Post-Independence Dairy Development in India (1947-1970)

When India gained independence in 1947, its dairy sector was fragile and fragmented. Milk production was low, cattle breeds were largely unimproved, and millions of rural farmers had no organized market to sell their milk. Annual milk production stood at just 17 million tonnes in 1950-51, and in cities, consumers depended on unregulated milk vendors and informal supply chains. The two decades that followed – from 1947 to 1970 – became the period when India made its first serious, structured attempts to change this. Through a series of government programmes, cooperative experiments, and support from international agencies, the foundations of modern Indian dairying were quietly laid.

The dairy situation at independence 🔗

At the time of independence, dairying in India was largely a rural cottage industry. Small and marginal farmers kept one or two milch animals – cows or buffaloes – whose nutritional needs were met mostly by agricultural byproducts. Milk production was dominated by small landholding farmers and landless labourers who collectively owned around 70 percent of the national milch animal herd. There was no reliable system to procure milk from rural areas and supply it to growing urban populations.

In cities, milk vendors kept cattle in cramped urban colonies and sold milk door-to-door – a practice that was both unhygienic and genetically damaging. Vendors focused on maximizing profit, extending the lactation period of animals through forced methods, which led to sterility and ultimately the sale of high-yielding animals to slaughterhouses – systematically draining the country of genetically superior breeds. Meanwhile, India was commercially importing large quantities of milk powder to meet urban demand. The situation called for immediate, coordinated action.

Government programmes to boost milk production (1947-1970) 🔗

The Indian government recognized early on that dairy development could not happen in isolation – it required improvements in cattle breeds, veterinary care, farmer education, and market access simultaneously. Several key programmes were introduced during the First and Second Five-Year Plan periods to address these challenges.

Community Development Programme (1952) 🔗

The Community Development Programme (CDP) was formally launched on 2 October 1952, with the aim of holistic rural development through people’s participation and multi-sectoral action. While it was not a dairy-specific initiative, it had direct relevance to dairying by integrating animal husbandry into rural development planning.

The programme began with 55 community projects covering 300 development blocks, with each block managed by a Block Development Officer assisted by extension officers for agriculture, animal husbandry, education, health, and social welfare. Village-level workers, known as Gram Sevaks, acted as the link between administration and farmers on the ground. For dairy, the CDP helped promote cooperative societies, construction of veterinary dispensaries, and encouraged organized milk collection at the village level. However, it was a broad programme with limited depth in livestock improvement, and its direct impact on milk production remained modest.

Key Village Scheme (1952) 🔗

Launched alongside the CDP in August 1952, the Key Village Scheme (KVS) was India’s first systematic attempt at organized cattle improvement through a comprehensive programme covering artificial insemination, selective breeding, cooperative marketing of purebred cattle, and feed and fodder development.

The scheme organized the country into Key Village Blocks, each consisting of one artificial insemination (AI) centre and four key village units. Each block was designed to cover around 10,000 breedable cows and buffaloes. The idea was to concentrate resources in identified breeding tracts, improve the genetic quality of local cattle, and make AI services accessible at the village level.

Despite its well-designed framework, the KVS fell short of expectations. By 1962, it was clear the scheme had not made the desired impact – several dairy plants were unable to collect sufficient quantities of milk, and reasons for failure included the establishment of centres in states with no recognized breeds, lack of attention to fodder development, and inadequate marketing infrastructure. The scheme covered about 5 million cows and buffaloes, which was only around 6.5 percent of the total breedable female cattle population – far too small to shift national production significantly.

Intensive Cattle Development Projects (1963 onwards) 🔗

When the Key Village Scheme did not produce the desired results, the government responded with a more focused intervention. The Intensive Cattle Development Project (ICDP) was introduced during the Third Five-Year Plan, modelled on the lines of the Intensive Agricultural District Programme, with each project expected to cover one lakh breedable female bovine population and provide all necessary inputs and technical services.

Each ICDP was deliberately linked to an existing dairy plant so that the plant could procure and process milk to its full installed capacity – a practical approach that connected production improvement directly to market infrastructure. The programme covered controlled breeding, veterinary aid, disease control, feed and fodder supply, and dairy extension services. Importantly, crossbreeding of non-descript Indian cattle on a field scale started in 1964 with the launch of the ICDPs, and by 1969, crossbreeding with exotic breeds had become official government policy for increasing milk production.

The government extended 100 percent central assistance during the Third Five-Year Plan, and the ICDPs were later transferred to state plan schemes. While the programme made a genuine impact on milk production and animal health in several regions, the Programme Evaluation Organisation’s 1970-71 report indicated that the ICDPs too had not fully accomplished their objectives, partly due to reduced state funding and uneven implementation across states.

