Co-Operate to Benefit

Every time you pick up a glass of milk, pause and think how it made its way to your kitchen. So, where is the milk coming from? Most states have village level dairy co-operatives and the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) guides and helps develop them. The NDDB website has an interesting fact: The dairy co-operative network in India, as on March 2007, was owned by around 12.96 million farmer members, of whom 3.4 million were women. A phenomenal 12.96 million owners! What organisation could support this? When people become members of an organisation on equal terms and use their resources towards achieving common goals, it is called a co-operative. Suppose a person with a cow has surplus milk, he or she might want to sell it and make some money. In villages, the local trader or the middleman would buy this surplus milk at a price which suited him. Then he would add water and sell it at a higher price. Thus, the seller made no profit; the end buyer got diluted milk, but the trader minted money.

This is where a co-operative steps in. The milk sellers form a co-operative. They organise for the milk to be collected at village levels and transported to a plant where it can be pasteurised. Then this milk is packed in pouches and transported to distributors at various towns and cities. Here good quality milk is sold to the end buyer.

Co-operatives have a reputation for selling unadulterated goods and do not emphasize maximising profit. Because every seller of milk is an equal member of the co-operative, they run a transparent organisation and work towards its growth. This avoids traders and money lenders, increases ownership and accountability, ensures better voice of dairy farmers in management, gets them timely payments and provides access to useful technical guidance and information.

The reason of the stupendous success of milk co-operatives in India can be summed up in one word – empowerment. The sheer hard work of ordinary and marginalised dairy farmers, their unstinting co-operation with one another, an indomitable will to achieve a common goal, together with the visions of people like V. Kurien, the father of Indian dairy farming, milk co-operatives have scripted success stories like Amul, Verka and Operation Flood. When the co-operative dairy movement was started, the daily per capita milk consumption was 106ml. Today, it is 250ml or 90 kg per year. Today milk is the country’s number one agricultural commodity. Thus both milk producers, mostly marginal, small and landless farmers and consumers, who get value for their money and healthy milk, are mutually benefited.