India is an agricultural country. Before the development of modern science, every village in India was self-sufficient, perfect. Our own self-sufficient society collapsed due to foreign aggression, quarrels among the people of India, superstition, ignorance, the influence of the British on us, etc.
The whole economy of the village collapsed. As a result, the importance of occupations like traditional farming began to diminish and man started running towards the city. Due to the changing situation in India, milk had to go through two journeys.
Let’s look at the journey of milk before India became independent.
In the past, even in Mumbai, the natives used to farm. Pure milk was also available in cities in India. There were cow farms in many places in the city. In the village, a large number of cows, buffaloes and goats were used to be raised there.
So the children in the house used to have plenty of pure milk. Milk selling was not the prime business in India. Selling milk was not part of Indian culture. Domestic cows – The calves of the cows and buffaloes and the children of the house had the right to have the milk of the buffaloes.
So the children in the house were getting plenty of milk. Also, pure milk could be easily available to a house in a village where there were no cows or buffaloes, because of large number of cows.
Similarly, there used to be cow farms in both rural and urban areas. And in the morning and evening, the freshly obtained milk was delivered to houses in the city.
Therefore, cow and buffalo milk was available even in the city. The survey clearly states that even when the British left India, the number of native cows in India was more than the human population.
Our parents and grandparents were provided with a lot of pure milk and as a result we see that their physical and mental strength is many times higher than ours even today.
Let us understand the journey of milk in independent India.
As modernity increased after independence, the influence of foreigners on our lives became stronger. In this way, our traditional way of life like agriculture, animal husbandry, etc. began to lag behind.
People started running towards the cities. Buildings replaced the city’s farmland and cow farms. Even the villages started to look like cities. As a result, the milk that used to reach everyone’s doorsteps directly from the cowshed, now started to come from milk processing plants.
As we saw in the previous sections, the sugarcane from the field went to the sugar factory and from there the nutrition less – chemical rich sugar was produced.
The same thing happened with milk. In the past, every village had sugarcane fields in many places. So the farmer himself was making molasses-jaggery from sugarcane juice in the traditional way.
Also, there were cows and buffaloes in the house, so the children used to get the fresh milk.
Direct milk was reaching the houses after milking the cows. So we were getting milk in pure form. But due to the changing lifestyle, the milk in the cowshed started reaching the dairy, from the dairy to the milk factory, from the factory to the distributor, from there to the house.
Let’s see in detail in the next section what exactly happens with milk in this journey of milk.
