Operation Flood
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- White Revolution (India) redirects here. See White Revolution, for movements known by the name in other countries.
Operation Flood was a rural development programme started by India's National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) in 1970. One of the largest of its kind, the programme objective was to create a nationwide milk grid.
It resulted in making India one of the largest producers of milk and milk products, and hence is also called the White Revolution of India. It also helped reduce malpractices by milk traders and merchants. This revolution followed the Indian green revolution and helped in alleviating poverty and famine levels from their dangerous proportions in India during the era.
Gujarat-based Amul (Anand Milk Union Limited) was the engine behind the success of Operation Flood and in turn became a mega company based on the cooperative approach. Varghese Kurien (chairman of NDDB at that time), then 33, gave the professional management skills and necessary thrust to the cooperative, and is considered the architect of India's White Revolution (Operation Flood). His work has been recognised by the award of a Padma Bhushan, the Ramon Magsaysay Prize for Community Leadership, the Carnegie-Wateler World Peace Prize, and the World Food Prize.[1] [2]
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[edit] Introduction
Operation Flood has helped dairy farmers like Mayur direct their own development, placing control of the resources they create in their own hands. A National Milk Grid links milk producers throughout India with consumers in over 700 towns and cities, reducing seasonal and regional price variations while ensuring that the producer gets a major share of the price consumers pay.
The bedrock of Operation Flood has been village milk producers' cooperatives, which procure milk and provide inputs and services, making modern management and technology available to members. Operation Flood's objectives included :
- Increase milk production ("a flood of milk")
- Augment rural incomes
- Fair prices for consumers
[edit] Programme Implementation
Operation Flood was implemented in three phases.
[edit] Phase I
Phase I (1970–1980) was financed by the sale of skimmed milk powder and butter oil gifted by the European Union (then the European Economic Community) through the World Food Programme. NDDB planned the programme and negotiated the details of EEC assistance.
During its first phase, Operation Flood linked 18 of India's premier milksheds with consumers in India's major metropolitan cities: Delhi, Mumbai, kolkata and Chennai. Thus establishing mother dairies in four metros.
[edit] Phase II
Operation Flood Phase II (1981–1985) increased the milksheds from 18 to 136; 290 urban markets expanded the outlets for milk. By the end of 1985, a self-sustaining system of 43,000 village cooperatives with 4.25 million milk producers were covered. Domestic milk powder production increased from 22,000 tons in the pre-project year to 140,000 tons by 1989, all of the increase coming from dairies set up under Operation Flood. In this way EEC gifts and World Bank loan helped promote self-reliance. Direct marketing of milk by producers' cooperatives increased by several million litres a day.
[edit] Phase III
Phase III (1985–1996) enabled dairy cooperatives to expand and strengthen the infrastructure required to procure and market increasing volumes of milk. Veterinary first-aid health care services, feed and artificial insemination services for cooperative members were extended, along with intensified member education.
Operation Flood's Phase III consolidated India's dairy cooperative movement, adding 30,000 new dairy cooperatives to the 42,000 existing societies organized during Phase II. Milksheds peaked to 173 in 1988-89 with the numbers of women members and Women's Dairy Cooperative Societies increasing significantly.
Phase III gave increased emphasis to research and development in animal health and animal nutrition. Innovations like vaccine for Theileriosis, bypassing protein feed and urea-molasses mineral blocks, all contributed to the enhanced productivity of milch animals.
[edit] Summary
From the outset, Operation Flood was conceived and implemented as much more than a dairy programme. Rather, dairying was seen as an instrument of development, generating employment and regular incomes for millions of rural people.
A World Bank Report 1997 says:
- Operation Flood can be viewed as a twenty year experiment confirming the Rural Development Vision
[edit] Criticisms
Some critics of the project (cf. Ramdas and Ghotge, 2006) argue that the emphasis on foreign cow breeds has been instrumental in the decimation of Indian breeds. Foreign breeds give higher yields, but require more feed and are not suited to Indian conditions. Critics also argue that the focus on the dairy sector during this period came at the expense of development, research, and extension work in other areas of Indian agriculture. It is relevant here to point out the fact that the farmers and the agriculturists, who form the backbone of both the Green and White Revolutions made both the Revolutions a success with their supreme sense of responsibility and co-operative endeavour for ensuring the very existence of India's people. It is these virtues, rooted in their ancient wisdom, much more than using foreign breeds for high yields of milk, that led to the efficacy and success of the Revolutions. [The Indian Green Revoloution was the phenomenon of introducing imported heavy yielding varieties of foodgrains rapidly obviating the need to import substantial foodgrains to feed the growing population of India and saving it from widespread starvation.] There is also the criticism that the product from the White Revolution, namely milk and dairy products [like foodgrains from the harvests using Green Revolution methods and practices] is qualitatively, not exactly 'technically', inferior to the product obtained employing traditional methods and practices geared to smaller population levels which had only to be 'scaled up' for larger populations. Indian research and development might have failed to look at this superior option.
[edit] References
Ramdas, Sagari R. and Nitya S Ghotge. 2006. India's Livestock Economy. "The Forsaken Drylands", Seminar Issue # 564, August 2006.
- ^ Welcome to Amul - The Taste of India
- ^ Magazine: India Today- special issue: April 21, 2008- page no. 96
