Milk IMPERIALISM

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Social Change Paper 6

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HEALT-

Milk Imperialism
A Critique of Operation Flood Project

by
BHARAT DOGRA

April 1 984

Price Rs. 3/-

Operation Flood Project of Dairy Develop
ment is based on donated milk products from
EEC countries. In stage I of OF World Food
Programme authorities committed 1,26,000
metric tons of skim milk powder and 42,000
metric tons of butter oil which were to be used
for making recombined milk in the dairies of
four metropolitan cities.
Rs.
1,164 million
obtained from this sale was to be used for
dairy development in the country, more specifi
cally for increasing milk production, organising
milk cooperatives and strengthening the pro
curement system of milk in some selected
milk-shed areas.

This is the largest dairy development project
in the world to which WFP made its biggest
allocation of aid. The project was to be com
pleted in five years (1 970-75) but was extended
to nearly 1 1 years. This has been followed by
OF II which operates on an even larger scale.
Whereas under OF I milk grids were to be
arranged to link Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and
Madras to their major hinterland milkshed areas,
the aim under OF II is the creation of a national
milk grid connecting 27 cooperative federations
with 147 major cities in India.
Operation Flood—A Case Study of Food Aid
Does food-aid have a harmful impact on pro
ducers of food in the recipient country? We exa
mine this question here in a specific context—
did Operation Flood Project of dairy develop
ment, based on donated EEC milk products, have
a harmful impact on milk producers in the tradi
tional milk supply areas of the metropolitan
cities to whose organised dairy sector these

milk products were mainly supplied ? We will
try to answer this question by examining four
issues :
1. The first of these sub-questions is—did the
share of milk producers of the milk supply areas
decline in the total milk supply of the city in the
course of the implementation of OF I ? We
answer this sub-question in the specific context
of Delhi.

(The milk supply area of Delhi may be defined
as Delhi, most villages of Haryana and Western
U.P., several villages of Punjab and Rajasthan
nearer to Delhi and a few villages of Madhya
Pradesh.)

According to the summary terminal evalua
tion report of United Nations experts (STER-UN),
1981, on OF I project, the milk processing
industry in Delhi (or the organised dairy sector)
supplied 37 per cent of the milk needs of Delhi
before OF started. The total quantity of milk
supplied by the industry was 263 thousand
litres per day. From this it follows that the
total milk consumption of the city was 711
thousand litres (263 thousand litres from the
organised sector and 448 thousand litres from
the unorganised sector).
As far as the unorganised sector is concern
ed, all the milk was provided by milk-producers
in Delhi's milk-supply area in and around Delhi.
In the organised sector, 203 thousand litres
out of 263 thousand litres were obtained from
procurement, mostly if not all from milk supply
areas. .Chilling centres had been set up to collect
this milk.
Thus on a rough estimate 651
3

thousand litres out of 71 1 thousand litres were
obtained from milk supply areas. The remaining
milk was obtained from milk products. Even if
we assume that none of these were locally
manufactured, we still get a high percentage of
the share of local milk producers in the total
milk supply of the city (91 percent).

Now let us examine the situation at the end
of OF I, in 1 981 . Unfortunately, the various set
of data that is needed to calculate the share of
local milk producers in the total milk supply is
not available in published form for this year, to
the best of this author's knowledge. On the
basis of the available published data, however,
we can obtain a fairly reliable estimate for the
year 1 978-79.

We know from STER-UN (Note 1) that the
share of the organised dairy sector had increas
ed to nearly 60 per cent by this year. From
a different source (Economic Times—May 1 3,
1 981) we also have the following information :
Total annual milk supply to
Delhi
—350 million litres

Total annual milk supply by
organised dairy sector
—21 0 million litres

Total annual milk supply
by unorganised sector
—140 million litres
All the supply by the unorganised dairy
sector is from the milk produced in and around
Delhi. The supply by the organised sector can
be further divided :

