Has NDDB become a personal fiefdom run on taxpayer funds?

The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was a bustling organisation founded by the eminent Verghese Kurien, the man behind India’s Operation Flood.

In 1998, he ceased being the chairperson of NDDB and Amrita Patel took charge.

At that time, one thought NDDB would show the same levels of transparency and vibrancy.

For a while, it appeared that NDDB was indeed trying to become a lot more aggressive and innovative.

However, lately, there appears to have been a thick cloak of secrecy within the dairy board. Its officials refuse to answer queries, its chairman refuses to meet the press either because “she is busy” or is “on holiday”.

All queries are fobbed off with one excuse after another. Worse still, all the statements that can be viewed on its website are statements of intent.

There is no information at all about what it has achieved in a given year.  All its annual reports have disappeared, and the webpage (http://www. nddb.org/aboutnddb/annualreport.html) which is meant to make these available for downloads merely greets you with the following message: “This page is under construction”.

Even details about Patel’s history have disappeared from Wikipedia.

What is more intriguing is the fact that all cached copies of NDDB’s annual reports — even older ones — are now missing even from Google’s own cache servers.

NDDB’s officials sidestep any request for copies of its annual report.

In fact, this is very strange coming from an organisation which in January 2005 mentioned in its 2003-04 annual report (perhaps the last instance when its annual report could be viewed and studied by the general public)  that it had amalgamated Bharat Aseptic Packaging Industry (BAPI) with another group company Indian Dairy Machinery Company (IDMC).

Similarly, it merged Mother Dairy Delhi (MDDL) and Mother Dairy Foods (MDFL) with Mother Dairy India (MDIL) and Mother Dairy Foods and Vegetables (MDFVL), respectively.

The fate of organisations like Dhara and IDMC (Indian Dairy Machinery Company) is not known.

In the NDDB annual report for 2003-04, Patel stated that these mergers had been effected  “to successfully meet the challenges of a liberalised economy and attract professionals, dairy co-operatives which are emerging as big businesses need to evolve into new generation co-operatives by registering as ‘Producer Companies’ under the Companies Act.”

What now appears to be a poor joke is the manner in which the NDDB report made some caustic remarks about Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), the apex marketing organisation for all milk co-operatives in the country, and over which Kurien still retained a degree of influence.

At one place the report stated, “Today, even after 30 years, India’s largest dairy co-operative in Gujarat, with a turnover of Rs2,500 crore, circulates neither the board agenda notes nor the minutes of meetings to its co-operative director members.

Even by a liberal definition, many of today’s dairy co-operatives in the country do fall well short of the definition, values and principles of co-operation.”

Today, NDDB has actually thrown such values and principles to the wind. Today, few know how NDDB functions, even though it is well known that in 2003-04 it had investments of Rs2,534 crore in form of loans and grants in dairy co-operatives and reported a surplus of Rs101 crore. Today, NDDB is unwilling even to make public its annual reports.

Among queries that NDDB has so far chosen not to answer are
>    During the period 1998 to 2010 milk production went by 32,6 million tonnes, while per capita consumption climbed by 41 gms/day.  It would, therefore appear, that there was no increase in per capita consumption in 2009-10 over 2008-09.NDDB refused to answer this presumption, and refused to give out its targets set out for 2010 and 2011?
>    NDDB’s website talks of “Perspective 2010” which aims (among other things) to:(a) Increase liquid milk procurement by cooperatives to 33 per cent (488 lakh kilograms per day) or quadruple liquid milk procurement by year 2010),
    (b) Increase liquid milk sales to 365 lakh kilograms per day, or treble fluid milk marketing by year 2010. The website fails to tell us whether these were achieved, and if there were any failings.
>    Some of the achievements listed out on the NDDB website include 177 milk unions (involving 346 districts, 1,40,227 village level societies, 14 million farmer members of which 4 million are women.) comprising the Dairy Cooperative Network (as on March 2010). But many of them were included during Kurien’s helmsmanship.  It is difficult to ascertain what Patel’s achievements are.

The website refuses to mention anywhere what incremental progress has been made on almost any front ever since Kurien demitted charge.

It was to ascertain these facts, that DNA tried seeking out a meeting with Patel or her officers in January 2011.  No meeting was granted, nor were any of the queries answered, of which the above list is a partial one. Finally, in June this year, NDDB formally stated that “meeting with the chairman is not possible”. Nor did any officer of NDDB meet  the author despite three different assurances which were not kept.

So has NDDB become a personal fiefdom run on taxpayer funds of the general public with no accountability whatsoever? Given the reluctance to post even annual reports for public consumption, and the refusal to answer questions, one can only fear the worst.