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Journalism of Courage
On October 31, 1964, the birthday of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri inaugurated a 50-tonne-per-day cattle feed plant of the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union, better known as Amul.
A couple of days before the function, Verghese Kurien, Amul’s 43-year-old general manager, got a message from then Gujarat Chief Minister Balwantrai Mehta. The Prime Minister, Kurien was told, would not merely open the feed factory at Kanjari, about 8 km from the cooperative’s dairy in Anand, but wanted to also go to a village and stay overnight at the home of a farmer supplying milk to the Amul society there.
The village that Kurien identified was Ajarpura. Nearly 15 km from Anand, it had been visited nine years earlier — again on Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary — by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi. The occasion then was the inauguration of Amul’s (and the world’s first) buffalo milk powder manufacturing plant. The difference this time was that Shastri was keen to not just “see”, but also interact freely with the villagers sans any intrusive police presence.
It was a challenging request. But Kurien, like always, found a solution. He convinced Ramanbhai Punjabhai Patel, a farmer-member of the Ajarpura Milk Producers’ Co-operative Society and also owner of a tobacco-processing facility in the village, to host the distinguished visitor. For security reasons, he didn’t reveal who the guest-to-be actually was.
“He’s a foreigner whom I know,” Kurien lied to Patel. “How will he stay here and what would he eat?”, the latter asked. Kurien replied: “Don’t worry about that. You know foreigners are crazy and like to experience things. Ensure the place is tidy and a clean bathroom. Give him the same food that you eat.”
The unassuming “foreigner” arrived around 6:30 in the evening on October 30. Shastri spent the night at the village, talking to its people, learning from them about the cooperative, eating a simple dinner arranged at a stunned Ramanbhai Patel’s tobacco shed, and going to bed late at 1 a.m. in his house. He was up early morning again to see milk being procured from farmers at the society. From there, he went to inaugurate the feed plant at Kanjari and then to Anand to have a detailed discussion with Kurien.
On December 2, 1964, just over a month after his visit to Ajarpura, Shastri wrote a letter addressed to the Chief Ministers of all states. He proposed the setting up of a National Federation of Dairy Cooperatives to “transplant the spirit of Anand” all over India. He had seen for himself ordinary farmers of a village banding together to pour milk at a society collectively owned by them. This milk was procured by a dairy union that gave them a fair and remunerative price, while ensuring a steady year-round market for their produce through a nationally established brand. Incidentally, Amul, contrary to perception, is not short for Anand Milk Union Ltd.
The National Dairy Development Board was established in September 1965, with Shastri appointing Kurien as the chairman of this organisation having the mandate to replicate the “Anand Pattern”. It laid the basis for the Operation Flood programme that helped turn India into the world’s largest milk producer by 1998.
Ajarpura not only seeded the White Revolution, it was the first Amul dairy cooperative society (DCS) to be registered on August 7, 1947, with a union code of “0001”. One of its members Chhotabhai Manoharbhai Patel was on the first board of the Kaira union, while another, Ramanbhai Shankarbhai Patel, became Amul chairman twice, in 1975-78 and 1987-88.
The Ajarpura DCS had 66 farmer-members who together sold an average 355 litres per day (LPD) of milk in 1947-48. That rose to 368 members and 513 LPD in 1959-60, 580 members and 1,118 LPD in 1979-80 and 877 members and 1,391 LPD in 1989-90.
The increase hasn’t been much thereafter — to 1,010 members and 1,580 LPD in 2015-16 and a peak of 1,014 and 2,546 LPD in 2018-19. Procurement has in fact fallen since to 1,703 LPD in 2022-23.
Ajarpura is no longer a showpiece star performer like it was when Shastri, and before him Nehru, came visiting. Amul’s top five DCSs ranked by average milk procurement in 2022-23 were Badharpura (18,609 LPD), Undel (17,429 LPD), Bedva (12,173 LPD), Motipura (10,430 LPD) and Borsad (9,769 LPD). They are all much bigger than Ajarpura.