Supply from procurement
of liquid milk
4

—1 07 million litres

Supply from milk products
made in India

—35 million litres

Supply from foreign milk
products

— 68 million litres

We also know that a big share of the pro
cured milk was coming from distant areas which
cannot be considered the milk-supply areas
of Delhi.
During this year (1978-79) Mother
Dairy obtained 202 lakh litres of its milk from
Gujarat, compared to 77 lakh litres from U P.,
Haryana and Punjab. Also we know (The Hindu,
October 26,
1981)
that the milk-powder
plants in
public/co-operative sector in the
milk-supply areas of Delhi were being heavily
under-utilized. Capacity utilization in 1 980
was 30 per
cent in Rohtak and only 10
per cent in Meerut. In contrast the capacity
utilisation in Gujarat based plants ranged
from 7 9 per cent to 115 per cent.
Thus
it appears that nearly one-half of the milk
procured indigenously in the form of liquid milk
or milk products was procured from the milk
supply areas of Delhi, defined properly (nearly
71 million litres out of 142 million litres). In
other words total milk obtained from the milk
supply areas was 211 million litres (140 un
organised sector, 71 organised sector) out of a
total milk supply of 350 million litres.

In the course of the implementation of OF I,
the percentage share of the milk-supply provided
by the milk producers in the villages of Delhi,
Haryana, Western U.P. (and also the villages of
Rajasthan M.P. and Punjab nearer to Delhi)
declined from nearly 90 per cent to nearly 60
per cent (Note 2).

5

Depending on the way the 'milk-supply area'
is defined the percentage points may move
slightly in the calculations that other authors
make, but broadly the conclusion (of a signifi
cant decline in the market opportunities of
farmers for whom Delhi was always the main
market) will not be altered. Several chilling
centres opened for collecting milk around Delhi
were closed down during the years of this
project.

What is the significance of this finding? This
finding supports the argument of the critics of
food aid that food aid is aimed at increasing the
long term market of the donor country's gift pro
ducts by gradually destroying the traditional
supply base.
Operation Flood authorities have
always publicised that the aim of the project is
to get milk for the cities from the surrounding
milk-shed areas and thereby providing more
benefits to the milk producers. Instead we find
that the market opportunities of these milk pro
ducers are being eroded.
2. At the same time the share of imported
milk products in the total milk supply to Delhi
has more than doubled—from around 8 percent
before OF I to over 1 9 percent (68 million litres
out of 350 million litres) in 1 978-79 (Note 3).

3. Beyond Delhi we may look at the total
national level imports of milk-products. During
the last twenty years we have imported four
milk-products, in gift form or on commercial
terms,—skim milk powder (SMP), butter oil (BO),
whole milk powder (WMF) and butter. The last
two, WMF and butter, are relatively unimportant.
6

Moreover, the imports of WMP in the pre-OF
years are balanced, more or less, by the imports
of butter in the OF years. Further, transfer
values are given for SMP and B.O. in STER-UN
but not for WMP and butter. Due to these
various reasons we are justified in excluding the
relatively insignificant quantities of WMP and
butter.

Imports of milk products in the five years
preceding OF and in the last five years of OF are
considered. The source of the former is STERUN and the latter statistics were given recen
tly in Parliament. These imports are evaluated
at constant prices. The constant prices that
we use are the latest EEC transfer prices given
in STER-UN. Actual international prices may be
higher. Our purpose is only to compare the
situation before OF and now. so that these
transfer prices (Rs. 9000 per ton for SMP and
Rs. 1 2,500 per ton for butter oil), can be used.
In the five years preceding OF 1 66 thousand
ton imports of SMP are evaluated at Rs. 1 50
crores. (No B.O. during these years). In the last
five years of OF 1 93 thousand ton imports of
SMP and 50 t.t. imports of B.O. are evaluated
at Rs. 236 crores. Thus there has been a 57
percent rise in milk product imports in the
course of implementing OF. This is the situation
just two years before the scheduled date of
the completion of OF II. According to recent
reports this high level of imports is likely to
continue upto 1 985 and beyond.
It may be asked why we took 1 978-79 statis
tics earlier and why we are taking statistics

7

upto 1983 now. The reason is that earlier we
were examining milk supply to Delhi only and so
considering only OF I which ended in 1 981.

4. Lastly we may look at the transfer values
of EEC products vis-a-vis the procurement price
paid to local producers. An important argument
against food aid has been that it makes avail
able food at a cheaper rate than the local
prevailing rate, and thereby in various ways
acts as a disincentive for local producers.

