Villages, Women, and the Success of Dairy Cooperatives in India: ...

The difference between the original model as exemplified by Amul and its various replications has been one of the principal organizing frameworks for most analyses of dairy development, and one notable example of the utilization of this framework was provided by Mascarenhas (1988). Focusing on the replication of the Anand model in the state of Karnataka in southern India, Mascarenhas brought up the frictions that characterize relationships between the NDDB and other dairy bodies. According to him, these can be traced to the fact that the “process of farmer organization initiated through the creation of state level development agencies resulted in a conflict of cultures between bureaucratically controlled and farmer controlled approaches to dairy development programs” (120). Moreover, though Mascarenhas firmly identified the NDDB's organizational culture with that of successful business organizations (119), he argued that there was a tendency on the part of the NDDB to implement dairy development on its own instead of working with the state governments (113). The differences that comprise dairy development thus reside in relationships between the NDDB and state-level dairy bodies, and Mascarenhas made the broad argument that

The association of failure with replications of the model preserves meanings of success in Amul, and this has to be noted as a key strategy for associating dairy development with success. Thus, geographic separations between the Anand model and its replications become a means to maintain the binary of success and failure.

In contrast to this, George (1988) argued that official constructions of the Anand model have to be considered an ideal formulation, and her studies mark the divergences between actual structures of cooperative dairying and the model that purports to be replicated through them. In fact, George argued that divergences exist not only between the Anand model and ground realities in spaces of replication, but also, and more