People throng to a milk booth as Ranchi reels from milk crisis on Sunday. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Ranchi, May 16: Wedding bells in Bihar is depriving Jharkhand of its daily dairy needs.

The state has been witnessing an acute crisis of milk for the past four days with supply from Barauni in Bihar — considered to be a major supplier of the dairy product — going down by 50 per cent because of the huge demand during the ongoing marriage season.

The state capital gets about 85,000 litres of milk from Bihar daily. However, the figure has fallen to 33,000 litres a day. As a result, most outlets of Sudha Dairy, a government subsidiary that supplies the bulk of the milk to the city, are running dry. A family that usually consumes one litre of milk daily is now managing with just half a litre.

“According to information gathered from Bihar, consumption of milk has gone up in the neighbouring state due to the marriage season. Hence, it is unable to supply the required quantity of milk to our state,” said A.K. Sinha, manager of Sudha Dairy, Ranchi.

He added that the bulk of milk was produced in Bihar villages that have currently stopped supply. “Everything will be normal within a week,” Sinha added.

Owners of Sudha outlets in the state capital are having a tough time meeting the demand of consumers in the face of the acute crisis. Sandeep Kumar, owner of the Sudha Dairy outlet at Sarjana Chowk, rued that they were getting just 150 litres of milk a day against the requirement of 300 litres. “Our regular customers are returning home empty-handed. We are helpless. This crisis will be on for another week,” he said.

Owner of another store at Plaza Chowk B.D. Sharma said at least, they were getting regular supply of lassi pouches. “Apart from curd, we are selling about 60 pouches of lassi a day,” he added.

Left with no other option, homemakers are now turning to the local milkmen. “Yesterday, we managed to procure half a litre of milk from the Sudha Diary outlet, which was used for preparing tea. For my children’s consumption, I am taking milk from the milkman,” said housewife Sangeeta Sinha.

Officials of the state animal husbandry department put the blame on two successive droughts for low production of milk in Jharkhand. They said cattle could not get adequate fodder.

In Jharkhand, about 19.1 lakh tonne of milk is produced annually while the demand is 33.69 lakh tonne per year. Only 83 per cent of milching cows produce less than one litre of milk per day due to poor breeding and shortage of fodder.

Joint director of state animal husbandry department Mukul Prasad Singh said the situation would become normal within the next fortnight. “We will get green fodder because of pre-monsoon rainfall, which will improve breeding. We are also involved in cross-breeding,” he said.

The Medha dairy farm at Ormanjhi block, which could have bailed the state out of the crisis, failed to do so as it only produces only 10,000 litres of milk a day against the production capacity of 20,000 litres.

Besides, the milk processing unit in Hotwar for which the foundation stone was laid by Governor K. Sankaranarayanan in 2009 is also yet to take off.

The animal husbandry department had tied up with the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) for the unit. “NDDB has already started the process for setting up the plant. Within two months, the 16-crore project will kick off. The unit will produce 50,000 litres of milk per day.”