Q1.
Today, the cooperative has a wide range of products made at many milk processing plants and factories all over India. Can you name a few?
Answer
Yes — walk into any dairy shop and almost everything on the shelf is a product of this cooperative. All of them begin as the same thing: milk drawn from a cow or buffalo on a farmer’s doorstep.
| Kind of product | Examples you will recognise | What is done to the milk |
|---|---|---|
| Liquid milk | Toned milk, double toned milk, full cream milk, flavoured milk | Pasteurised and packed in pouches or cartons |
| Fats | Butter, ghee, cream | The fat is separated from the milk and churned |
| Dried products | Milk powder, infant food, dairy whitener | The water is dried out so the milk keeps for months |
| Cheese and paneer | Processed cheese, cheese slices, paneer | The milk is curdled and the solids pressed |
| Fermented products | Dahi (curd), buttermilk, lassi, shrikhand | A culture is added and the milk is set |
| Sweets and frozen foods | Ice cream, chocolate, gulab jamun, rasgulla, peda | Milk solids are cooked, sweetened or frozen |
The chapter names the first two itself. When the cooperative’s milk collection grew too large to sell as milk alone, “they set up a factory in Anand, and began to produce butter and milk powder” (page 204). Everything else on the list grew out of that first factory.
Why a cooperative makes so many things: milk spoils in hours, but ghee lasts months and milk powder lasts a year. Every extra product is one more way to save milk that would otherwise be wasted — and each processing step is value addition, so the farmer’s milk earns more than it would have as plain milk. That is why the same litre can end up as butter in Bhopal or milk powder in a ship bound for another country.
Did you know? India has been the world’s largest producer of milk for the last thirty years. The change began with cooperatives like this one, and the nationwide programme built on the Anand pattern was called Operation Flood — often remembered as the White Revolution.