Companies that sell you milk for around ` 40 a litre buy it from the small milkmen or cooperatives at the rate of just ` 24 a litre.
Hundreds of milkmen from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan protested against the huge gap between the purchase and selling price at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Saturday.
Mahender Singh Ahluwalia, the president of Gwala Gaddi Samiti and the protest leader, complained of exploitation by the big companies.
“ Our demand is that people should get milk at the rate of ` 34 a litre and farmers should also get a better price for their product,” he said.
Subhash Sharma, Parag Dairy Cooperative Federation chairman, claimed that the companies used the fat extracted from toned milk to make other dairy products.
Explaining the chain of supply, Rajinder Chahal of Haryana Dairy Farmers Association, said: “ Farmers deposit their daily production at milk centres, from where it is transported to a particular company’s processing centre. Here, milk is processed and packaged and then sent via agents to the vendors across the city,” he added.
According to an estimate, the daily consumption of milk in Delhi and NCR is around 90- 100 lakh litre a day and most of it is produced from the neighbouring states.
Chahal said: “ If we add up all the costs — transportation, processing, packaging and other overhead expenses — it won’t exceed ` 5 a litre,” he added.
Ahluwalia called on the government to do something or threatened another protest.
MINTING MONEY
Milkmen allege there is a gap of around ` 10 in the prices at which big companies purchase and sell milk
They said big companies’ costs for transporting, processing and packaging milk do not exceed ` 5 a litre