|
|
Patna, (Bihar Times): Sudha Dairy had been the rare success story of Bihar in the last 15 years. But that is history.
 Faced with acute milk shortage and repeated rise in its prices the state has finally decided to look elsewhere. The search ended on Wednesday with the arrival of 25,000 litres of milk from Nepal. This was the result of a Memorandum of Understanding signed between Patna Dairy Project and Dairy Development Corporation, Hetauda in Nepal.
According to the MoU the Himalayan republic would be supplying 50,000 to 60,000 litres of milk every day. The first tanker of 25,000 litres arrived on Wednesday.
According to the managing director of Comfed, Arunish Chawla, the state capital requires 2.45 lakh litres of milk every day when the fact is that it is getting only 1.75 lakh litres daily. It is fulfilling the current demand with the help of powdered milk. However, with the supply of milk from Nepal the state capital would, to much extent, be able to overcome this crisis.
The irony is that Operation Flood launched about two decades back to bring about White Revolution in the state became the victim of real floods, which devastated Bihar both last year and this year.
Since Patna mostly gets its supply from villages in Vaishali district it could not get so much milk last year because of the prolong waterlogging in the river Gandak area. A large number of cattle were swept away in the flood last year. This year too it is estimated that about one million cattle got swept in the floods in the north-east districts. Not only the Patna Dairy but other dairies of the state too are facing acute shortage.
It needs to be mentioned that Barauni Dairy once used to supply milk and milk products to cities like Bokaro, Jamshedpur, Ranchi, Dhanabad and even Kolkata. It was even exporting some milk products like peda, rasgollas to neighbouring countries like Bangladesh.
Today the story is just the opposite. Bihar is not only reeling under a serious milk shortage but even the price of milk has increased by Rs 7 to 8 per litre in the last three years.
|
|