In 1980-81 the transfer value of a litre of
milk obtained from abroad was Rs. 1.30 at
WFP rates and Rs. 1.7 5 at E.E.C. rates. The pro
curement price for indigenous liquid milk was
Rs. 2.60 per litre.

At the same time the market price of milk
sold by Mother Dairy in Delhi was Rs. 2.20
per litre and that sold by Delhi Milk Scheme
was Rs. 1.80 per litre while the price of the
(somewhat higher fat content) milk sold by
the unorganised sector in Delhi was around
Rs 4 per litre or more.

How many glasses of milk, and for whom ?
Increasing milk production
is a desirable
objective in India. However there are various
ways of increasing milk production not all of
which are desirable.
One way of increasing milk production is by
diverting important sources of human nutrition
into cattle feed. These include the outer and
most nutritious layers of rice and wheat,
coarse-cereals and the edible parts of oilcakes.

8

In this context one has to consider not only the
diversion from human food to animal food at the
processing stage but also the diversion of land
from producing food crops to cattle-feed crops.
Keeping in view the substantial under-nutrition
and malnutrition that exists in this country, this
writer is firmly against this method of increasing
milk production.
Another
(not necessarily
separate
but
related) method of increasing milk production is
to introduce intensive dairy-farming in a few
selected areas which will have cross-breed
cows and upgraded buffaloes requiring high
concentrate feeds and to supply this cattle-feed
plants will be established in these areas. In
other words this strategy wants to distribute
the available scarce supplies of concentrate
feeds in an unequal way, giving a lot to some
selected milk-shed areas and depriving other
areas. The purchasing power for this in the
selected areas will be made available through
heavy dairy development investment in these
areas. This briefly is also the OF strategy.

Two prominent dairy experts K. Narayanan
Nair and M. G. Jackson show clearly (Economic
and Political Weekly—December 26, 1 981) that
as a means of increasing national level milk
production this strategy is counter-productive. It
may increase milk production in some areas but
will not do so at the national level. This is
because an egalitarian distribution of limited
concentrate feeds can contribute more in term
of milk production than an inegalitarian one.
According to Nair and Jackson,

"The OF II
9

strategy (which in this context is the same as
the OF I strategy) aims precisely at helping some
farmers, by setting up feed plants and by
arranging a supply of concentrates on credit,
produce more milk and earn more profit at the
expense of other farmers not in OF districts.
This pattern of exploitation of the many by the
few has already been going on for generations
in order to supply our city markets. City cattle
and buffalo owners have long monopolised
limited concentrate supplies—OF II strategy
actually calls for an extension of this system of
waste and exploitation by fostering city type
milk production in selected milk sheds."

M. G. Jackson comments in another paper,
"There is no real development in these project
areas—if development be defined as the more
efficient use of local resources—but only a
transfer of limited available scarce feeds from
one area to another via a market system that is
in essence exploitative of the former."

Under Indian conditions it is unlikely that
cross-breed cows will prove very successful
even in limited areas of intensive development
because of their high susceptibility to disease,
higher mortality rate, need for close supervision,
high feed requirements which most villagers
may not be able to provide and lower capacity
of these bullocks to work on farms, specially
during the summer months. In any case progress
even in these areas has been slow.

According to the mid-term appraisal of the
Sixth Plan by the Planning Commission, "In
regard to the OF Project, it has been observed
10

that progress relating to artificial insemination,
frozen semen technology and the rearing of
cross-breed calves is not satisfactory. Further,
progress of the work done by Punjab, Gujarat
and Tamil Nadu states under this project is
satisfactory while in 18 other states and in
4 union territories, achievements are much
below the targets. This will in turn lead to short
falls in the target laid down for indigenous milk
production under this project."
Impressive claims of an increase in milk
production in the country in the OF years have
been made by the dairy authorities. However a
recent note released by the Animal Husbandry
Division, Ministry of Agriculture, states that
right upto the mid-seventies no significant
achievement was
made in estimating milk
production for the country as a whole.

