The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) is a

statutory body A statutory body or statutory authority is a body set up by law ( statute) that is authorised to implement certain legislation on behalf of the relevant country or state, sometimes by being empowered or delegated to set rules (for example r ...

set up by an Act of the

Parliament of India The Parliament of India ( IAST: ) is the supreme legislative body of the Republic of India. It is a bicameral legislature composed of the president of India and two houses: the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and the Lok Sabha (House of ...

. It is under the ownership of

Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying is a newly formed ministry in India. It was formed in May 2019 by Modi government from the department of same name under fish minister . The move was welcomed by Tamil Nadu Co-operative M ...

of the

Government of India The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

. The main office is in

Anand, Gujarat Anand is the administrative centre of Anand District in the state of Gujarat, India. It is administered by Anand Municipality. It is part of the region known as Charotar, consisting of Anand and Kheda districts. Anand is known as Milk Capital ...

with regional offices throughout the country. NDDB's subsidiaries include Indian Dairy Machinery Company Limited, Mother Dairy and Indian Immunologicals Limited, Hyderabad. The Board was created to finance and support producer-owned and controlled organisations. Its programmes and activities seek to strengthen farmer cooperatives and support national policies that are favourable to the growth of such institutions. Cooperative principles and cooperative strategies are fundamental to the board's efforts. Meenesh Shah was appointed the Chairman of NDDB in 2021.

Establishment

The NDDB was founded by Dr.

Verghese Kurien Verghese Kurien (26 November 1921 - 9 September 2012), known as the "Father of the White Revolution" in India, was a social entrepreneur whose "billion-litre idea", Operation Flood, made dairy farming India's largest self-sustaining industry a ...

in 1965. The prime minister of India at that time,

Lal Bahadur Shastri Lal Bahadur Shastri (; 2 October 1904 – 11 January 1966) was an Indian politician and statesman who served as the 2nd Prime Minister of India from 1964 to 1966 and 6th Home Minister of India from 1961 to 1963. He promoted the White Re ...

, wished to replicate the success of the Kaira Cooperative Milk Producers' Union (

Amul Anand Milk Union Limited (AMUL) is an Indian dairy state government cooperative society, based in Anand, Gujarat. Formed in 1946, it is a cooperative brand managed by Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), which today is ...

) across India. Kurien had been instrumental in Amul's success, where he had instituted a producer-run, democratic farmers' cooperative model. Until this time, India's own dairy industry was limited in its capacity and dominated by traders who set pricing. Marginal milk producers reaped little reward in this system, and the country's foreign exchange was expended in European and New Zealand dairy industries, purchasing dairy imports to fill the shortfall. Between the start of the NDDB's landmark project in 1970, ''

Operation Flood Operation Flood, launched on 13 January 1970, was the world's largest dairy development program and a landmark project of India's National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). It transformed India from a milk-deficient nation into the world's larges ...

'' and its founder's retirement in 1998, India quadrupled its milk production, with the board's technical and organisational support. By then India had 81,000 dairy cooperatives, formed with the assistance of NDDB on their "Amul" pattern. In 1998, India became the largest milk producer in the world, when its output surpassed that of the United States. The country remains a major dairy-producing nation.

Initiatives

In 2012, under the national dairy plan (NDP) programme, NDDB had initiated plans to boost dairy farming by targeting 40,000 villages in 14 major milk producing states including Punjab. The project was aimed at covering about 2.7 million milch animals in these states. In October 2020, the NDDB launched a "manure management initiative" at the Mujkuva Dairy Cooperative Society (DCS) in Anand district, wherein

biogas Biogas is a mixture of gases, primarily consisting of methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide, produced from raw materials such as agricultural waste, manure, municipal waste, plant material, sewage, green waste and food waste. It is a ...

plants are installed by the dairy farmers outside their residences for producing gas to be used as cooking fuel. In addition to biogas, bio-slurry produced from these biogas plants will also be used by the farmers in their own fields for soil conditioning. Surplus bio-slurry can be sold to other farmers or converted into organic fertilisers. In 2000, in accordance of the plans of NDDB to reach out to more states, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the administration of

Ladakh Ladakh () is a region administered by India as a union territory which constitutes a part of the larger Kashmir region and has been the subject of dispute between India, Pakistan, and China since 1947. (subscription required) Quote: "Jammu a ...

to promote dairying and rural livelihoods in the newly formed union territory. In one innovative approach, NDDB, in collaboration with

All India Radio All or ALL may refer to: Language * All, an indefinite pronoun in English * All, one of the English determiners * Allar language (ISO 639-3 code) * Allative case (abbreviated ALL) Music * All (band), an American punk rock band * ''All'' (All ...

(AIR), launched ''Radio Samvad''—an awareness series on radio for dairy farmers of the

Vidarbha Vidarbha (Pronunciation: �id̪əɾbʱə is a geographical region in the east of the Indian state of Maharashtra and a proposed state of central India, comprising the state's Amravati and Nagpur divisions. Amravati Division's former name is Be ...

and

Marathwada Marathwada () is a proposed state and geographical region of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It was formed during the Nizam's rule and was part of the then Hyderabad State. The region coincides with the Aurangabad division of Maharashtra. I ...

regions. , a twice weekly, 30-minute episode was broadcast from Nagpur, Jalgaon, Aurangabad, Osmanabad and Nanded radio stations on subjects related to scientific dairy animal management. Subject experts from NDDB conduct the sessions.

References

External links

National Dairy Development Board
{{Authority control Economy of Gujarat Executive branch of the government of India Dairy farming in India Shastri administration Dairy organizations Agricultural organisations based in India 1965 establishments in Gujarat Government agencies established in 1965