How Elections In Gujarat Curdle The Milk Cooperatives Bowl !

 BY R.K.MISRA

You built on costs and borrow on value, so goes an old saying.

 The late V.Kurien,  father of the milk revolution built India into the largest milk producer of the world on costs. Mr Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat turned Prime Minister of India has borrowed on its value to claim political capital for himself and his party which it encashes  in full measure in the elections. And this one in Gujarat 2022 is no exception.

The present day Amul pattern  dairy cooperatives  trace their origins to the establishment of a  dairy cooperative at Anand in 1946 under the direction and guidance of sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. His nominee Tribhuvandas  Patel and freshly minted-foreign educated  engineer Kurien, began this experiment from a shed and organized  even single milch cattle owners to form a dairy cooperative . It would undertake direct sale and processing of milk collected from members. It was this pattern which grew to be known as the Anand pattern. It was thereafter that the National Dairy development Board(NDDB) was set up with Kurien as its chairperson and the experiment replicated countrywide. The pattern entails joining individual farmers in village level dairy cooperative societies(DCS) which are collected to form district level unions, which in turn are joined in state level marketing federations in each state .GCMMF is one of them and the initiating pioneer.

Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation(GCMMF), the apex marketing body of the milk cooperatives of Gujarat  holds lien to Amul and Sagar brands besides numerous others and had an annual turnover of Rs 61,000 crores in  2021-22. It has a network of 18600 village milk cooperatives under 18 milk unions in 33 districts accounting for 3.64 million milk producers in a 38 million voting population. This number  accounts for a formidable voter population and Narendra Modi during his chief minister-ship worked assiduously to take control of this financially powerful and politically crucial voter base for the BJP. He even strategised to oust the father of the milk revolution in India .V.Kurien from the GCMMF and the Institute of Rural Management Anand(IRMA) in 2006 because he was proving a stumbling block in his political plans. Kurien guarded his milk producers like a hawk and  chief minister Modi wanted the milk cooperatives with their  huge voter base and fat finances . After Kurien’s ouster there was no stopping Modi and the BJP under him took control of the milk cooperatives in Gujarat and his partymen were appointed chairpersons of the district  milk cooperative dairies of the state.

So deep was  the then Gujarat chief minister’s antagonism against Kurien that when he passed away on September 9, 2012 though just about 30kms away on a public engagement he did not go over to pay his  last respects to the colossus of India’s milk revolution.

Now the ruling BJP has a direct say in the election to key positions in the district dairy cooperatives as well as in the election of the GCMMF chairperson. The offshoot, however , is a ferocious tug-of-war within party leaders for these positions of power, each vying to prove themselves more loyal to the king.

It was this fall-out that saw former minister of state for home and former chairman of the Mehsana district Cooperative milk Producers Union Ltd (Dudhsagar dairy), Vipul Chaudhary being  arrested in a midnight swoop on September 14 allegedly for siphoning off Rs 750 crores from the dairy through dummy firms and illegal money transactions.

Joint director Anti-Corruption Bureau(ACB) Makrand Chauhan said in a press conference after the arrest that an FIR had been registered against him for his alleged involvement in financial irregularities during his chairmanship of the Dudhsagar dairy between 2005 and 2016. His wife Gitaben, son Pavan who are abroad have also been named in the FIR alongside his chartered accountant Shailesh Parikh. Chaudhary and his CA were produced in Court and remanded to police custody until September 23.They have been charged with cheating, forgery, breach of trust, criminal conspiracy and charges under the Prevention of corruption Act.

While the corruption charges may well be the subject of legitimate police investigation but it is its timing, coming close to the elections that  makes the move suspect. Chaudhary had earlier been arrested by the state CID in 2020 charging him  with alleged involvement in siphoning off Rs 14.8 crore from a fund meant for paying bonus to workers of the Dairy but there was little activity in the period thereafter.

 His present arrest comes close on the heels of  his setting up a non-political outfit, Arbuda Sena, towards organizing his community and harnessing it to contest the ensuing state assembly elections. That there is a move to call the Enforcement Department into the investigations, is also indicative of a lurking desire to render Chaudhary hors-de-combat for the period of the elections in Gujarat. The case of Delhi health minister Satyender Jain  who was gingerly heading the AAP electoral effort in Himachal Pradesh and his incarceration by the ED is an example.

Interestingly Dudhsagar is one of the largest cooperative dairy in India with an annual turnover of Rs 4700 crores(FY 2018-19) with over 6 lakh rural milk producers and an average milk collection of 28 lakh litres per day including from Haryana and Rajasthan besides Gujarat. Chaudhary’s father was  an influential member of the aanjana sub-caste and  is revered as one of the pioneers of the milk cooperative movement in the district. The community exercises electoral sway over about a dozen seats in the region. Following Chaudhary’s arrest, a large number of his supporters led by former Dudhsagar dairy vice-chairman, Moghjibhai Patel had led a protest  outside the district collector’s office ,Mehsana charging that their leader was innocent and was being deliberately targeted by the ruling BJP since long.

Chaudhary is a former chairman of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation(GCMMF). Incidentally Vipul Chaudhary was among the BJP legislators who had gone along with Shankersinh Vaghela in the rebellion of 1995 that led to the ouster of the first BJP chief minister of  Gujarat, Keshubhai Patel.  Modi was then a close confidante of Patel. When Vaghela broke away from the BJP to form  his own regional outfit  and come to power as chief minister with Congress support ,Vipul was his minister of state for home.

Though Chaudhary subsequently made up with Modi, he did not take kindly  to his overtures towards the Manmohan Singh led UPA government which was in power at the Centre. Chaudhary who aspired to become the chairman of the National Dairy Development Board(NDDB) had met  Rahul Gandhi in Ahmedabad. Chaudhary had also given away cattle feed worth Rs 22 crores for free to a milk cooperative in the then agriculture minister Sharad Pawar’s home state of Maharashtra. This got Modi’s goat. He was  ousted from GCMMF in 2014 as most of the district dairy members on the federation belonged to the BJP. Later in 2016,he was sacked as the chairman of the Dudhsagar Dairy over alleged corruption in cattle fodder. Still behind bars, his persona lingers and is likely to have a bearing on the outcome of at least 12 seats in north Gujarat  on which his community has a say.

The BJP would like to see him  away from the electoral scene but aware this strategy may backfire, it has opened  back-channel negotiations with the incarcerated Chaudhary. This was done  after news reports that he may contest the ensuing elections on AAP ticket. AAP chief  Arvind Kejriwal was  scheduled to address the Arbuda sena  convention on November 15 at Charada village in Gandhinagar district but the Delhi chief minister cancelled his plans at the last minute. It was said that Kejriwal was supposed to announce Chaudhary’s joining of the party and his candidature on AAP ticket but the cancellation raised speculation of a compromise being worked out  with the BJP. The Arbuda Sena announced at the meeting that it would do whatever Chaudhary directs it to and for the moment that it had  not received any directions from him. 

A  garlanded turban  was kept on the seat meant for him at the meeting indicating that the last had not been heard on the subject yet.

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