Operation Flood and India's White Revolution

Operation Flood was a national dairy development programme launched in 1970 by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). It organised millions of small milk farmers into village cooperatives and connected them to buyers in cities across India. It turned India from a country that had to import milk powder into the world's largest milk producer. This huge rise in milk production is known as India's White Revolution.

Why was it needed?

In the 1950s and 1960s, India did not produce enough milk for its people. In 1950-51, India produced only about 17 million tonnes of milk. Cities often faced shortages, and India imported large amounts of milk powder. At the same time, village farmers who kept one or two buffaloes had no fair market. Private traders and middlemen bought their milk cheaply and sold it at high prices in cities.

The farmer worked hard but earned little. Operation Flood set out to fix both problems at once: more milk for cities, and fair income for farmers.

Where did it come from? The Amul story

• In the 1940s, milk farmers of Kaira (now Kheda) district in Gujarat were unhappy with a private dairy company that bought their milk at unfair prices.
• Guided by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and led locally by Tribhuvandas Patel, they formed their own cooperative. The Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union was registered on 14 December 1946. It began with just two village societies collecting about 247 litres of milk a day. Its brand later became famous as Amul.
• Dr. Verghese Kurien, an engineer, came to Anand in 1949 as a government dairy officer and stayed on to build the union into a modern dairy. In 1954, the Kaira union set up its first plant to turn extra milk into milk powder, so that winter surplus could be stored and sold in summer.
• In 1964, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri visited Anand and wanted the Amul model copied across India. This led to the creation of the NDDB at Anand in 1965, with Kurien as its first chairman. The NDDB Act, 1987 later made it a statutory body (created by an Act of Parliament) and an Institution of National Importance.

The Anand Pattern: how the cooperative works

Operation Flood spread a three-level cooperative structure, called the Anand Pattern:

1. Village Dairy Cooperative Society: Farmers in a village bring milk twice a day. It is tested for fat content, and each farmer is paid based on quantity and quality.
2. District Milk Union: It collects milk from all village societies, processes it in a dairy plant and provides services like cattle feed, veterinary care and artificial insemination.
3. State Federation: It markets the milk and milk products under a common brand. For example, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), set up in 1973, owns and markets the Amul brand.

The farmers own the whole chain. Professionals run the plants, but elected farmer representatives control the boards. This way, a large share of the consumer's rupee goes back to the farmer instead of middlemen.

How was Operation Flood carried out? The three phases

• Phase I (1970 to 1980): Funded by selling skimmed milk powder and butter oil gifted by the European Economic Community (EEC) through the World Food Programme. This was clever: food aid was not given free to consumers (which would have hurt local farmers) but sold, and the money was used to build Indian dairies. It linked 18 milksheds (milk-producing regions) to the four metro cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.
• Phase II (1981 to 1985): Funded by EEC gifts and a World Bank loan. Milksheds grew from 18 to 136, and urban markets grew to 290. By the end of 1985, about 43,000 village cooperatives covered 42.5 lakh (4.25 million) milk producers.
• Phase III (1985 to 1996): The consolidation phase. About 30,000 new dairy cooperatives were added. Milksheds peaked at 173 in 1988-89. Services like veterinary first aid, cattle feed and artificial insemination were extended, and women's dairy cooperatives grew. Research produced a vaccine for theileriosis (a cattle disease spread by ticks), bypass protein feed and urea-molasses mineral blocks (cheap nutrient licks for animals).

A key idea was the National Milk Grid. Milk was collected in rural milksheds, chilled, and carried in insulated rail and road tankers to cities that needed it. In the end, the grid linked producers to consumers in over 700 towns and cities.

What did it achieve?

• India became the world's largest milk producer in 1998, overtaking the United States, and has stayed at the top since.
• Milk output grew from about 17 million tonnes in 1950-51 to about 247.87 million tonnes in 2024-25 (Basic Animal Husbandry Statistics 2025), a growth of 3.58% over 2023-24.
• Per capita availability (milk available per person per day) rose to about 485 grams per day in 2024-25, well above the world average of about 328 grams.
• India produces nearly one-fourth (about 25%) of the world's milk.
• Top milk-producing states in 2024-25: Uttar Pradesh (about 15.7%), Rajasthan (about 14.8%), Madhya Pradesh (about 9.1%), Gujarat (about 7.8%) and Maharashtra (about 6.7%). Together they produce a little over half of India's milk.
• Cattle now give a larger share of milk (about 53.5%) than buffaloes (about 43.1%).
• Dairy gave regular, daily cash income to millions of landless and small farmers, many of them women, which is rare in farming where income comes only at harvest.

