The Moo-ving Experience at Go Cheese Factory

Last week I got the opportunity of visiting Go Cheese Factory, a good 2 hour drive from Pune operated from Manchar amidst Maharashtra’s Western hills. This is a home grown dairy farm and Cheese factory owned by the one of the pioneers of dairy products in India, Parag Milk Foods. The brand portfolio entails various dairy products from brands like Gowardhan, Pride of Cows, Topp Up and Go.

Dairy Products

On arrival we were offered Chaas (Buttermilk), Lassi & Badam Milk as welcoming drink and were briefed by the management team of the stories of establishment and unique innovative inventions in the Indian dairy industry.

The itinerary included to visit the home grown dairy farm, cheese factory and understand behind the scenes of the manufacturing of the delicious milk products. We started with the Bhagyalaxmi Dairy farm visit owned by the company where around 3500 cows are taken care to produce variety of milk and cheese products.

Members of the farm take good care of the cows right from their birth to handing over to farmers (once their milk production reduces) including sanitation, nutrition and survival. Thing which intrigued me was the automation at the farm to reduce contamination and  avoid spread of communicable ailments. Even the rotary belt used to milch cows is fully automated and at a time can milch upto 35 cows. We also tasted the fresh milk that gets packaged in bottles of Pride of Cows to be delivered at various locations across and has been recognised as the best packaged milk.

Rotary belt for milking cows

 

Post the visit, we were offered lunch at the hall that had various products from the milk and cheese manufactured at the factory. There were varieties of Pizza, Pasta, salads and Indian dishes made with milk.

Pizza-Pasta served for Lunch

Now was the time for Cheese factory visit. Started with the dressing for the tour, we were given briefing of the various types of cheese produced and their uses followed by the showcase of various processes and procedures of the manufacturing and packaging. Most of the process is same except for the time required for ripening of the cheese for different kinds. While Mozarella takes 2-10 days to ripe with extreme cold temperature, Cheddar might take quarter to half an year.

Cheese Factory Visit

Cheese Factory Visit

 

The amazing experience came to an interesting end with some interesting interactive session with the factory team followed by Cheese tasting and high tea session. And we did get enough time to ‘Say Cheese’ throughout the tour.

Cheese Tasting

Objective of Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan understated

While it is apt that Total Sanitation Scheme is a demand drive scheme and the targets of its projects may vary year by year, to achieve its objective of rural sanitation by 2015, there has to be a means for measuring achievement against the benchmark or the target set previously.

In spite of the clear mentioning of the above statement in the objectives of Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), cumulative project objectives set by different governments and the number of households without toilet vary in large numbers.

To make my allegation strong, here is a complete analysis on the objectives of Total Sanitation Campaign. Tamil Nadu had an objective of 86 Lakh toilets, the achievement numbers soar that so many    toilets have been built but Census 2011 figures show around 95 lakh households still don’t have access to toilets.

These objectives are defined to provide a definite direction to the program and to ensure continuous monitoring of progress during the course of implementation of the campaign. Achievement is thus measured on the basis of these objectives. But in this case, the objectives are not defined properly are there are no parameters prescribed for the deciding the objectives of TSC campaigns.

And then results are measured on the basis of these objectives. It is for this reason that both TSC data and Census data show variation in the data.

Inspite of fixing the objective of constructing 20 lakh plus toilets in Uttar Pradesh in the beginning of the campaign, it had 17 lakh plus households without toilets (according to 2001 Census report) and at present according to the Census 2011 report, has 21 lakh households without toilet.

This is not just the case of Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat, Bihar, Assam and West Bengal as shown in graphs below. West Bengal had an objective of 1 crore toilets and still 8 lakh plus households do not have toilets there.

Gujarat which is soaring of its achievement in terms of economy and growth in the world had set up an objective of building 53 lakh toilets and still have 5 lakh plus households without toilet since 2001.