The Indian livestock system is the endeavour of smallholders; there are no big players in it. Livestock keeping is a centuries-old tradition for millions of Indian rural households and domesticated animals have been an integral part of the farming systems from time immemorial. While livestock do yield economic outputs, it is difficult to explain many aspects of household behaviour with respect to livestock, purely from the angle of economic rationality and maximisation. Consequently, treating the livestock production system as a pure input–output type economic system often misrepresents the Indian reality (GoI 1996). Traditionally, farmers keep livestock in proportion to the ‘free’ crop residues and family labour available in their own household production systems and convert these into food, fuel and farm power—making each household a virtually self-contained production system with no purchased inputs and few marketed outputs. This age-old trend has undergone rapid change in recent decades. Although the organisation of livestock production in small units persists, household production systems are increasingly becoming integrated into input as well as output markets. As a result of gradual transition from subsistence to market system, the economic dimensions of livestock keeping have assumed increasing significance in household behaviour. Thus, in understanding its true significance, the livestock sector in India needs to be viewed as a sector linked with the livelihoods of millions of rural households—over 70% of all rural households—who depend on livestock farming for supplementary incomes.