Replicating Anand Pattern Milk Cooperatives: Studying the Operation Flood

Replicating a successful dairy cooperative model to enhance the milk production in India seems an innocuous proposition. Around the same time as the cattle development policy was witnessing a shift to intensification, the then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri while inaugurating a cattle feed plant established by Kheda District Cooperative Milk Producers’ UnionKheda district cooperative Milk producers’ union (KDCMPU) (KDCMPU) called upon a dairy technocrat to the task of replicating KDCMPU success story across the nation. Was Shastri the first one to speak about the need to replicate the success of the cooperative milk union model across the nation? Could we find such an emphasis in the policy discourses on dairy development during late colonial India? Was that statement by the then Indian Prime Minister a result of successful lobbying and advocacy efforts by young dairy technocrats working at KDCMPU and envisioning a pan-Indian milk and milk products marketing institution? This chapter brings years that witnessed white revolution under study along with the focus on these questions.