Struggles to give away 22,000 cattle after closure of military farms; Rs 300-crore annual burden
Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, August 5
The Indian Army is faced with ‘bovine battle’ as it struggles to hand over some 22,000 cows it owns. The Army is spending Rs 300 crore a year on their upkeep — feed, manpower, salaries and day-to-day expenses.In July last year, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) ordered the closure of 39 military farms across the country. Started in 1889 by the British, such farms are redundant as the milk supply is no more dependent on them.The farms sit on 20,000 acres of prime defence land that is now needed for new projects like upcoming ground-based missile storage, aviation, new raisings and even housing for jawans.The cows should have been handed over a year ago, but there was no interest at auctions. The MoD, in last week of June, issued instructions to give away the cows at a nominal rate of Rs 1,000 each to central and government units besides cooperatives.The Army originally had 25,000 cows, of which 2,700 were given away. Some 22,000 cattle head still remain and are being looked after by the Army. After the fixation of a nominal cost, the Army has received applications to take away 11,000 more cattle head, sources have confirmed. The cost of transportation is to be borne by the purchaser.A large number of these cows are of high-yield variety ‘Frieswal’ developed by cross-breeding the Holstein Friesian cow of the Netherlands with the Sahiwal of India.As per the MoD plan, 12 of the 39 British-era military farms were to close by August 15, 2017, and the remaining by the end of October 2017.These farms, when running full steam, met 14 per cent of about 210 million litres of annual milk supply needed by 1.3 million-strong Army. The rest is now procured through various cooperative milk supply schemes run across the country.The ‘white revolution’ of the 1970s changed the dynamics of milk availability. On December 28, 2017, Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh told a parliamentary consultative committee that “India continues to be the largest producer of milk in the world since last 15 years”. Milk production, which was around 17-22 million tonnes in the 1960s, has increased to 163.7 million tonnes in 2016-17.The original decision to close down the military farms was taken in 2013 after a meeting of the Army Commanders. While 29 farms were to shut shop between 2013 and 2015, the remaining 10 had to follow suit by 2017.The farms are spread in places like Ambala, Jalandhar, Pathankot, Jammu, Srinagar, Kargil, Udhampur, Meerut, Ranikhet, Ahmednagar, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Secunderabad, Mhow, Jhansi, Dimapur, Guwahati, Jorhat, Panagarh, Kolkata, Agra, Allahabad, Lucknow and Kanpur, among others.British legacy
- Started in 1889 by the British, 39 military farms have far outlived their utility of providing milk to forces
- As per the MoD plan, 12 of the 39 farms were to close by August 15, 2017, and the remaining by the end of October 2017
- Of 25,000 cows, 2,700 were given away, while some 22,000 still remain. With little interest at auction, these are now being offered at Rs 1,000 each
