Dairy has been a part of Indian cuisine and culture for a very long time; its history goes back thousands of years. Today, India is the world’s largest producer of dairy products, all thanks to the White Revolution from the 1970s. Operation Flood, popularly known as the White Revolution, included a series of measures taken by the Indian government to make the country self-reliant in terms of dairy production. The project also aimed to decrease the price of milk in the country and simultaneously increase the income of the rural population. This was achieved by introducing an extensive cattle rearing development program that helped livestock owners initiate new and improved methods of animal husbandry. Since the country’s Independence and the implementation of Operation Flood, the Indian dairy industry has seen a stable growth of milk and dairy production. This resulted in the volume increasing from just 17 million tonnes in 1951 to around 209 million tonnes in 2021. This tenfold increase in production allowed the country to stop importing and start exporting milk and dairy products. As of today, India has become the world’s largest producer of dairy products and is responsible for more than 23% of the milk that is produced globally. It also has the highest number of milk producing livestock in the world. Fifty percent of the world’s buffaloes and more than 20% of the world’s cattle are in India. The dairy industry is growing at a rate of 6.2% per year. The Government of India and the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying recently announced a Rs 161 billion infrastructure development programme for the industry. Currently valued at Rs 13,174 billion, it is predicted that the dairy industry will reach more than Rs 30,000 billion by the end of this decade. With the Indian dairy industry growing rapidly in the past few decades, a significant proportion of the rural population depend on it for their daily income. The demand for dairy products has also been robust across the country, with the industry having become a fundamental part in the socio-economic development of the country.
10 May 2022
Akshat Bhatnagar