India's dairy support system today

• National Milk Day is observed on 26 November, Kurien's birthday (he was born in 1921). It was first observed in 2014.
• Rashtriya Gokul Mission (launched December 2014): to develop and protect indigenous (desi) cattle breeds and improve their milk yield.
• National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD): to build milk testing, chilling and processing infrastructure, especially for cooperatives. Its newer version, NPDD 2.0, also funds White Revolution 2.0.
• Dairy Processing and Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF) (2017-18): a fund of about ₹8,004 crore, run through NABARD, giving cheap loans to cooperatives for processing and chilling plants.
• Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund (AHIDF): a ₹15,000 crore fund created under the Atmanirbhar Bharat package to support private and FPO investment in dairy and meat processing.
• White Revolution 2.0 (2024 to 2029), led by the Ministry of Cooperation: aims to raise milk procurement by dairy cooperatives by 50% in five years, from about 660 lakh kg per day (2023-24) to about 1,007 lakh kg per day by 2028-29, mainly by setting up new dairy cooperative societies in villages that have none.

Commonly confused concepts

• White Revolution vs Green Revolution: White Revolution is about milk (Operation Flood, from 1970). Green Revolution is about foodgrains, mainly wheat and rice, using high-yielding seeds, fertilisers and irrigation (from the mid-1960s, linked to M.S. Swaminathan and Norman Borlaug).
• Other "revolutions": Blue = fisheries; Yellow = oilseeds; Pink = meat and poultry (also sometimes onions); Golden = horticulture and honey; Silver = eggs. UPSC often mixes these in options.
• Verghese Kurien vs Tribhuvandas Patel: Tribhuvandas Patel founded and chaired the Kaira union (1946). Kurien built it into a modern dairy and later led NDDB and Operation Flood. Kurien is called the "Father of the White Revolution".
• NDDB vs GCMMF vs Amul: NDDB is the national statutory board that spread the model across India. GCMMF is the Gujarat state federation that markets products. Amul is the brand owned by GCMMF.
• Milkshed vs watershed: A milkshed is an area from which milk is collected for a dairy. A watershed is an area of land that drains rainwater into a common river or lake.

Issues, criticism and the way forward

• Low yield per animal: India has the world's largest number of cattle and buffaloes, but each animal gives much less milk than in countries like the US or Israel. Total production is high mainly because there are so many animals.
• Fodder shortage: Land for grazing and growing fodder is shrinking. A weak monsoon quickly causes fodder prices to jump, which raises the cost of milk.
• Climate and heat stress: Rising temperatures reduce milk yield. High-yielding crossbred cows (mixes of foreign and Indian breeds) usually suffer more from heat than hardy indigenous breeds.
• Seasonal swings: Milk output rises in winter and falls in summer. Dairies must convert winter surplus into milk powder and butter, but when processing capacity is full, farmer prices fall; when the flush is weak, shortages follow.
• Uneven cooperative reach: The cooperative model is strong in Gujarat, Karnataka and a few other states, but weak in many others, where farmers still sell to middlemen or unorganised buyers.
• Disease: Diseases like Lumpy Skin Disease (which spread widely in 2022) and foot-and-mouth disease cause big losses.
• Trade pressure: Dairy is a sensitive sector in trade deals because cheap imports could hurt millions of small farmers. India has usually kept dairy out of tariff cuts in free trade agreements.
• Way forward: Better breeds and artificial insemination, fodder banks and silage (stored green fodder), animal insurance, cooling sheds for animals, more processing and powder-making capacity, and expanding cooperatives to uncovered villages as White Revolution 2.0 plans.

Concepts to Know

• Cooperative: A business owned and run by its members (here, milk farmers) for their own benefit. Profits go back to members, not to outside shareholders.
• Milkshed: The area around a dairy plant from which milk is collected.
• Skimmed milk powder (SMP): Dried milk with most of the fat removed. It can be stored for months and turned back into milk later.
• Butter oil: Almost pure milk fat, similar to ghee, used to make milk again when mixed with SMP and water.
• Artificial insemination: A method where semen from a high-quality bull is placed in a cow by a trained worker, to produce better calves without keeping a bull.
• Per capita availability: The total amount available divided by the population, showing how much each person gets on average.
• Statutory body: An organisation created by a law passed by Parliament or a state legislature.
• Flush and lean season: The flush season is when animals give the most milk (cooler months); the lean season is when they give the least (hot months).