Draft Fifth Plan said, "Broadly speaking the
project OF is behind schedule by nearly two
years. A more unsatisfactory aspect is the lack
of emphasis on the indigenous milk production
programme, which is vitally necessary to
maintain the metropolitan supplies when the
gifts of butter oil and milk powder are stopped
at the end of the programme period."
In the course of implementing OF I, money
was diverted from production aspects to pro
cessing aspects. Rs. 285 million were originally
sanctioned for increasing provision of techni
cal inputs, but disbursement upto 31-1-81 was
only Rs. 230 million. Rs. 40
million were
sanctioned for development of milch animals
but till 31-1-81 only Rs. 29 million had been

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11

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spent. Rs. 154 million was sanctioned for
resettlement work but only Rs. 2 million was
spent.

On the other hand Rs. 19 million were
sanctioned for expansion of city" plants but
Rs. 32 million were spent. Rs. 1 40 million was
sanctioned for setting up of new dairies while
Rs. 262 million were spent. Rs. 209 million
were sanctioned for chilling centres while
Rs. 479 million were spent.
According to K. S. Mathew, Secretary of the
National Cooperative Dairy Federation of India,
"The capacity utilization (of dairy plants) was
extremely poor in most of the feeder balancing
dairies set up under OF I and World Bank aided
scheme during 1979 and 1980." (The Hindu,
October 26, 1 981 .)
In a recent article in the Economic Times
(February 12, 1 982) economist V. S. Vyas
summed up the state of milk production
statistics in these words, "Uptodate
infor
mation on the vital aspects of dairying is
conspicuous by its absence. Even the estimate
of the total quantity of milk produced in the
country is based on a series of assumption.
What we ultimately get is nothing more than
'guess estimates'. No body can say with cer
tainty as to what is the total quantum of milk
produced in a year, much less about the rate of
growth in milk production over a period of time,
or the precise contribution of various factors in
the growth of production . On the basis of the
estimates prepared for computing
national
income data, we find that the total production
of milk has been increasing at a snail's pace."
1 2

Vyas

goes on

to say,

"in

spite

of the

indigenous systems of procurement, delivery
and extension one gets the feeling that of late
production at the farm level is being neglected.
Our emphasis seems to be more on modernising
the marketing and that too, by concentrating
upon the so called epicentres of purchasing
power i.e. metropolitan cities and large towns."

OF I project had planned that the capacity of
the milk processing industry in the four metro
politan cities will be raised to 2750 thousand
litres per day. The actual achievement was
2900 thousand litres. It had been targeted that
this industry will procure 2275 thousand litres
per day, the procurement in 1 97 9-80 was only
1341 thousand litres.
It had been targeted that within five years
of the project, it will become possible to raise
procurement of milk from rural areas from 687
thousand
litres to
2275 thousand litres.
Actually after extension of the project from five
years to ten years (1 979-80 statistics) only an
increase of 6 54 thousand litres could be
obtained instead of the targeted 1 588 thousand
litres. OF I was mainly a project to increase the
procurement to city dairies by increasing
production as well as marketing facilities in the
surrounding rural areas. In this sphere it took
double the time to achieve only 43 per cent of
the target. This is what the official data says.
If this is success, I wonder what is failure.

When faced with this kind of criticism,
operation flood authorities offer a strange
defence. According to Dr. V. Kurien, "I felt
13

justified in setting myself targets that were
almost impossible to achieve. I think there is no
harm in aiming at the stars. That is one way of
hitting the tree-tops."
What he ignores is that the project was got
approved from the Government on the basis of
the 'star-targets'. If only the 'roof-top' targets
had been submitted in the original report, it is
possible that the Government may have never
cleared this project. If other bureaucrats also
start applying this reasoning to explain the
failure of the projects headed by them, then the
country is doomed.

