Mother Dairy, Amul and other suppliers of packaged milk and milk products are quick to raise prices of milk and milk products whenever their procurement-price increases. But there are reports that villagers are selling milk at much reduced prices. It is evident also from the fact that prices of pulse and other items required to feed cattle has sharply declined. It is also observed that a new entrant for marketing milk and milk products is spending heavily on advertisements and sale-promotion meaning thereby a big profit-margin in marketing milk and milk products. Even Mother Dairy and Amul also advertise for a necessity like milk.
It will be better if saving in advertisement-budget may be made to cut down prices of milk and milk products which is otherwise also necessary because of villagers already having reduced price of milk. Unfortunately giants like Mother Dairy and Amul do not accept themselves to be public authority under the RTI Act. Otherwise these could be easily grilled on such aspects by filing RTI applications. Central government should bring co-operatives and public-private-partnerships (PPP) directly under RTI Act by including these in definition of public authorities.
Madhu Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