The reason for that has primarily to do with community profile.
Roughly two-thirds of Ajarpura’s population of 4,693 comprises Patidars. Amul’s leadership, including its redoubtable founder-chairman Tribhuvandas Patel, came largely from this community. But the Patidars have gradually exited from dairying and agriculture, while seeking greener pastures overseas.
Ajarpura has some 700-750 people now living abroad — an estimated 500 in the US and the rest mainly in the United Kingdom and Canada. Vijaybhai Ramanbhai Patel, whose father famously hosted Shastri nearly 60 years ago, has settled in the US. The Ajarpura DCS has 1,024 farmer-members. But out of them, only 302 are active ‘pourers’, with hardly a third or more Patidars.
The Patidars have also relinquished their dominance as leaders in the milk cooperatives — of Kaira and other district unions of Gujarat as well. Amul’s farmers and DCS chairpersons are today mostly Kshatriyas (with surnames such as Parmar, Padhiyar and Gohel), just as it is the Chaudhary or Anjana Patels in Banaskantha and Mehsana and Adivasis in the Panchmahal and Valsad unions.
Neither Kurien nor even Tribhuvandas Patel would have minded the Patidars passing on the baton to other communities. For them, milk and cooperatives were simply tools for empowering the rural producer.
The Ajarpura DCS has, since June 21, 2022, had a woman, Gayatriben Riteshbhai Patel, as its chairperson. The 44-year-old B.Com graduate, who drives her own Wagon R car, has 75 animals, 40 of them adult cows and 28 currently producing milk. She pours 300 LPD on an average and 400-500 LPD in the peak “flush” months of November-January.
Unlike many others who have moved on from dairy farming, Gayatriben, who has been Ajarpura’s top supplier since 2017, wants to bring people, especially those from her community, back into the business. “It’s not easy, as the ones with education are interested in going abroad. Even the less educated lot are ready to sell their land and go through the Dunki route,” she says, referring to the 2023 Hindi blockbuster depicting illegal immigration to the UK.
Gayatriben’s husband Riteshbhai was himself one such emigrant to the US in the early 2000s: He ran a convenience store at Charleston in South Carolina as a “hidden partner” with 5-6 other men, also from Ajarpura. He returned after about five years to Ajarpura to manage the family’s 15-bigha (9 acres) farm, a retail outlet and Gayatriben’s dairy. The couple also has a cable TV business operation catering to Ajarpura and three nearby villages.
The Ajarpura DCS paid an average price of Rs 43.01 per litre for milk supplied by its members in 2022-23. That was inclusive of a “price difference” bonus of Rs 7.46/litre, payable from the year-end profits on sales to the Kaira union. Besides Kaira, the other district unions too market their dairy products under the Amul brand through the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation or GCMMF.
Gayatriben sells milk valued at Rs 40 lakh annually. At least 80% of that revenue goes into buying cattle feed and dry/green fodder and paying for labour, electricity and water. “The profit that I make really comes from the price difference (Rs 8 lakh) and sale of dung (Rs 1.5 lakh) and 5-7 cows (each at Rs 60,000-62,000) every year,” she points out.
Dairying, according to her, is a profitable business, but requires “good management”. Gayatriben engages four labourers: two from Uttar Pradesh (for feeding and milking the cows, and taking their milk to sell in the society) and two locals (for collecting the grass and dung). Her dairy farm has a covered shed, with a fan and fogging system plus rubber mats to provide cool air and comfort for the animals. She also has milking machines and a chaff cutter for the grass/straw fed to the cattle.
“I am happy, but not sure if my son (a Class 9 student at Anand’s D Z Patel Higher Secondary School) would want to continue with this. Also, today’s parents don’t want to marry off their daughters to someone doing gai-bhains ka kaam (dairying) or even regular (crop) agriculture. There’s no brand value to this business,” she sums up.
Gayatriben offers a solution: “Agriculture and dairying must be made part of the school curriculum. Our children should be taught this so that they understand the importance and develop an interest in farming”.
