
