Even the limited increase in procurement for
city markets that has taken place can be justi
fied only if this is the result of an increase in
milk-production. It is well-known that per capita
milk consumption is already low in rural areas
compared to city areas.
When milk production is increasing at a
very slow pace while procurement is increasing
at a relatively higher rate (even if lower than
targeted rate), the per capita consumption of
milk in rural areas is declining. This trend is
likely to be accentuated by the rapid increase in
the manufacture of dairy products for elites
(baby foods, table butter and cheese, milk
chocolates, shrikhand, flavoured milk drinks et.
al.). Because of the higher purchasing power in
the cities, milk is drawn from village families to
the city rich in the form of these products, a
trend fully supported by OF authorities as is

evident from the fact that first Amul and then
other co-operative organisations have been in
14

the forefront of the manufacture of these
products They have even started behaving like
multinational companies in not being bothered
about the ethics of promoting baby foods. Amul
is now emerging as a more vociferous champion
of baby foods than some of the multinational
companies.
India Today reported recently about baby
foods.

"Manufacturers continue with aggressive
promotion and formula sales are booming.
Sales skyrocketed to 40000 tonnes last year, a
compounded annual growth of 20 per cent in
tonnes and almost 40 per cent per year in value
terms. DGTD statistics show that the growth
rate was higher than that of any other food
product and one of the highest in all of India's
industries."
Operation Flood and the Rural Poor

Operation
Flood
authorities have made
claims of substantial benefits to the poor as a
result of the implementation of OF. However
Operation Flood can benefit the poor only if they
have milch animals and some land to feed them.
If the poorest do not have either milch animals
or land, it is unlikely that they will benefit much
from Operation Flood. Programmes such as
IRDP (outside Operation Flood) which have tried
to give milch animals to the poor have not
succeeded much because of some conceptual
weaknesses but even more because of wide
spread irregularities in their implementation.

To the extent that the poor are members of

1 5

milk cooperatives, some strategies of develop
ment can be more easily followed by them than
others. The strategy of cross-breed cows that
Operation Flood emphasises is likely to be less
accessible to them. Unfortunately it appears
that even middle level peasants may not get the
expected benefits because of the domination of
cooperatives by technocrat managers, as at
Amul. Operation Flood is also responsible for
uprooting several small-scale, village based,
milk trader families.

Statistics of the All India Rural Debt and
Investment Survey (1971-72) tell us that the
bottom 1 0 per cent of rural households (Classi
fied according to the value of assets) own only
1 per cent of milch animals, the bottom 20 per
cent own only 5 per cent and the bottom 30 per
cent only 1 2 per cent. In the lowest docile only
5 per cent of the households own any milch
animals. In the next docile also only 1 6 per cent
of the households own animals.
The reason why the poor own much lesser
milch animals is that they have a low resource
base and they have very little land or no land at
all from which to feed their milch animals. For
the same reasons, the proportion of dry animals
in their stock is much higher. Also the milk yield
is lower than the better fed animals of the rich.
Hence the real inequality of milch animal owner
ship is even higher than what is indicated by
the above data.
Economists like V.S. Vyas and N.S. Jodha drew
attention to this reality of dairy activities in the
Indian rural setting by writing that "It would be

1 6

misleading to infer too much from the mere
presence of a few milch cattle on the small
farms
There is a close association between
dairying and owned land resources. Ensuring
a sizeable amount of fodder resources is essen
tial for at least limited stall feeding. This factor
tends to belie the generally held impression that
owned land is not an important consideration in
maintaining a dairy animal."

In all of India it is the milk cooperative
benefits to the poor of Kaira district of Gujarat
which have been publicised the most and
efforts have been made, with a lot of inter
national aid, to create a model of dairy develop
ment here. However in this heart of the white
revolution, things are not at all as good for the
poor as they are often made out to be.
According to a study (1980) on the 'Role
of Milk Cooperatives in Articulating Rural Urban
Interaction' under the supervision of Prof. Vimal
P Shah of Gujarat University (this study was
based on a sample survey of 599 respondents
in six villages of Kaira district), as many as 50
per cent of the villagers are landless and only
20 per cent of them sell milk. "The cooperative
movement has not been able to significantly
modify the traditional relationships between
milk production and land holdings. The landless
(person) who takes up dairying seems to face a
formidable problem of cattle feed. Green fodder
is not available to him because he does not
have land, and the relatively high price of the
compounded cattle feed adds disproportionately
to his costs of milk production. Again, when the
purchase of milch animals is funded through a
17

