Dairy Cooperatives in India

Introduction

Majority of densely populated India live in villages. And they are involved in agriculture. The cattle animal is correlated with agriculture in India as the old method of cultivation is still vogue here. Rearing of cattle animal is also an additional source of income of the villagers in our country. We get from our ancient history that the domestication of the cow and the buffalo dates back to nearly 4000 years. Scriptures of India refer to the wealth through the word ‘Godhan’.

Maximum proportion of cows and buffaloes of the world are seen in India. India produces only eighteen percent of the total quantity of milk produced in the whole world. The supply of milk in some parts of India is higher than the local demand. On the other hand, supply of milk in the rest of the country as well as in urban areas is much lower than the demand.

In 1965, National Dairy Development Board (N.D.D.B) was set up with the object of meeting the increasing demand of milk especially in urban areas as well as developing the rural economy through the enhancement of the milk production of the country. In 1970 National Dairy Development Board took up Operation Flood Programme in order to organize Milk Producers’ Co-operative in several probable places of India taking the Kaira District (Anand) Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union Limited (AMUL) of Anand, Gujarat as a model with the above object in view. The Himalayan Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union Limited (HIMUL) was formed at the foot of the Himalayas in West Bengal in 1973 as a part of this programme like other states of the country.

According to Operation Flood Programme many Milk Producers’ Cooperative have been formed in this vast country. For the benefit of detailed analysis only two Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union Limited - The Kaira District (ANAND) Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union Limited and The Himalayan Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union Limited, have been taken into account.

History of Dairy Co-operative in India

The Co-operative movement started in India in the last decade of the 19th Century with two objects in view, i.e. to protect the farmers from the hands of the private money lenders and to improve their economic condition and thus improve their way of life. Madras province was the birth-place of this movement. With the setting up of an Agricultural Co-operative Banks there the movement took root in our Land and slowly gained strength. However, the growth of Co-operative movement in India during British rule was very slow and haphazard one. In most of the cases, the provincial governments took the lead. The foreign ruler had only made some committees or framed a few rules and regulations. But they did not take any wide-ranging programme to spread the movement all over the country.

The golden era of Co-operative movement began after India had won freedom. Within two decades of independence the membership of primary societies had increased four times while the share capital and working capital increased 23 and 31 times respectively. The history of Dairy Development Movement in India is a new one. During the pre-independence period this movement was limited to a few pockets of Calcutta, Madras, Bangalore and Gujarat.

White Revolution

In early 1999, the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) declared India as the world's largest producer of milk. According to FAO's Global Food Outlook Report, milk production in India crossed 146 million tons (mts) by2014, while milk production in the US, the second largest producer, was 101 mts.

This was truly a moment of glory for India, which, less than four decades earlier, had been a milk-deficit country. According to analysts, India's transformation into a milk surplus country was largely due to the collective initiative undertaken by various government and semi-government bodies to promote milk production and animal husbandry. In 1970, 'Operation Flood (OF)' was launched by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), an institution constituted as a body corporate in 1965. Declared as an 'institution of national importance' by an Act of Parliament, in 1965, NDDB was established with the objective of replicating the 'Anand Model' of dairy development.

The most notable of this venture was Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union Limited of Anand, Gujarat. But after independence the National Government took great initiative in setting up new Dairy Co-operatives in many parts of the country. The National Dairy Development Board was set up to make the ambitious project a success. By the late 1990s, NDDB's success with the co-operative movement in India attracted the attention of many other developing countries as well as international agencies related to dairy development.

The countries which were inspired by the 'Operation Flood' project and which planned to implement similar projects included Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines and Malaysia, besides a few African nations. Helping other emerging countries establish co-operatives in the dairy industry was one of the elements of the three-pronged strategic plan outlined by Amrita Patel (Patel), who took over as chairman of NDDB in 1999 (after Kurien's 33-year stint). In addition to aiming at capitalizing the success of co-operative-run diaries, the plan also involved transforming India into a major milk exporter and extending the co-operative model to other domestic agricultural products.