Dudhwala Number One

He’s rushing back to his office from inspecting the quality of cattle-feed at a Sudha Dairy plant, and calls for the latest sales figures on ‘Mattha’ or sour buttermilk.

You ask him about the award.
“Huh,” says Patna Dairy Project Managing Director SB Sinha, “which award?”
“Didn’t you get an award at Delhi, recently?” we ask.
“Oh, the Best National Productivity Award. Yes, we came first in the Dairy Development and Production Sector. It’s a great honour. Now, where are those sales figures?”

Make no mistake, the National Award for 2005-06 is no mean achievement, with the Vaishal Patliputra Dugdh Utpadak Sahakari Sangh [Patna Dairy Project is its popular short-form] becoming the number one milk production cooperative in the country in terms of procurement, production, and profits.
And this is possible in Bihar, the butt of bad publicity!
“Awards are very important milestones, and it’s a tremendous honour”, says Sinha, “but we’ve got to scale new heights. I’m monitoring the progress of the latest addition to our product range, Sudha Mattha.”

The National Productivity Awards were instituted in 1982 with the objective of recognising and encouraging organisations that excel in their respective fields.
This is the third time that the Patna Dairy Project received the award.

“You may say that the figures speak for themselves. We procure over 175 thousand litres of milk every day from a network of over 1285 village dairy societies spread over four districts. This is accomplished in spite of heat, water-logging, bad roads, erratic power supply, and many other challenges. We pass on more than 80 crores of rupees every year to these milk producers as the price of milk, thus improving the social and economic conditions of the households. Our excellent performance and good management practices have earned us international certification for quality and food safety management, ISO 9001:2000 and HACCP. We have achieved a commendable 21% growth in milk sales alone. All our milk products including table butter, ghee, peda, lassi, icecream, paneer enjoy a very high reputation among consumers and this is reflected in our rapidly growing sale trends.”


FRANK KRISHNER