NOT SO UTTERLY BUTTERLY

Forget cow politics, even milk has reached boiling point in Madhya Pradesh.

- Rahul Noronha

The trigger: the state government's decision to hand over control of the MP State Cooperative Dairy Federation (MPCDF) to the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) for five years has come under fire. The cooperatives department has almost finalised the modalities of the transfer, after which an MoU will be signed between the two entities. The move has attracted criticism from the opposition Congress which alleges it is to facilitate the 'backdoor entry' of Amul into the state and swamp inhouse brand 'Sanchi'.

Madhya Pradesh is the third largest producer of milk in the country, after UP and Rajasthan, and there is immense scope for growth in the sector. Officially, the state government maintains the decision to hand over management and operational control to the NDDB is to strengthen the Sanchi brand, make it competitive and infuse fresh life into it. But why now? Well, the annual turnover of the state's milk cooperatives stands at Rs 2,200 crore and insiders claim there has been little growth in the past few years. The state dairy cooperative collects around 1.05 million kg of milk every day, but collection has not been increasing as expected.

Currently, the milk cooperative sector in MP has a three-tier structure, pertaining to milk aggregation. The dairy cooperative societies at the outermost layer mostly collect milk from around 11,000 villages while, in the second tier, the milk unions located in Bhopal, Indore, Ujjain, Sagar, Jabalpur and Gwalior are involved in processing the procured milk. At the apex is the MPCDF with its brand Sanchi that exercises administrative control over the unions and primary bodies. It also helps in marketing the products.