financing agency, the regular payment of instal
ments leaves only a small amount in his hands,
and therefore, he does not seem to consider
dairying adequately remunerative.
Another study of milk cooperatives in Surat
made for the Centre of Social Studies by B. D.
Desai, points out that of the 358 landless
households in the three villages studied only 8
were found to be milk producers. The condition
of even these few landless milk producers was
found to be very precarious.
Two other aspects of milk cooperatives
deserve mention. Firstly, due to the heavy
emphasis on processing aspects of the dairy
industry in Operation Flood, several coopera
tives have been saddled by a heavy infrastruc
ture which adversely affects their economic
viability. Secondly, as in other areas of the
cooperative movement, there are indications
that in milk cooperatives,
leadership and
decision making is being monopolised by the

rich.
Operation Flood has placed heavy emphasis
on the technology of crossbreed cows for
increasing milk production. However the desir
ability of this technology has been questioned
on several grounds. According to Akhil Bhartiya
Krishi Goseva Sangh, the consequences of
exotic cross-breeding of indigenous breeds of
cows have been rather disastrous as the male
calves of crossbreed progeny are unsuited to the
rigours of Indian agriculture and invariably
found their way to the beef market. Sangh
sources have quoted a study of cross breeding
18

in and around Bangalore where as many as 75
per cent of the male calves were reported to
have been sold to butchers.

The disease susceptibility and mortality rate
among the crossbreed cows has also been found
to be much higher. Further, it has been pointed
out that dairy development based on crossbreed
cows, because of the high level of feeds and
the overall care required, is likely to reach only
the relatively big farmers, who by cornering
the scarce supply of feed concentrates will
further diminish their availability to the small
farmers.
Finally, we may refer to the passage in the
widely discussed research paper—Technological
Change in Milk Production—written by a dairy
expert K. Narayanan Nair "Given the unequal
distribution of milch animal holdings, the bene
fits of dairy development are unlikely, in the
normal course, to benefit, the poorest classes.
The efforts made under the various programme
to provide state assistance to enable these
segments to acquire more animals do not seem
to have been large enough to make a substantial
difference to the above picture. The fact that
the relatively weaker sections do not have the
resources needed to maintain high quality milch
animals makes it all the more likely that dairy
development programmes based on cross bree
ding, milk marketing, processing and distribution
would hardly benefit them; instead the benefits
would mostly accrue to the better-off segments.
And in the long - run such efforts may even

contribute to the acceleration of the process of
concentration of asset ownership in agriculture

1 9

rather than to a broad based growth of dairying,
the benefits of which are more equitably shared
by different segments of rural society."

According to prominent sociologist B. S.
Baviskar
(EPW—14 - 1 - 84), "that Amul is
controlled by the managers and technocrats,
with the elected directors playing a secon
dary role.
is fairly clear- to any careful
observer. Let me give some instances. In 1 980,
the members of the milk producer co-opera
tive societies
affiliated
to the
KDCMPU
formed an association to agitate for higher
prices for the milk supplied by them to Amul.
(Unlike Maharashtra where milk prices are fixed
by the State Government, in Gujarat each
district level co-operative milk producers' union
such as the KDCMPU, decides the prices). As in
theory these producers are the owners of Amul,
a paradoxical situation emerged whereby the
owners of Amul
had to form an
asso
ciation to get higher prices for their milk
from their own organisation. The agitating
members openly complained about the ineffec
tiveness of the elected directors and the strong
grip of the managers ..
"At least some of the directors of Amul seem
to be aware of and resent the fact that they are
treated as rubber stamps while the managers
enjoy the real power, indeed, rumblings of
tension between the managers and directors
can be heard."

It has been claimed that milk co-operatives
have reduced caste-tension in Kaira district and
neighbouring areas. I quote from my report on
20

these villages, published in the Deccan Herald,
at the time of the attacks on Harijans in 1 981.
"The Harijans of Uttar Sanda village in the
Nadiad Taluk of Kheda District were attacked on
the night of February 20. Twenty four houses
were burnt, seven of them completely. In the
Dhetroj village of Viramgaon Taluk in Ahmedabad District, the Harijan basti was similarly

attacked on February 27. Thirty-seven houses
were badly damaged seven of them destroyed
completely".
Benefits to Multi-nationals

Manufacturers
of
dairy equipment
in
developed countries as well as multinational
companies
based in India have benefited
enormously from the capital intensive nature of
dairy development promoted in India under
Operation Flood.
Several newspapers, specially the prestigeous financial daily from Calcutta 'Business
Standard', have reported from time to time
several glaring cases of indiscriminate imports
of various dairy equipment.

