A rapid increase has been witnessed across that nation in milk production during last few years, due to numerous efforts taken by the present Government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In short, one can say that during last more that eight years, the country’s dairy sector has undergone a long journey, taking the country from status of a milk-deficit nation to a milk-products exporter. The evolution of the dairy sector in India and the stellar role played by dairy cooperatives since the launch of Operation Flood form an integral part of the country’s remarkable growth story after Independence. Today, India is the largest producer of milk in the world, contributing 21 per cent of global milk production. During 1950s and 1960s, the situation was radically different. India was a milk-deficit nation dependent on imports and the annual production growth was negative for several years. The annual compound growth rate in milk production during the first decade after independence was 1.64 per cent, which declined to 1.15 per cent during the 1960s. In 1950-51, per capita consumption of milk in the country was only 124 grams per day. By 1970, this figure had dropped to 107 grams per day, one of the lowest in the world and well below the minimum recommended nutritional standards. India’s dairy industry was struggling to survive. The country produced less than 21 million tonnes of milk per annum despite having the largest cattle population in the world.
Milk production in 1950-51 stood at merely 17 Million Tonnes (MT). In 1968-69, prior to the launch of Operation Flood, milk production was only 21.2 MT which increased to 30.4 MT by 1979-80, 51.4 MT by 1989-90 and 209.96 MT by 2020-21. In three decades (the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s), the daily milk consumption in the country rose from a low of 107 grams per person in 1970 to 427 grams per person in 2020-21. After Operation Flood, the Indian dairy and animal husbandry sector emerged as a primary source of income for a huge number of rural households – most of them either landless, small or marginal farmers. Today, India holds the place of pride of having been the largest milk-producing country in the world for nearly two-and-a-half decades. The dairy sector has been a major contributor to the growth of the rural economy in India. The government has facilitated the dairy farming infrastructure through its initiatives such as the development of the National Dairy Plan, a sustainable development-focused framework for the sector, along with general empowerment schemes such as the Jan Dhan Yojana and the Start-up India initiative. In the past eight years, the animal husbandry and dairying sector have received a great deal of impetus under Prime Minister’s vision of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ and the journey of this sector is indeed a remarkable reflection of self-reliance.