With the Kaira Milk Producers' Cooperative Union, which produced just 250 litres of milk a day, Dr Verghese Kurien developed a model, which later became famous as the Amul (or Anand) pattern. The Amul pattern is an integrated cooperative structure that procures, processes and markets milk and milk products.

Supported by a professional management, producers decide their own business policies, adopt modern production and marketing techniques and receive services that individually they could neither afford nor manage. The Amul pattern of cooperatives has progressively, linked producers directly with consumers.

The Amul pattern aims at maximising the farmer's profit while ensuring efficient delivery of quality milk at a reasonable cost to the consumer, thus meeting a marketing as well as social development challenge.

It operates in a three-tier structure:
The village society: Replicating the Anand model, a village 'dairy cooperative society' (DCS) is formed by milk producers. Any producer can become a DCS member by buying a share and committing to sell his stock of milk exclusively to it. Each DCS has a milk collection centre where members take their daily stock of milk.

Each member's milk supply is tested for quality, and the payments are based on the percentage of fat and the SNF content. At the end of each year, a portion of the DCS' profits is used to pay each member a patronage bonus, depending on the quantity of milk.

The district union: A 'district cooperative milk producers' union' is "owned" by the dairy cooperative societies. The union buys the milk from all the societies, and processes and markets the fluid milk and products. Most unions also provide a range of inputs and services to DCSs and their members, such as feed, veterinary care, artificial insemination. The employees of these district unions train and provide consulting services to support the local DCS leaders and staff.

The state federation: The district level cooperative milk producers' unions in the state comprise the 'state federation', which is responsible for marketing milk and milk products of the member unions. Some federations also manufacture feed and support other union activities.

The Amul pattern involves people in their own development through cooperatives where professionals are accountable to leaders elected by producers. The institutional infrastructure — village cooperative, dairy and cattle feed plants, state and national marketing — is owned and controlled by farmers.

The Amul pattern's success led to the creation of similar structures of milk producers in other districts of Gujarat, drawing on Amul's experience in project planning and execution. Between 1977-78 and 1991-92, the production of milk in Gujarat increased from about 2-mt to approximately 3.6-mt — an average growth of about 4.3 per cent per annum.

The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was set up in 1965 to replicate this remarkable experiment all over India, initially in the dairy sector and extended later to edible oil, fruits, vegetables and salt too.

This experiment has been able to:

• Develop an appropriate blend of policy makers consisting of a farmers' board of management and professionals, with each group appreciating their roles and limitations
• Bring to rural milk producers the best milk processing and storage technologies
• Provide a support system to the milk producers without disturbing their agro-economic systems
• Plough the profits back to the rural sector, for the common good and betterment of the member producers
• Continue growing in scale without compromising the cooperative principle of collective ownership of every producer, irrespective of size

Some major achievements of the Amul pattern include:

• Live exposure to various modern technologies and their application in day-to-day life has made the farmers aware of their benefits, thereby improving continuous technolgy accptance.
• More than 900 village cooperatives have created jobs for nearly 5,000 people in their own villages — without disturbing the socio-agro system — and reduced migration from rural areas.
• The income from milk has substantially improved standards of living.
• Empowering women, who are the major participants in the cooperatives.
• Independent studies have shown that 48 per cent of the income of the rural household in Kaira District is derived from dairying, a subsidiary occupation for the majority of the rural population. This secondary income continues to spread rural prosperity and has led to the elevation of the standing in society of dairy farmers in the state.

The adoption of information technology by the cooperatives has played a significant role in emulating the Amul pattern successfully.

The essence of Amul's success lies in the breakthrough it has achieved in modernising the economics of the dairy sector by enabling the rural producers in the area to organise themselves.

Compiled by Shubha Khandekar