Around 4.50 lakh rural families associated with 8600 dairies cooperatives are not only supplementing their income but also earning a name for their state as second Anand . Set up in 1983 COMFED does not treat itself as government body nor does it treat itself as NGO. It prides itself on being a body of the farmers, by the farmers and for the farmers.
Result has been phenomenal with low average milk procurement of 281.81 thousand litre per day in 1999-2000, the state is now obtaining nearly 14 lakh litre per day milk from farmers in 2011-12.
COMFED tries to fashion itself around Anand with three tier structures- all working in perfect coordination with each other. At the primary level which actually is village level, Primary Dairies Cooperatives exist.
There are 8600 PDCs in the whole of State. About 4.50 families are connected to these PDCs but only one member from each family has voting rights. Each family can purchase share but no matter how much share one owns, voting right is limited to one in a family unlike commercial venture where greater no of shares gives you greater clout.
Village level dairies cooperatives elect District Cooperative Unions which are presently six in number with head quarters at Patna, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Barauni, Arrah and Bhagalpur. Two more are in the process of coming up.
At the village level, dairy cooperatives have 13 members with a Chairman. The chairmen of Primary Dairy Cooperatives elect district milk union board. These district milk union boards take care of the needs of village dairy cooperatives and operate in tendem with them. At the state level the COMFED is constituted by the chairmen of district union boards which are six in number. There are 11 members on the board of COMFED in which 3 are from National Dairy Development Board, Managing Director and the chairman being the other two.
Milk is collected from dairy cooperatives in the village twice a day and brought to milk sheds in district milk unions which have more than one dairy plant on average. There are 13 dairy plants in total. At the plant, milk is processed for urban consumer , filled in pouches and milk derivatives are produced. COMFED has about 26 milk products and this is marketed under the brand name of Sudha. On an average 7.5 lakhs litres of milk is procured every month with this figure touching 11 lakh litres in March 2010.It is being marked in 110 cities even crossing the boarder of State to West Bengal, UP and Jharkhand.
Amidst the dismal cooperative scenario in the state of Bihar the story of Sudha is indeed inspiring. Most of the cooperatives be it consumer, land development bank, the once famous BISCOMAUN are defunct bodies today. But even for COMFED the journey is far from complete. Sudha would be truly successful when along with raising the milk production entire milk production in the state is routed through it. Mr Ashok Jawa, the General Manager at COMFED is confident that with new plants and vision of expansion this could be achieved.