MAHARASHTRA: AIKS LEADS MILK FARMERS' STRUGGLE
IN STATE
Ashok
Dhawale & Ajit Nawale
On August 1,
2020, the milk farmers' struggle led by the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and the
Milk Producing Farmers Struggle Committee was intensified all over Maharashtra
with the participation of thousands of farmers in around 50 tehsils of 20
districts. The first phase of this struggle began on July 20 in Ahmednagar and
some other districts. The state Dairy Development minister Sunil Kedar
organized an online meeting of farmer leaders and milk companies on July 21 at
which the AIKS was represented, but nothing came of it.
The AIKS
took the lead among all farmers’ bodies in this struggle, and this was clearly
stated in its report by the largest-selling state daily among farmers,
‘Agrowon’ of the ‘Sakal’ group. The ‘Agrowon’ report noted that it was only
after the AIKS took the lead on the milk price issue that other farmers’
organizations, and including the BJP, also joined the fray. The AIKS has
brought some farmers’ organizations together to form the above Struggle
Committee and has been consistently fighting on the issue of milk for the last
three years.
Milk prices
to farmers have plummeted from Rs 30 per litre for cow milk before the lockdown
to Rs 17 per litre now, whereas cow milk continues to be sold to consumers at
Rs 48 per litre. This has adversely affected lakhs of milk farmers in
Maharashtra. The amount of milk, both cow and buffalo, collected daily in
Maharashtra, is 1 crore 30 lakh litres. Of this, about 65 lakh litres is sold
as pouched milk, and the remaining is turned into powder.
Last year,
the AIKS had led a similar struggle for remunerative milk price by distributing
milk free to poor children for 15 days continuously, under the slogan, “Why are
you looting us? Take our milk for free!” But this had very little effect on the
thick-skinned central and state governments. That is why the AIKS was forced to
resort to the form of ‘abhishek’.
WIDESPREAD
STRUGGLE
The AIKS
struggle on August 1 covered districts in regions all over the state. They
included Ahmednagar, Pune, Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur and Solapur in Western
Maharashtra; Thane and Palghar in Konkan; Nashik in Northern Maharashtra;
Wardha, Amravati and Buldana in Vidarbha; Aurangabad, Jalna, Parbhani, Nanded
and Beed in Marathwada. In many of these districts, the struggle was conducted
in several tehsils.
The struggle
was led at various places by AIKS national president Dr Ashok Dhawale, state
general secretary Dr Ajit Nawale, state treasurer Umesh Deshmukh, CITU state
secretary and CPI(M) MLA Vinod Nikole, AIKS state office bearers Ratan Budhar,
Barkya Mangat, Sidhappa Kalshetty, Shankar Sidam, Uddhav Poul, Sunil Malusare,
Manik Awaghade and many other AIKS state and district council members, and also
AIDWA, DYFI and SFI leaders.
The response
of the state government was to lodge police cases against Dr Ajit Nawale and 50
other farmer leaders of the Milk Producing Farmers Struggle Committee in
Akole.
FOUR MAJOR
DEMANDS
The four
major demands of this struggle were as follows:
1. The state
government must give direct subsidy of Rs 10 per litre to all milk producers so
that they get the price of Rs 30 per litre that they were getting before the
lockdown.
2. The
central government must immediately take back the notification clearing imports
of 10 lakh tonnes of milk powder, which will destroy the lives of milk farmers
all over India.
3. The
central government must immediately rescind its decision to import milk and
milk products from the USA in return for export of generic medicines to that
country.
4. The
central government must give an export subsidy of Rs 50 per kg for the large
stocks of milk powder that are lying unsold in the country's godowns.
The scheme
announced last month by the state government of buying 10 lakh litres of milk
per day was limited to only about 12 tehsils in the state and only to 24 per
cent of the milk companies. It thus failed to benefit farmers. Hence the AIKS
demanded that instead of the state government buying milk or giving subsidies
to milk companies, a direct subsidy of Rs 10 per litre must be transferred to
the bank accounts of all milk producing farmers.
