Analyze the land reform’s effects in the years following independence with a critical eye.
Launched in 1970, Operation Flood was the world's largest dairy development program and a landmark project of India's National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). It transformed India from a milk deficient nation into the world's largest milk producer with about 17 percent of global output in 2010–11. WRead more
Launched in 1970, Operation Flood was the world’s largest dairy development program and a landmark project of India’s National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). It transformed India from a milk deficient nation into the world’s largest milk producer with about 17 percent of global output in 2010–11. Within a few decades, it doubled the milk available per person in India and made dairy farming India’s largest self-sustainable rural employment generator.
Significance Of The Indian Dairy Sector
- It is estimated that there are 75 million dairy farmers in the country, a number larger than the entire population of countries such as the UK, France, Italy or Thailand.
- It is especially important for women who account for over 60% of the days devoted to animal rearing and those with little land for whom it is an overwhelmingly important source of income.
Operation Flood And The Dairy Development Board
1.The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was created in 1965, fulfilling the desire of the then prime minister of India — the late Lal Bahadur Shastri to extend the success of the Kaira Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union (Amul) to other parts of India. 2.The White Revolution or Operation Flood launched by NDDB under the leadership of Dr Verghese Kurien, based on the Anand model of cooperative dairying that preceded it, is often regarded as one of the most successful examples of Indian innovation in the 20th century. 3.Operation Flood’s objectives included:
- Increased milk production
- Augmented rural incomes
- Fair prices for consumers
- Increased income of, and reduced poverty among participating farmers while ensuring a steady supply of milk in return.
An Effort That Brought Together Institutional, Technical And Market Innovation
Institutional Innovation
- NDDB has integrated more than one lakh dairy co-operatives in what it calls the Anand Pattern, linking the village society to the state federations in a three-tier structure.
- They organized farmers into a cooperative in the best sense of the word. They established a network of farmers and local dairies to collect and process daily milk produced.
- Cooperatives together decided to end the menace of middlemen in the dairy sector by procuring, processing and selling the dairy products themselves by using cooperatives.
Technical Innovation
- Adaptation of modern technology to local contexts was the bulwark of Operation flood’s early success. For example, the ability to make milk powder from buffalo milk was at that time regarded as impossible.
- Technology-enabled dairies to smoothen supplies of the dairy products, that are seasonal, throughout the year.
Market Innovation
- Since the beginning of operation flood dairies and the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) have evolved with the Indian consumer.
- As consumer diets changed, first gradually, then rapidly, Indian dairy cooperatives have kept pace, with offerings of processed products, butter, ghee, cream, sweets, chocolate and ice cream, with innovations in last-mile delivery.
- Operation flood is often credited with altering consumer perceptions that fresh milk purchased directly from milk vendors was safer than those that came in packets.
Political will
- The cooperative movement in India also owes much to Sardar Patel and Morarji Desai for their commitment to cooperatives, especially dairy cooperatives. They are the examples of political will that is expected from today’s politicians.
- In 1964 the then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, on a visit to Anand to inaugurate a cattle feed plant, chose to spend a night in the village. His goal was to fathom the ingredients of Amul and to see if these could be replicated in other parts of the country. His visit led to the establishment of the National Dairy Development Board in 1965.
Impact Of Operation Flood On Society
- Operation Flood has its impacts on poverty alleviation. On one hand, it provided affordable dairy products to consumers and on the other hand, it helped farmers to secure their income from highly perishable products.
- All three phases of Operation Flood were implemented to reach around 18 million farmers.
- A significant proportion of beneficiaries were women and the functionally landless. It led to women empowerment.
- It was also a pioneer in prioritizing food safety at a time when these concerns were less well articulated.
- The cooperatives responded to the evolving needs of the farmer, expanding the range of input services and development activities upstream, including cattle feed, breeding, artificial insemination services, animal health and nutrition.
India is the world’s largest producer of milk, with some of the world’s smallest producers, but dairy cooperatives today thrive in only five or six states. Only around 22% of all milk produced is processed by the organized sector and most of the milk is consumed in liquid form or khoa, channa and paneer, all highly perishable. Considering the high employability of the sector we must replicate the Operation flood throughout India. Dairy is an obvious focal point for the government’s goal to double farmers’ incomes by 2022.