Milk supply schemes in cities 🔗

Parallel to the cattle improvement schemes in rural areas, the government addressed the urban side of the dairy problem. Initial government action focused on organizing milk schemes in large cities to provide hygienic milk to the growing urban population. State governments also tried different approaches during the 1960s – running department-managed dairies, setting up cattle colonies near cities, and organizing city-level milk supply schemes.

These efforts had limited long-term success on their own, but they created an important institutional appetite for a better solution. They also built early infrastructure – chilling centres, milk collection points, and pasteurization units – that would later become essential to the cooperative dairy movement.

The Anand Model and the birth of NDDB 🔗

While government schemes were being rolled out nationally, a quiet revolution was already underway in Anand, Gujarat. In the late 1940s, milk producers in the Kaira district, led by the vision of Dr. Verghese Kurien, broke away from exploitative middlemen by forming the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union – later known as Amul. The model was straightforward: village-level cooperatives collected milk from farmers, which was then processed and marketed collectively, with profits going back to the producers.

This Anand model proved so successful that it inspired national policy. The strategy for organized dairy development in India was conceived in the late 1960s, within a few years after the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was founded in 1965, and it rested on replicating this cooperative approach across the country through Operation Flood.

During its initial stages, NDDB received financial support from the Government of India, the Danish Government, and Amul, as well as aid from UNICEF in the form of teaching material and equipment. The NDDB was not simply a funding body – it was a technical institution that designed and drove India’s dairy development strategy, and its establishment in 1965 marked a decisive shift in how the country approached the problem.

Role of non-governmental organizations 🔗

Government initiatives alone could not reach every corner of the country. Non-governmental organizations played a complementary role, particularly in areas where state capacity was limited.

The Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF), founded in 1967, focused on improving livestock productivity through breed improvement, nutrition, and veterinary care, working directly with smallholder farmers to introduce sustainable dairy practices. Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), established later in 1972 but with roots in organizing workers during this period, contributed to ensuring women dairy farmers received training, credit access, and market linkages – recognizing women as central to household-level dairying across rural India. These organizations filled critical gaps in technical support and grassroots mobilization that government programmes often could not address.

International aid and technical support 🔗

India’s dairy development during this period also benefited significantly from international partnerships. In 1969, when the Government of India approved the Operation Flood programme and its financing through the monetization of World Food Programme-gifted commodities, it established the Indian Dairy Corporation in 1970 to handle the donated commodities, manage quality testing, and act as a finance-and-promotion entity while NDDB provided all technical support.

The government of India set up several bilateral crossbreeding projects in collaboration with external agencies in the early 1960s – including the UNDP project in Haringhatta (West Bengal), the Indo-Danish project in Hesserghatta (Karnataka), the Indo-Swiss project in Mattupatti (Kerala), and the Indo-German project in Mandi (Himachal Pradesh) – to test the potential of exotic-breed crossbreeding for milk yield improvement under Indian conditions. The FAO provided technical assistance and training to Indian dairy farmers and officials, while USAID supported development projects through funding and coordination with government agencies and NGOs.

Slow progress and the case for a new approach 🔗

Despite all these efforts, the overall result of the 1947-1970 period was sobering. During the two decades between 1951 and 1970, milk production growth was barely 1 percent per annum, while per capita consumption actually declined by an equivalent amount. Annual production hovered between 20 and 22 million tonnes throughout the 1960s.

Throughout the first decade after independence, milk production recorded a CAGR of just 1.64 percent, which fell further to 1.15 percent during the 1960s. The core problem was structural: without a stable and remunerative market for milk producers, there was no real incentive to invest in better cattle, better feeding, or better management. Schemes that focused only on production without solving the marketing and pricing problem were always going to be limited in impact.

This recognition – that dairy development requires linking producers to markets, not just improving animals – was the critical insight that shaped what came next. By the time NDDB was established in 1965 and Operation Flood was being planned, India had learned from nearly two decades of partial successes and honest failures. The groundwork laid between 1947 and 1970, imperfect as it was, provided the institutional knowledge, physical infrastructure, and policy lessons that made the White Revolution possible in the decades that followed.

What do you think? Given that production-focused schemes like the Key Village Scheme and ICDP had limited success without solving the market access problem, what does this tell us about the relationship between production support and market linkages in agricultural development? And how much credit should international aid and bilateral partnerships receive for India’s eventual transformation into the world’s largest milk producer?

References

1. https://www.ibef.org/blogs/development-of-india-s-dairy-sector
2. https://www.fao.org/4/t3080t/t3080t07.htm
3. https://www.gktoday.in/community-development-programme/
4. https://www.journeywithasr.com/2020/12/key-village-scheme-intensive-cattle-development-project.html
5. https://www.longdom.org/open-access/crossbreeding-in-cattle-for-milk-production-achievements-challenges-and-opportunities-in-indiaa-review-23656.html
6. https://organiser.org/2024/11/26/266947/bharat/indias-dairy-revolution-from-shortage-to-global-leadership/