The current price inflation in milk is mainly due to a shortage of fat. It has led dairies to hike full-cream milk prices or to cut fat content through rebranding of existing products. Also, milk does not attract GST, while fat and powder used in reconstitution does, an anomalous situation for which the consumer ultimately pays.

India’s agricultural production statistics sometimes present dissonances with consumption data. The household consumer expenditure data are more than a decade old, and an update is urgently needed.

Remembering Dr Verghese Kurien, the ‘Milkman of India’ who would have turned hundred today. How he built what is now a $5.3 billion-turnover dairy enterprise owned by 3.6 million farmers.

Government must not sacrifice rise in farm incomes at altar of short-term consumer interest or to save RCEP. 

It is the industry that is lobbying the hardest to keep its products out of the free trade agreement currently under negotiation among 16 countries to India’s east and north. Why is this so?

Subsidies for farmers shouldn’t end up benefiting consumers and depressing market prices