Articles by Shanti George

The EPW has long been a forum for debate on various controversial programmes and developments within India.

Designer Co-operatives Shanti George Making Farmers' Co-operatives Work: Design, Governance and Management by Tushaar Shah; Sage Publications, New Delhi/Thousand Oaks, London, 1995;

Stemming Operation Flood Towards an Alternative Dairy Policy for India Shanti George The paper assesses ten central decisions taken under the Operation Flood programme, viz, to use donated dairy foods to generate funds for launching a flood' of milk in India, to introduce crossbred cows widely, to extend the cultivation of green fodder, to emphasise compounded cattle feed, not to prevent the export of concentrate residues from India, to supply cities entirely with milk from rural sources, to replicate the Anand pattern of dairy co-operative, to set up a national milk grid, and not to undertake special feeding programmes. These policy decisions are criticised, and an alternative dairy policy is sketched for India.

Operation Flood: From Issues to Quotations Shanti George IN the normal course, contributions to a discussion terminate once the author of the article which has provoked reactions replied to the points raised. By such norms, the recent discussion on Operation Flood in these pages should now close. K T Achaya and Vinod K Huria's article 'Rural Poverty and Operation Flood' (EPH\ September 13, 1986) drew a reaction from B S Baviskar and Shanti George in 'Operation Flood: A Different View' (EPW, November 8, 1986), which was in turn followed by Achaya and Huria's rejoinder 'Operation Flood: A Realistic View' (EPW, December 20, 1986). However, in their rejoinder, Achaya and Huria went beyond the scope of the earlier discussion, which centred on various studies of the impact of the programme Operation Flood. They devoted several paragraphs to explicate a statement: "Words used out of context are of course dangerous" As illustrations of this danger, they used a number of quotations on subjects other than rural poverty cited in my book (George 1985). Discussion was thus extended from the impact of Operation Flood to the procedures used when analysing such programmes, 1 may therefore be justified in continuing this discussion with a brief response to Achaya and Huria on the subject of quotations and context.

World Food Programme, World Bank and Jha Committee Evaluations of Operation Flood Shanti George In this second of two papers that critically analyse a number of evaluations of the Operation Flood dairy development programme, we move on from village-level evaluations to those conducted by international agencies that sponsor the programme and by the national committee appointed by the Government of India. The three evaluations discussed here have similar defects of sketchy coverage, contradictory and misleading data, and questionable conclusions. However, the three evaluations also differ significantly as a result of the various interests that impinge upon them as well as those interests that they represent IN the first of these two papers, we noted that the lactometer and other instruments that evaluate and monitor the quality of milk are essential not only at the basic level of the village producer and the co-operative society that (s)he supplies, but also at wider levels: the local chilling plant, the district cooperative dairy, the state milk marketing federation, the bulk vending units, the plastic sachets of milk that travel to urban households... Similarly, it is not sufficient for us only to examine village level evaluation and monitoring of dairy development programmes like Operation Flood. Evaluations at wider levels are available and are often quoted to discount criticisms of Operation Flood: we must therefore critically examine these larger lactometers to ascertain how reliable and valid their readings are.