Milked away by developed countries: Plight of Indian dairy farmers in the WTO regime

By Deepak Shah, faculty member, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune



In India, milk is produced by small farmers living in remote areas and processed in plants owned by co-operatives. In contrast, in OECD countries dairying is a huge, scientifically managed industry which is heavily subsidised and thus creates a huge surplus. This surplus is dumped in developing countries like India. The effect of this dumping of cheap subsidised dairy products is felt by families of small farmers.

The paper argues that sustained dumping of cheap imports of dairy products needs to be checked by taking stringent measures like revision of tariff rates and quotas.

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