Matter of people : co-operative dairying in India and Zimbabwe

India's 'Anand pattern' dairy co-operatives are widely held to be a developmental model for Asia, Africa and Latin America, but have been criticized for their limited benefits to the poorest, their effect on rural women's work, and their use of capital-intensive imported technology. This book assesses the Kheda dairy co-operative in Gujarat that supposedly inspired the Anand pattern, and uses case studies from another Indian state, Kerala, to question the drive to 'replicate Anand'. It discusses the long-established and successful Choryasi dairy co-operative (also in Gujarat), that uses intermediate technology but has not been adopted as a model. The book then moves to an African country, Zimbabwe, where the Dairy Development Programme has tried to learn both from the 'Anand pattern' and from critics, in its efforts to set up locally appropriate dairy co-operatives.

Most studies of dairy co-operatives in India focus on the word 'dairy'-on milk, cows, and technical and organizational aspects, possibly because animal scientists and dairy technologists dominate the field. But what of 'co-operation', the complex economic, social and political process that can bring together different communities, castes, classes, households, genders and generations? This book tries to argue for a sustainable development which takes the human factor into account. A Matter of People is scholarly is conception and presentation but reads like an exciting novel.