A milk(y) way to better fortunes

patna: farmer binay sharma has set up his own baijalpur dugdha utpadak sahyog samiti, a cooperative society, in his kab village in rani talab area of patna in 1991. he has been maintaining his 11-member family, although he owns some landed property too. "doodh supply mein munafa to utna nahin hota, lekin saat se das din par regular cash payment se bahut sahuliyat hoti hai -- business mein bhi aur kheti main bhi.kyunki kheti ke liye bhi rupayon ki jarurat hoti hai" (milk supply business is no longer profitable. but regular cash payment every seven to 10 days helps a lot, since cash is required for agriculture too), said sharma, who is the chairman of his samiti and also one of the 12 farmers' representative in the board of directors of the vaishal patliputra milk union (vpmu). this union covers patna, vaishali, nalanda and some parts of saran districts. another farmer, surendra rai, who had been one of the members of the board of directors for two terms, has also his own cooperative society, namely the bakarpur gangajal dugdh utpadak sahyog samiti in his bakarpur village under chak sikandar police station of patna district. it was established in 1981. he too maintains his 20-member family, of course, he too has some landed property. about 200 farmers, including five women and two scheduled caste members of rai's village and nearby villages, have registered themselves as the members of his samiti. more than two lakh households through 4,000 cooperative societies of milk producers are directly attached to the bihar cooperative milk producers' federation (comfed), which is better known by its brand name `sudha'. it was established in 1983 under the `operation flood' programme on the pattern of anand in gujarat. it procures milk from producers at a remunerative price and supplys wholesome, hygienically packed milk and milk-products to the urban consumers at competitive prices. these societies are of the farmers, by the farmers and for the farmers and cover about 8,000 villages of both bihar and jharkhand, said comfed managing director arunish chawla. vpmu, along with four other milk unions -- barauni milk union, tirhut milk union, mithila milk union and shahabad milk union -- is not only engaged in procuring milk from rural milk producers but also standardising, processing, packing and marketing the product to urban consumers. the unions' surplus milk meets the demand of the major dairies in industrial towns of ranchi, jamshedpur, bokaro, gaya and bhagalpur. these dairies are also engaged in processing, packing and marketing of milk as well as milk products. the popularity of the comfed can be gauged from the fact that its membership rose from 21,500 in 1985-86 to 90,270 in 1989-90 and 1,38,120 in 1996-97 to about two lakh to date. of them 13.6 per cent are women, 9.3 per cent sc/st people and 52.8 per cent backward castes, said comfed chief manager (operation) ashok jawa. chawla said that 35 per cent of the profit is spent on the maintenance of plant machineries, while 65 per cent go back to the farmers in the form of dividend and bonus. the farmers are provided artificial insemination facilities for their cattle at their homes on concessional rates, jawa added. "sudha is the household name. when you purchase its milk or its products, you should be aware of the fact that you are helping the farmers of the state in a small way", said chawla.