We all remembered Dr Kurien on his eighth death anniversary on September 9th. It is quite apt to revisit the key principles which he so fondly embeded in the DNA of of NDDB and later operation flood program.
Dr Kurien shared three golden principles tin his autobiography which paved the way of dairy development in India. These are as follows :
- Production of milk is of no meaning without a ready market.
- Procurement of milk and market demand are not rigidly linked with each other.
- Procurement activities must be carried out by focussing at the markets with a capacity to give enough profits to the farmers.
Anand could not have existed without Mumbai. But Anand could not have been developed in close proximity to the Mumbai market either. Had Anand be in close proximity to Mumbai then it would have met the same fate as that of few government run dairies which got established at the epicenter of large cities.
Milk Procurement and markets are to be distant apart
Principally you can not keep the milk procurement closer to the place of consumption . In that case you would end up fiercely competing with the milk aggregators on one hand and with the petty milk vendors at the market place.
Cooperatives are formed above the bedrock of integrity, Which could not be guaranteed with the other unorganized players at the market place. The underlying context of these three principles lies in trusting the farmer’s wisdom to continuously produce the crop which gives him enough of profits.
No other program in the world created Rs 24000 Crores per annum of farmer’s income over a decade with a petty support of Rs 200 Crore by the world bank. Today’s dairy industry would never be able to measure the true depth of understanding and horizon of vision of Dr V Kurien.
Legendary outcome of Dr Kurien’s vision
The outcome of Operation flood program from 1980-81 till 2018-19 have brought about the following development Cooperative dairying in the country.
a. Milk producer societies : 14 folds
b. Enrolled farmers with cooperative societies : 10 folds
c. Milk Procurement : 20 folds
d. Liquid marketing : 13 folds
Dr Kurien has also inspired the private sector in India to tread the path of cooperatives. Today in we also have an equally large network of cooperatives, milk collection and processing of milk in the private sector also. Dr Kurien was like a catalyst. He was the reason of the big bang of Indian dairy sector.
At this moment , I remember a famous quote by Mehmet Murat ildan which says that
““Every time you discover the beauties of this world, you are reborn!”
I believe that looking at the way our dairy cooperatives have made progress, Dr Kurien must have taken birth somewhere to cherish the same.
Now moving forward we need to reimagine the tasks in front of Dr Kurien. I feel him around to be there , amongst us today. People in the industry have already started to feel the need of another Dr Kurien looking at today’s environment.
Current national dairy scenario
The cooperatives, which he created with so much of love and dedication, are ready to take on each other in fierce battle at the market place. The farmers are on roads. The concepts of feeder balancing dairies and milk sheds are finding no place in the national dairy policies.
Almost 50 % of the milk sold by the organized sector in nearly 1100 cities across the nation is not meeting the regulatory requirements of FSSAI . Huge stocks of SMP and butter are acting as a biggest impediment to the farmer’s getting good price of milk.
In Dr Kurien’s times the same stocks were captured from the developed world. These stocks were later used for the dairy development in India.
The consumer is not sure of the quality of milk at his home . He has already started to explore the possibilities of shifting to dairy alternatives.
The policy makers at government departments are still obsessed with animal husbandry, breeding and vaccination programs . They are ready to infuse any amount of money to ensure productivity with local breeds. Markets and Food safety does not look to be high on their priorities.
I am not sure if any one is looking at the dairy development from the lenses of above captioned three principles . Dr Kurien used to follow these while crafting future of dairying in India.
The plausible way ahead
Trying to use the same lenses the three key areas requiring immediate attention in next 5-10 years are as follows :
- We have done enough with farmers cooperatives at both public and private sector level. Now it is the time to enroll the petty milk vendors with the cooperatives and skill them. The skilling must be for the art of delivering safe milk to consumers after collecting safe milk from the farmers. Let him be the true representative of the farmers for the households/sweetshops which still believe in consuming raw milk. Neither we could ignore them nor remove them as they are huge in numbers.
- Let there be no subsidy to the farmers for producing milk. Dr Kurien never advocated for subsidy of any sort. He always talked about the judicious use of any aid to make the farmers self reliant and self dependent. Most of the federations which are paying subsidy are actually creating an uneven level playing field for other players . It could be compared with what Polson was doing with Kheda cooperative . As he was having monopoly to supply milk to the Bombay milk scheme.
- This is high time for the policy maker to first develop a protocol for running dairy business in the country using the Anand model only and then to enroll every public sector, private sector, FPO, entrepreneur, foundations to follow the same model and make India the milk pail of the world.
I would also like to thank the team behind audio book on autobiography of Dr Kurien , titled the man who made elephants dance. I would recommend all of you to listen to the great journey of Indian dairy development through the link http://www.drkurien.com/content/audio-book-man-who-made-elephant-dance
A blog by Kuldeep Sharma
You nailed it Mr. Sharma, its time for action, its time for – “Walk the talk” and that would be the real tribute to Dr. Kurien.
Thank you for sharing the audio autobiography ‘The Man Who Made The Elephant Dance’. I assure all the listeners not just an inspiring but a thrilling, dramatic, and at times funny experience too. I bet you would go back and listen twice many tracks narrated passionately by Tom Alter.
As Dr. R. S. Sodhi mentioned during the launch, one can enjoy it even while jogging or during your break, as most of the tracks are of approx 10 minutes of time.
If you like, do share it with your friends. Happy listening!
How very true . Am sure todays policy makers are more open to the ideas and would certainly take inputs from the think tanks like u and carve out the policy for the New India and more so in these days the new mantra – Atmanirbhar Bharat.
I beg to differ from Mr Kuldeep Sharma on his observation
1.that about 50% milk sold by organized sector in India does not meet FSSAI standards. The present production of milk is about 50-51 cr. liters per day. AMUL se lls about 1.5 to 1.7 cr liters per day while Mother Dairy sells about 35-40 LLPD. At the same time most of the coop federations snd Milk Unions are meeting liquid milk requirements of respective states. I am sure none of the above would be selling below standard milk in their areas. Organized Private sector’s share is very less in the liquid milk market and so would be the scenario in milk products. Hence i feel the statement needs to be corrected.
2. As ar as peoples’ shifting to other alternatives is concerned, I would say that this is mainly due to lack of awareness and education of consumers about mill industty as there are lot of myths in public minds about packed milk and dairy industry. Most of the people feel that packaged milk is skim milk, is a synthetic milk, is a milk devoid of nutrients, is a powdered milk, is very old milk and what not. I know some people in my locality are buying raw milk @ Rs 130 /- per liter in glass bottles saying that it is fresh molk. Now to to educate the masses I suggested to IDA also and reiterate now also that we need to educate urban families thru their wards studying in colleges by conducting 1-2 hrs lectures on present and past of Indian dairy Industry and what is mill, how part of it is conserved in winter /flush months and then reconstituted into fresh milk in deficit summers and regions without affecting its basic qualities etc.
This I am ready to take up thru’ slides show in very simple terms. They need to be taught what milk is, buff and cow mill etc. By one lecture in a class of 50-60 graduate level students we can educate as many families and more including teaching staff. People living in posh colonies have lot of myths about milk which needs to be removed.
This can be done by issuing letters to colleges by IDA, FSSAI and such lecturers have to be delivered by very experienced people thru’ slides ppp.