Mumbai, Sept 18: Politics is not former Deputy chief minister and BJP leader Gopinath Munde's only passion. He's also a role model for other sugar growers in the Marathwada region for setting up a cane factory with minimum resources and staff.In fact, the Rs 40-crore Vaidyanath Cooperative sugar factory set up by Munde in the economically backward Beed district, has not only surpassed all national records for crushing, but has emerged as a model unit for its innovative approach. Significantly, the Congress-led Democratic Front has drafted the `Vaidyanath Pattern', which will serve as a model for new units.``I think it is a big achievement for me. After I was inducted into the Cabinet during the Sena-BJP rule, I had an occasion to study the cooperative sugar factories from a close angle. I felt that if there was proper management, we could design a model unit. Accordingly, I chalked out the plan and set up the unit in my village. Now, officially our unit has been declared the most efficient organisation in the country,'' a beaming Munde said.Munde's was a novel approach. After procuring the latest machinery, Munde appointed a bare minimum staff of 450 persons against 1500 recruited by the Congress and NCP-controlled unit and constructed the unit on a minimum space in a record time of 11 months at an estimated cost of Rs 40 crore against the projected cost of Rs 45 crore.``The board of directors selected the modern machinery and succeeded in bringing down the cost from an estimated Rs 25.15 crore to Rs 23.45 crore, while the width of the building was also reduced, which resulted in net saving of Rs 1.50 crore,'' Munde said.The senior BJP leader said ever since the proposal was cleared, the response of the farmers was so massive that against the target of Rs 2.67 crore, his unit, collected Rs 3.05 crore towards the share capital.Munde also plans to set up a 15 MW co-generation plant and a distillery of 30,000 litre capacity, cooperative consumer shopping complex and introduce special kisan credit cards for the farmers in the next two years.A senior official of the cooperation department also admitted that the Vaidyanath Cooperative Sugar Factory had emerged as the unit not only in the country, but perhaps in Asia too to have crushed 5.10 lakh tonne cane to produce six lakh tonne sugar in the trial season itself. ``In the trial season, it created history by crushing 3,440 tonne cane in a single day against the installed capacity of 2,500 tonne,'' the official said.In fact, its approach has been helpful for Marathawada which was reeling under unprecedented production owing to less number of units. Significantly, during the last crushing season, the Vaidyanath Cooperative Sugar Factory crushed the entire 2.6 lakh tonne of sugar cane registered with it and in addition, it also crushed 2.5 lakh tonne sugarcane from the farmers of Renapur, Ahmedpur, Kej, Gangakhed, Sonpeth and Vadvani outside the jurisdiction of the factory.The official said in view of the massive success of Munde's unit, the Congress-led Democratic Front has drafted the `Vaidyanath Pattern', which will be a model plan for the new units. ``The unit began the trial season from November 1999 and has now established as one of the best units in the country,'' the official added.The official said as per official records, barring a few units, all the cooperative sugar factories are controlled by the Congress or the NCP. ``We have 143 units, out of which 139 are controlled by the Congress or the NCP, but no one runs the unit like Munde,'' the official admitted.
