‘Modi ki Guarantee’ is seen as a reason the BJP won the heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in elections last November. Now, the prime minister has attached the political catchphrase to brand Amul, owned by the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), promising to make it the world’s topmost dairy company. The occasion for this pitch was the GCMMF’s 50th anniversary celebrations on February 22. The venue: Narendra Modi Cricket Stadium in Ahmedabad. The star attraction: the prime minister himself.
“Today, Amul (GCMMF) is the eight largest dairy company in the world; your target is to make it number one. The government will give all its support. This is Modi’s guarantee,” PM Modi thundered in the stadium, where farmers from thousands of Gujarat villages had gathered.
One may argue why the prime minister would put his political capital and the state machinery in empowering this entity. It is because Amul is uniquely owned in a cooperative model by millions of farmers, many of whom were in attendance at the Narendra Modi Stadium.
Amul (Anand Milk Union Limited) was set up as a cooperative society in 1946 to deal with the exploitation of cattle-rearing farmers by milk contractors and traders. The concept of a dairy cooperative procuring milk and selling it to dairies succeeded, and over the decades, more districts of Gujarat formed their own dairy cooperatives.
In 1973, GCMMF was established with 18 district unions under it as members. Today, the federation has 3.64 million farmers and an annual turnover of Rs 61,000 crore. Amul is the brand under which an array of dairy products made from the milk procured from these farmers is sold.
Modi, in his address, proudly noted that Amul’s products are exported to more than 50 countries. “More than 18,000 milk cooperative committees, a network of 3.6 million farmers, processing of more than 35 million litres of milk per day, and online payments worth over Rs 200 crore a year to livestock breeders are among the organisation’s achievements,” he said.
The farmers are a part of the profits earned by Amul, which are distributed to them in the form of dividends. So, when the prime minister gives his guarantee to help Amul become the world’s number one dairy company, he is empowering the over three million farmers and their families who make up Amul. Their livelihood is dependent on it and directly impacted by the fortunes of the brand. Also, each of the 18 dairies are represented by an elected representative in GCMMF.
Gujarat’s dairy cooperative sector is a critical vote-bank for the BJP and the support of its stakeholders has been one of the reasons for the party’s invincibility in the state. The sector has over time come to be thickly associated with politicians. Almost all the district cooperatives are headed by BJP leaders. For instance, Tharad MLA and Gujarat legislative assembly speaker Shankar Chaudhary heads the Banas Dairy as chairman. Deputy assembly speaker Jetha Bharwad, the MLA from Shehra constituency, heads the Panchmahal District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union as its chairman.
How does Amul—as Modi desires—grow into the world’s top dairy firm? The brand has been working on expanding its geographical reach and product portfolio, as also its capacity to procure milk. Replicating the ‘Amul model’ of cooperative ownership of farmers across the country is the way forward to increase its milk procurement and take a shot at being the global number one.
GCMMF managing director Jayen Mehta says Rs 11,500 crore are being invested over the next three years to set up milk processing and ice-cream manufacturing plants in Goa, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The company is also expanding its packaged food portfolio and scaling up distribution throughout the country.
Modi, during his two-day Gujarat visit, inaugurated five new dairy projects: a modern cheese plant of Sabar Dairy, which has come up with an investment of Rs 600 crore; a long-life tetra pack milk plant of Amul Dairy at Anand; the expansion of its chocolate plant; a 50,000 litre ice-cream plant of Sarhad Dairy in Kutch; and a unit of Bharuch Dairy coming up in Mumbai.
“Cooperative movement is gaining momentum with the setting up of over 200,000 cooperative societies in more than 200,000 villages in the country,” Modi said. He informed that in the past decade (of his governance of India), milk production in the country had increased by almost 60 per cent and the per capita milk availability by about 40 per cent. The Indian dairy sector, he said, is growing by 6 per cent annually compared to the global average of 2 per cent.
The prime minister underscored the centrality of women in India’s Rs 10 lakh crore dairy sector. The turnover of the sector—70 per cent of which constitutes women stakeholders—was more than the combined turnover of wheat, rice and sugarcane in India, he said. That’s some guarantee of an even brighter future for the prime minister to bet on.
