On April 5, 2023, Amul tweeted an innocuous message. It was entering Bengaluru to supply milk and curd. The city would be able to savour its products, initially delivered through e-commerce and quick commerce channels. An innocent message by a brand making its expansion plans overt.
In any other circumstance, or possibly at any other point of time, this would have been a simple announcement of brand intent that consumers would respond to with the usual degree of boredom new brand launches today tend to cause. But not this one. By the time you read this, a lot of noise and fracas has ensued in the last seven days. This proposed entry of milk and curd has riled the milk of human kindness in a lot of people and organisations, and they have gotten very vocal about it.
Let me start with the timing of this noise and fracas for a start. Karnataka is in the midst of an election campaign. This is a summer of discontent, of high proportion. Add malcontent to it. Four parties are fighting it out to be the dominant force of the future in the state. The BJP wants to hold on to its ruling party status, the Congress wants to snatch it back, the JD(S) wants to grab its basic number of seats (enough to make it a kingmaker if the need arises), and the AAP is making a tentative entry into the state and definitely wants to score on a vote-share basis at least.
As of today, there is a motivated clarion call from the opposition parties in Karnataka to ban the entry of Amul into the state. There is a call for a farmers’ protest. There is widespread discussion among Opposition parties of this being a conspiracy theory of the Central government to achieve a future merger of GCMMF (Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation) and the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF), which is the owner of the popular brand Nandini. At the macro-level, the conspiracy theory, by and large, talks of the local getting subsumed into the national in every sphere of life. The now subsumed banks of Karnataka, the imposition of Hindi (including the debate on semantics of whether it is “curd” or “dahi”), and the lead up to the current conspiracy theory of Amul eventually gobbling up KMF, are all parts of active political debate, noise, passion and election firepower today. Milk and curd are active ingredients for this debate right now.
And since the category is all about small farmers and their interests, the debate deepens and widens. Milk is an election issue today. “Rotti, Battey, Maney and Haalu” (Roti, kapdaa, makaan and doodh in Kannada).
Let me rise above the politics of it all for now, and examine the issue with a bit of neutral sanity. The KMF is a co-operative body, just as the GCMMF (owner of brand Amul) is. Both these successful enterprises have catered to the needs and wants of dairy farmers and consumers in India alike. While GCMMF is a Rs 72,000 crore behemoth, Nandini churns a turnover of Rs 25,000 crore annually.
The dairy industry today, thanks to the vision of Dr Verghese Kurien, the father of the dairy industry in India, is a thriving business that links deep-end farm productivity of milk to the last-mile and the front-end consumption of milk in our cities and small towns. India is a veritable nation of co-operative milk marketing federations.
The point to ideate then is whether India needs just one milk marketing federation—or should it have many? Is there efficiency and meaning in that model? Or for that matter, should all the Indian milk marketing federations operate under the umbrella of the GCMMF and its brands, with Amul in the lead? Should the model of ‘One India, One tax’ replicate itself across this category as well—One India, One Milk?
In this very (currently theoretical) thought of combining the co-operative interests of the country into one big effort lies a big debate. India is a federal democratic republic. We are certainly a union of states. Every state has its differences, starting with language, food, economic interests, and lots more. The very meaning of the early co-operative movement in the country meant the cobbling together of local interests and efficiencies to create businesses for the locals. This included businesses in finance, milk, sugar, consumer, housing, and a plethora of other local interests that needed to be protected and promoted. In such a scenario, one is bound to face rebellion and dissent when the interest of the local is seen to be disturbed. And this is the exact point where the Amul curd has hit the fan.
There are two points to remember. From a brand perspective, there is nothing to debate here at all. Nandini products from KMF are today available in neutral terrains such as Mumbai, Goa, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Chennai. All brands must have the liberty to criss-cross terrains. It is possible that Nandini is not yet in Anand, but this does not mean that Amul milk must not enter Bengaluru. Point two then.
From the cooperative dairy farmer’s point of view, however, the view looks different. There is insecurity. The milk procurement centers of KMF procure the output of the udder from the districts of Bengaluru, Kolar, Tumakuru and Mandya. In the future, will Bengaluru drink milk from far away rather than nearby? And must it? Is there sense in it? Well, pricing has a way of sorting this debate out. Typically, a local product from KMF will be cheaper than a non-local product from Amul. Simple. Let the consumer decide. But then, there are emotions attached to all of this. And that is a dragon difficult to tame. And that is the exact dragon that many are trying to tame today in a politically heated Karnataka.
When I first met Dr Kurien in Anand at the GCMMF office many decades ago, I still remember his one strong comment. He told me: “Amul is not a brand, it is a movement.” The more the movement spread, the more the prosperity for Indians in the dairy sector at large.
The movement has certainly spread far and wide. In many ways, the current raging debate in Karnataka is making brand Amul out to be a behemoth milk MNC, and Nandini the smaller co-operative brand fighting to hold on to its share of business—and importantly, its share of pride.
Life has indeed come full circle for GCMMF the co-operative. It started small. It became big. Very big. It is now seen to threaten the small. Touché!
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc