White Counter-Revolution? India's Dairy Cooperatives in a Neoliberal Era

Abstract

While the imposition of neoliberal policies by Western development institutions has been widely criticized, the ways in which such policies have found allies in the Third World have not received the same attention. This article focuses on India's cooperative dairying program in order to trace its transformation from an organization seeking to protect small-scale dairy producers against foreign dairy interests to current shifts in favor of the privatization of the dairy sector. The story of how India averted neocolonial dependence in its (dairy) White Revolution merits consideration now, when the global percentage of people in food poverty is again increasing. For decades, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank enforced the Washington consensus demanding that developing countries adopt structural adjustment programs including privatization of state services, subsidy cuts to indigenous farmers and consumers, and the opening of markets to (often subsidized) food imports from rich countries. Neoliberal policies are implicated in rural poverty, hunger, and migration to sprawling megacities. Given this, it is important to focus on struggles against the possible loss of cooperative institutions and thus build a broader understanding of the ways in which neoliberal policies spawn rural conflicts.

This article is divided into three main sections. In the first section, the growth of dairy productivity in India under the cooperative dairying program is traced from the 1970s onwards, beginning with its ability to utilize EEC food aid for the growth of the national dairy sector in a program called Operation Flood. A large part of the credit for this creative use of monetized food aid is usually attributed to Verghese Kurien, who has been associated with cooperative dairying from its beginnings in the small town of Anand, Gujarat, and whose pro-cooperative philosophy guided national dairy development organizations till recently. The second section of the article focuses on the institutional politics of dairy development, taking as its point of entry the replacement of Kurien by officials who are less likely to be oppositional to the privatization of the dairy sector. The departure of Kurien thus marks a key moment in the neoliberalisation of the cooperative dairying sector.

The third section focuses on the wider politics of the state of Gujarat within which the ‘Anand pattern’ of cooperative dairying was established. Here, the pro-business policies of Chief Minister Narendra Modi have been focused on attracting foreign investment to the state, leading to accelerated, but not equitable, economic growth. The ways in which agrarian interests have both clashed and intersected with Modi's vision of development provides an understanding of the transformed political economy within which cooperative dairying now has to function. Overall, the politics of cooperative dairying in India provides an insight into the place-based nature of neoliberal experiences, and can serve as an illustration of impending rural struggles across the world.