Principles and Techniques of Veterinary and AH Extension

AMUL AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE ANAND MODEL

• Milk procurement from the rural areas and its marketing in the urban areas was the major problem in Indian dairying at the time when India gained independence. In one of the earliest urban milk supply schemes, Polsons - a private dairy at Anand - procured milk from milk producers through middlemen, processed it and then sent the milk to Bombay, some 425 km away (Korten, 1981).
• Bombay was a good market for milk and Polsons profited immensely. In the mid-1940s, when the milk producers in Kaira asked for a proportionate share of the trade margins, they were denied even a modest increase. The milk producers went on strike, refusing to supply milk to Polsons.
• On the advice of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a leader in India's independence movement, the milk producers registered the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union, now popularly known as AMUL, in 1946.
• The Kaira union procured milk from affiliated village-level milk societies. This was the genesis of organized milk marketing in India, a pioneering effort that opened a new vista for dairy development in the country. Between 1946 and 1952, AMUL's policy was directed towards obtaining monopoly rights for the sale of milk to the Bombay milk scheme.
• In 1952, it succeeded in achieving its purpose after the Government of Bombay cancelled the contract with Polsons and handed over the entire business of supplying milk from the Kaira district to AMUL. However, as the Bombay milk scheme was committed to purchasing all the milk produced by the Aarey Milk Colony in Bombay, it would not take AMUL's milk during the peak winter months. The disposal of this surplus milk posed difficulties for AMUL, forcing it to cut down on purchases from its member societies, which affected members' confidence. The answer was the production of milk products.
• In 1955, a new dairy plant was set up at Anand to produce butter, ghee and milk powder. A second dairy was built in 1965, and a product-manufacturing unit was established in 1971 to cope with increasing milk procurement. In 1993, a fully automatic modern dairy was constructed adjacent to the original AMUL dairy plant at Anand.
• AMUL formed the basis for the Anand Model of dairying. The basic unit in this model is the milk producers' cooperative society at the village level. These cooperatives are organizations of milk producers who wish to market their milk collectively. Membership is open to all who need the cooperative's services and who are willing to accept the responsibilities of being a member. Decisions are taken on the basis of one member exercising one vote. Whether profit or loss, are divided among the members in proportion to patronage. Each cooperative is expected to carry out the continuing education of its members, elected leaders and employees.
• All the milk cooperatives in a district form a union that, ideally, has its own processing facilities. All the unions in a state are normally members of a federation whose prime responsibility is the marketing of milk and milk products outside the state.
• There is also a fourth tier, the National Cooperative Dairy Federation of India (NCDFI), which is a national-level body that formulates policies and programmes designed to safeguard the interests of all milk producers.
• Each tier of the Anand organizational structure performs a unique function: procurement and services by the cooperative; processing by the union; marketing by the state federation; and advancing the interests of the cooperative dairy industry by the national federation. Thus, the Anand Model has evolved into an integrated approach to systematic dairy development.