IMPACT OF
COVID LOCKDOWN
The present
milk crisis has been aggravated by the steep fall in milk demand due to the
post-Covid shutdown of hotels, restaurants, hostels, canteens and mithai shops,
apart from very few marriages and other social functions. With institutional
sales collapsing — these make up a quarter of the country’s market for milk and
milk products — dairies have been accumulating skimmed milk powder and butter
through the summer and monsoon months. This situation will worsen once milk
production increases in the coming months with a lacklustre festival season
which may not see much demand for sweets made from milk products. Dairies
selling only commodities (skimmed milk powder and butter) have already, since
the March 25 lockdown, slashed milk prices by Rs 10-13 per litre. Even those
largely into liquid milk marketing have cut milk prices by Rs 3-5 per litre.
The central
government should direct the National Dairy Development Board to create a large
buffer stock of skimmed milk powder and butter and give export subsidy for
these products. But far from doing so, the BJP central government has issued a
notification for the import of 10 lakh tonnes of milk powder, a disastrous move
that has further depressed milk prices in various parts of the country. It has
also made a deal with the USA, wherein generic medicines from India will be
exported to the USA, and milk and milk products from the USA will be imported
into India. This will be another death warrant for India’s farmers.
BRAND WARS
IN MAHARASHTRA
The other
specific reason for the sharp drop in milk prices in Maharashtra is integrally
related to the milk brand wars that have been going on for the last several
years.
The
unprecedented success story of the giant Amul milk co-operative in Gujarat,
begun in 1946 and led for many decades by Tribhuvandas Patel and Verghese
Kurien, is well known. Apart from a whole range of innovative pro-farmer
measures, they brought all milk co-operatives in Gujarat under the single brand
Amul. Thankfully, successive BJP governments in Gujarat have not yet succeeded
in undermining Amul. Similarly, in Karnataka, there is another overwhelmingly popular
co-operative milk brand called Nandini.
Because of
Amul, milk farmers in Gujarat, even today despite the Covid lockdown, are still
receiving up to Rs 30 per litre for their cow milk, whereas in Maharashtra the
price received by farmers has dropped to less than Rs 20. Hence thousands of
farmers in Maharashtra sell over 33 lakh litres of milk daily to Amul, since
they get a better price.
In
Maharashtra, many years ago, a similar effort was made to set up a brand under
the name of the Mahananda apex state milk co-operative. However, the fact is that politicians from
both the ruling and opposition bourgeois parties, with their own vested
interests, undermined this effort and either began their own brands or encouraged
other companies to start theirs. As a result, today there are around 272
different milk brands in the state.
There is a
cut-throat competition among them, which is by no means free and fair. Huge
sums of ‘protection money’ changes hands for certain brands to be allowed to be
sold in certain areas. Massive amounts are extracted as commissions. The
quality of milk is compromised due to large scale adulteration. The large milk
companies, which may be called the milk mafia, make enormous profits. The
losers, who are millions in number, are both the milk producing farmers and
also the milk consumers in urban and rural areas.
Broadly, the
current economics of milk in Maharashtra is as follows, per litre of cow milk.
The farmer gets Rs 20 per litre or less, Rs 15 per litre is the cost of
homogenization, pasteurization, transport, distribution, profits and so on, and
the remaining Rs 13 per litre is swallowed by the unscrupulous milk mafia. This
makes it a total of Rs 48 per litre at which milk is sold to the consumers.
This third component can and must go to farmers. The formula that must be
worked out is that 70 per cent of the sale price of milk should go to farmers,
while 30 per cent should go to processing, transport, distribution and
profit.
The real
solution to this is for the state government to muster the necessary political
will to wind up all these brands and merge them into a single co-operative
brand, like Amul. But no state government, regardless of party, has shown such
a political will.
The AIKS
will continue its struggle for a fair deal to milk farmers in Maharashtra.
The milk price struggle at Akole, Dist Ahmednagar on August 1, led by AIKS state general secretary Dr Ajit Nawale and other leaders of the Milk Producing Farmers Struggle Committee
AIKS National President Dr Ashok Dhawale addressing the milk price struugle on August 1 at Waki village in Dahanu tehsil of Palghar district, with CITU leader and CP I(M) MLA Vinod Nikole to his left
