January 2008 Edition
Civil Society News
Sayla (Gujarat)
Aga Khan project helps a pastoral community enter the new economy
IT is 7 pm. Darkness descends over Mouli, a
Maldhari village in Gujarat’s Surendranagar
district. Inside, 16-year-old Sejal, a Maldharigirl, gets busy converting her verandah into a
laboratory. She places vials on trays, pulls out a
lactometer and opens a long register.
Amidst laughter and bonhomie, Maldhari
women troop in with pots of goat’s milk. Sejal
measures each sample, noting its protein and
fat content, with the eye of a dedicated scientist.
The milk is then plunged into a pan. The
one for goat’s milk has a green circle and the
other, for cow’s milk, has a red circle.
The pans are loaded onto a cart hinged to a motorcycle which clatters down the road to a cheese factory in nearby Sayla. The factory is run by the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP). Here, the goat’s milk is converted into Cheddar cheese and sold under the Maldhari’s milk federation’s name: the Paanchal Mahila Cheese Utpadak Sewa Sangh. The Maldharis and AKRSP are now all set to launch Feta cheese, a more exotic and expensive product. Ambrish K Dubey, plant manager of the cheese factory, says AKRSP wanted to help the Maldharis enter the new, globalised Indian economy. “We were looking for ways to improve their traditional skills and find new markets for them so that they could earn an income once again.” The Maldharis are a traditional pastoral community who used to roam hills and glades with their flock of goats and sheep, selling milk products and wool.
As pastures and forests began to disappear and consumers opted for milk neatly processed in cans and packs, the Maldharis found no option to a settled life. Hajja Bhai, Sejal’s father says his footloose community began to settle in Mouli some 20 years ago. Things were pretty bad till the cheese factory came up, he says. Maldhari women would go door to door begging people to buy goat’s milk. They were lucky if they got Rs 6 per litre. People preferred cow’s milk though goat’s milk has higher protein and lower fat content. “We would convert our goat’s milk into buttermilk and do our rounds again,” says Jassin, Hajja Bhai’s wife. “We were so poor.” The Maldharis of Morwa village, next door, were in equally dire straits.
The women spent the whole day making khoya, a dried milk product. Work began at 4 am says Dhani, a Maldhari woman since they had to sneak out to lop treesfor firewood. And after all that work, the stuff wouldn’t sell, says Dhani. “Nobody here wanders around anymore,” says Hajja Bhai. “The factory buys all our milk. I get a regular income through the year. Finally, we Maldharis are at peace.”AKRSP homed in on cheese as a marketable product, around two years ago. But the Maldharis didn’t know what cheese was. At monthly meetings, that was explained. They began to understand that more money could be made by selling quality milk to make cheese. Some Maldharis went to Ahmedabad to study how cheese was sold in shops and another group toured the Amul cheese plant in Khatrej.
Hajja Bhai now earns Rs 1,500 every 10 days
from selling goat’s milk. AKRSP pays Rs 10 per
litre, depending on the milk’s fat content. He also
earns money selling wool and dung cakes and by
taking his goats to spend a night on a field to fertilise
it.
Three months ago, says Ambrish, their Cheddar
cheese was approved by Hemant Oberoi, a topnotch
chef at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. Now a well
known bakery shop in Colaba has liked the
Maldhari Feta cheese and placed an order. “The
chef, Moshe, told us we were 70 per cent there,”
says Ambrish.
A packet of Feta cheese was also bought from
Mumbai and given to Hajja Bhai for tasting. His
verdict was that the Maldhari cheese rivaled the
imported version, surely.
“We will need more equipment. We already have an interested entrepreneur. While one kg of Cheddar cheese costs Rs 110, Feta can sell for as much as Rs 300 per kg,” feels Ambrish. The cheese plant has a capacity of 3,000 litres per day. It receives only 800 litres and so AKRSP is keen to hike milk production. Here, milk is weighed, rechecked, filtered and pasteurised. It goes into various cheese vats for many hours. Finally it emerges as a creamy, round roll. From the cold storage room it is sent for processing to another unit. The factory even has an effluent treatment plant.
“Five years ago I used to wander off with my flock,” says Poppat Bhai, at home in the cheese factory with its humming pipes and vats.“Not so anymore. Now we get more money and our goats are healthier.” AKRSP has organised Maldhari men and women in nine villages into goat dairy producers’ associations. It plans to expand to 25 villages. Together the nine villages form a federation, the Paanchal Mahila Cheese Utpadak Sewa Sangh. Services in animal husbandry, dairying and livestock management are provided by AKRSP. Three times a year, goats get their de-worming dose. Then, there are vaccinations. For fodder, quality feed concentrate is supplied for goats, ‘the poor man’s cow’ as Ambrish puts it.
“We are planning to train two Maldharis from each of the nine villages as para vets,” says Ambrish. On the cards are a medicine bank, herbal animal treatment and a breeding centre for goats to increase milk production. Shankar Bhai says they would like to increase their herd but there is no space. AKRSP has got anew design invented for their huts. The ground floor can be used to house goats. It has a raised floor so that waste can be collected and sold as manure. A staircase leads to a floor above where the family can stay.Poppat Bhai says the design, which is framed on the factory wall, works.
Life has certainly changed for this once wandering community. Dhani recalls how she first joined the AKRSP milk network. One day,she noted a queue in front of a hut. Somebody was actually buying goat’s milk. Dhani talked to Jayaram Rabari, AKRSP’s dedicated community organiser, and decided to enrol. He told her she would need to form a group. Dhani got seven of her friends interested. Her hut became the collection centre. Dhani can’t read or write, so a person was hired to check the quality and quantity of milk. Next day none of her friends turned up. But Dhani didn’t waver. For two months she and her husband Vallu kept selling their milk to the cheese factory. When the others saw they were getting paid Rs 10 per litre consistently every 10 days, they joined in. Now she has a group of 15 members.
“I had faith in AKRSP,” she says, simply. The Maldharis say they will never abandon milk production. Yes, they want their children to get an education, go to college. “May be they would like to do other jobs,” says Poppat Bhai. “But, we would like them to work with AKRSP to take the cheese business forward.”.
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