The secret of Mother Dairy’s success

B. K. Karkra

If there is a co-operative organisation alive to both business opportunities and social responsibility, it is the Mother Dairy establishment, a subsidiary of the better-known National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). Ours is the age of the showman and not of quiet competency. Therefore, Mother Dairy has hardly ever been in the news. It only finds a brief mention in the media when the rates of its milk undergo an occasional upward revision.

We are known for our negative ingenuity, finding some way or the other to make money. Thankfully, Mother Dairy — which meets over 40 per cent of our milk requirement — remains clean. It is, undoubtedly, manned by the same Indians, but what seems to have done the trick is that it functions in an environment of plenty and the absence of subsidies. However, the role of its parent organisation in its praiseworthy performance can also not be denied. The brilliant personality of the person who has led the milk movement in the country is fully reflected here.

Mother Dairy seemed to have imbibed the virtue of privatisation much before it became a buzzword of our economic reforms. Its booths are run by private individuals as concessionaires. Even the supply tankers are managed privately on commission basis. The management has rightly decided to limit its role to inspections so as to ensure that quality of its products is maintained and malpractices do not creep in at any level.

Mother Dairy also appears to be thinking ahead all the time. It is spreading fast to the suburbs of the megapolis like Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Noida and Faridabad. It already has its booths in the subcity of Dwarka where not a single post-office, municipal establishment or even a bank has ventured forth so far. One Mother Dairy booth is already functional in the township, and others are waiting in the wings, essentially for inhabitants to move in. Mother Dairy is also fast diversifying into other related areas. It is a tremendous success story in the ice cream segment having captured a credit worthy 45 per cent share of Delhi’s market.

Milk doesn’t exactly flood this country. Demand for milk is also on the rise. Nonetheless, the NDDB has seen to it that our country has sufficient quantities of milk available, in line with the purchasing power of the people. When the level of poverty goes down further and the purchasing capacity of our poor increases, we shall surely need a lot more milk. We would then need the NDDB to keep pace with this development.