The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the revised National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD).

The Revised NPDD, a central sector scheme, has been enhanced with an additional Rs 1,000 crore, bringing the total budget to Rs 2790 crore for the period of the 15th Finance Commission cycle (2021-22 to 2025-26). This initiative focuses on modernising and expanding dairy infrastructure, ensuring the sector’s sustained growth and productivity.

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The revised NPDD will give an impetus to the dairy sector by creating infrastructure for milk procurement, processing capacity, and ensuring better quality control. It is intended to help farmers gain better access to markets, to ensure better pricing through value addition, and improve the efficiency of the supply chain, leading to higher incomes and greater rural development.

The scheme consists of two key components : Component A and Component B.

Component A is dedicated to improving essential dairy infrastructure, such as milk chilling plants, advanced milk testing laboratories, and certification systems. It also supports the formation of new village dairy cooperative societies and strengthens milk procurement and processing in the North Eastern Region (NER), hilly regions, and Union Territories (UTs), especially in remote and backward areas, as well as the formation of 2 Milk Producer Companies (MPCs) with dedicated grant support

Component B, known as “Dairying through Cooperatives (DTC)”, will continue to foster dairy development through cooperation with the Government of Japan and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) as per agreements signed. This component focuses on the sustainable development of dairy cooperatives, improving production, processing, and marketing infrastructure in the nine States (Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal).

The implementation of NPDD has made a huge socio-economic impact already benefiting over 18.74 lakh farmers and has created over 30,000 direct and indirect jobs and increased milk procurement capacity by an additional 100.95 lakh liters per day. The NPDD has also supported cutting-edge technology for better milk testing and quality control.

Over 51,777 village-level milk testing laboratories have been strengthened, while 5,123 bulk milk coolers with a combined capacity of 123.33 lakh liters have been installed. In addition, 169 labs have been upgraded with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) milk analysers, and 232 dairy plants now have advanced systems for detecting adulteration.

The Revised NPDD is expected to establish 10,000 new Dairy Cooperative Societies, processing in the North Eastern Region (NER), as well as the formation of 2 Milk Producer Companies (MPCs) with dedicated grant support in addition to the ongoing projects of NPDD, to generate an additional 3.2 lakh direct and indirect employment opportunities, particularly benefiting women, which constitute 70 per cent of the dairy workforce.

The Revised National Programme for Dairy Development will transform India’s modern infrastructure, in sync with White Revolution 2.0 and will further support the newly formed cooperatives by providing new technology, and quality testing labs.

This programme will help improve rural livelihoods, generate jobs, and build a stronger, more resilient dairy industry that benefits millions of farmers and stakeholders across the country.