While direct imports of dairy equipment are
not insignificant perhaps even more significant
is the enormous purchase from MNCs like
Vulcan Laval. For example in the Mother Dairy
at Kurla, Bombay, nearly 1 9 items of machinery
out of the 55 installed (list given below) were
obtained from a single MNC Vulcan Laval.
Milk Stainers, Raw Milk, Processed Milk
Slices, Milk Pumps, CIP Tanks, Double toned
Milk Tanks, Milk Balance Tanks, SS Tanks,

Rubber Belt Conveyors, Butter Churn, Ghee
Kettles, Ice Building Coils in Water, Glycol
Cooking Coils, Condensing Coils, Liquid Ammonia
Receiver,
Diffusers,
Transfer
milk
pumps,
Powder hoppers, R C M Pumps.
Towards Genuine Dairy Development

Milk
of

production should be increased by means

1)

Land-reforms.

2)

Village-level processing of oilseeds so that
village animals get oilcakes

3)

Regeneration of pastures.

4)

Mass afforestation of fodder trees.

5)

Rediscovering and propagating some of the
traditional breeding strategies which have
given good results in our country. While
planning for animal breeding and nutrition
the availability of draught animals should be
kept in mind as a priority objective. Animal
nutrition has to be based on grass, leaves,
crop residues and some locally available
oilseed and pulse offals. Breeding policies
should keep this in mind. Export of oilcakes
should be banned.

Production of infant milk formulas and
various luxury dairy products should be dis
couraged.
Imports of milk-products should be stopped

completely, on commercial terms or in the form
of gifts.

Milk for cities should be collected from the
surrounding
rural
areas.
Milk-cooperatives
22

should be formed for this purpose. Small scale,
traditional, village based milk traders based
should be absorbed into the newsystem instead
of being uprooted. Distribution and processing
costs should be kept to the minimum. Labourintensive methods should be pursued.

Milk Imperialism

There are several internal reasons why the
EEC countries give large scale aid in the form of
dairy products. We are here more interested in
the external reasons of this aid :

1. They want to find a market for their
surplus dairy products in the cities of India (and
other countries) and towards this end they
want to erode the traditional supply base, make

the consumers get used to the taste of recom
bined milk and create processing facilities for
manufacture of recombined milk.
2. They want to find a market for their dairy
equipment industry.
3. They want to hang on to a source of aid
which really costs them very little but can be
publicized as high value aid going to the poor.

All these objectives are being achieved in
the course of the implementation of Operation
Flood.

NOTES
1. STER-UN gives statistics for 1979-80, but
the share of the organised sector could not
have been much different just one year earlier.
We have taken 1 978-79 because various other
data available to us is for this year.
23

2. Since some of the calculations are approxi
mate and not exact estimates, I am prepared to
concede an error of about 5 percent or so.
What is important is that instead of the share
of local producers in the market rising from
90 per cent to about 100 per cent as planned
it came down quite significantly.
3. If we calculate on the basis of figure of 55
percent being the share of the organised
sector, we still get the share of imports in
the total milk supply at 1 8 per cent in 197879 (68 m.l. out of the total milk supply of
380). Similarly our calculations of the share
of the milk supply area will not be substan
tially affected.

Import content in the milk-supply of metro
politan cities maybe reduced now (1983-84)
but only when there is high import content in
the milk supply of nearly 140 other Cities
(OF II)—witness the overall increase in milk
product imports.

I am greatful to Gurucharan for his help.
Copies of Social Change Paper 5 (Hunger—
A Report on India—Price Rs. 1 2/-, S3 outside
India) are available.

The present paper is available abroad for

8 1.

Published by Bharat Dogra. A-2/184 Janakpuri, New Delhi-110058
and Printed by Ravi Sharma, at Printing Press Institute for the Deaf
4E/6, Jhandewalan Extn., New Delhi-110055

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