BY MADHU AGRAWAL
It is shocking that Mother Dairy is following footsteps of Delhi Milk Scheme (DMS) in becoming a loss-accumulator for public-exchequer rather than taking cooperative milk-sector giant Amul as its ideal role-model when Mother Dairy was in loss continuously in fiscal-years 2018-19 and 2019-20 when corona-crisis was not there till about end of fiscal-year 2019-20.
If public-sector Mother Dairy can also not be managed properly, then it should also be leased out to Amul like DMS even though Amul is still awaiting transfer of DMS as per bid-tender finalised way back on 27.11.2018 where Amul succeeded in tender at rupees 42.30 crores per annum against rupees 42.20 crores tendered by Mother Dairy for 30 years with 7-percent annual increase in lease amount.
Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying should urgently transfer DMS to Amul as per tender-conditions firstly to save public-exchequer burdened with more DMS losses, and secondly to professionally utilise 566 milk-booths on prime government-land scattered throughout Delhi presently being misused as private shops at behest of DMS officials. DMS started in the year 1959 having already piled up losses to tune of about rupees 1000 crores making central government to decide to hand it over to some market-leader. Union Finance Minister who announced disinvesting three public-sector banks (including IDBI Bank), one General Insurance Company and several other public-sector-undertakings should rather enrich public-exchequer rather than suffering losses from DMS by implementing tender-process to hand it over to Amul.