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Land reforms refer to a series of policy measures taken by the government of India after independence, to regulate ownership, operation, and leasing of land. Nearly two centuries of British revenue policy has caused extreme indebtedness of farmers, land fragmentation, increase in income inequality iRead more
Land reforms refer to a series of policy measures taken by the government of India after independence, to regulate ownership, operation, and leasing of land. Nearly two centuries of British revenue policy has caused extreme indebtedness of farmers, land fragmentation, increase in income inequality in rural India, less productivity, and stagnation of agriculture. After independence, the government of India took up issues of farmers on mission mode and initiated a series of reforms to rid Indian agriculture of feudalistic and exploitative agrarian structure.
Evaluation Of Land Reforms
1.Abolition of Intermediaries: Abolition of zamindari and similar intermediary tenures during 1950-55 essentially involved the removal of intermediaries between state and actual cultivators. a.
i. It led to the large-scale eviction of poor tenants from land. While landlordism has been abolished, absentee landlordism now continues to flourish. ii. The legislation conferred ownership rights not upon the actual cultivator, but on the statutory tenant, who himself was an intermediary with a chain of sub-tenants under him. c. Assessment: Thus, the abolition of intermediary rights on land has been a mixed blessing. Undoubtedly, this zamindari abolition has paved the way for a remarkable shift in the balance of power. But the goal of “land to the tiller” was not achieved. 2. Tenancy reforms: These reforms include, regulation of rent, providing security of tenure, and conferring rights of ownership for tenants.
Positives of this measure
This policy mandated that the Rent payable to the landowners should not exceed one-fifth to one-fourth of the gross produce of the land. In the light of this guideline, all the states have enacted laws for the fixation of rent. A very important aspect of tenancy reform is the conferment of ownership rights to tenants. This reform resulted in nearly 124.2 lac tenants getting ownership rights.
Issues with this measure
There existed a large-scale inter-state variation in rents fixed by the states. Due to a loose definition of the term personal cultivation, landowners continued to resume land for self-cultivation and evicted the tenants despite it being illegal. These reforms have failed to regulate rents because of the poor position of land-hungry farmers. Conferment of ownership also failed as only tenants operating in 4 percent of land got ownership rights. Assessment: Overall impact of tenancy reforms has been rather limited. Legislation for conferment of ownership rights could not yield good results because many tenants are incapable of buying land from the landowners and many of them are unwilling to do so. 3.Ceiling on Landholdings: To reduce the existing disparities in the pattern of land-ownership and make some land available for distribution to landless agricultural workers, the imposition of ceilings on agricultural holdings above a certain limit was envisaged. Positives of this measure: Till 2001, the total amount of land declared surplus was 73.67 lakh acres, 64.95 lakh acres of land had been taken over by the states. A total of 53.79 lakh acres of land have been distributed among 54.84 lakh tenants. Issues with this measure: In the second phase of this reform that started after 1972, ceiling limits have also been lowered. Besides this, the exemption for orchards, grazing land, religious/charitable/educational trusts, sugarcane plantations, tanks, fisheries have made the ceiling laws virtually redundant. Assessment of this measure: The operations of the ceiling law made virtually no impact on the agrarian structure. The public debate preceding this law over several years enabled landowners to manipulate land records. 4. Consolidation of Landholdings: Fragmented and subdivided landholdings, as well as small sized holdings, have made Indian agriculture unremunerative. So consolidation of these lands was necessary to boost efficiency and economy in India’s agriculture. This process till now is completed only in very few states, prominent among them being Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. One of the reasons for the tardy progress of this aspect of land reforms is that small farmers have a strong fear that consolidation favours large farmers.
Impact Of Land Reforms
After more than 70 years of independence, one notices some achievements in the sphere of land reforms. At the same time, our efforts in this direction have not yielded desired results. Most of the planks of land reform measures are ambivalent and there are large gaps between policy and legislation and between legislation and implementation.
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