Billing for your dairy and milk round in Madhya Pradesh
Each family's litres, and what the month adds up to, kept on one phone.
Tools for a Madhya Pradesh milk round
Bills on your phone
Half a litre on Monday and a litre and a half on guest day, each made as its own bill and sent to the house.
Your own online shop
A page of the dairy's milk, curd, paneer and ghee, shared in the colony's group so families can message what they need.
Daily reports
The litres and the takings of each day, kept so the round's month can be read beside the centre's rate.
Orders to suppliers
The cattle feed ordered from the feed seller and the sacks that came, noted on his page.
The collection centre's rate, the town's rate and a round of many doors
The collection centre pays one rate and the town pays another
A Rajgarh farmer says the collection centre pays about Rs 40 to 45 a litre by fat content, while selling door to door in town fetches Rs 60 to 70. A farmer with a few litres to spare is tempted by the round. But a round means many doors, each with its own litres, each paying at the end of the month, and the farmer has no book to run it from.
The Sunday visitors and the Monday fast
A house takes a litre on most days, a litre and a half on a Sunday when relatives come, and nothing on the Monday it fasts. The Monday with no milk is easy to forget: three weeks on, nobody can say if that Monday was the fast or a day you missed.
A litre made into paneer is a litre not sold at the door
In town, door-to-door milk fetches more than the collection centre pays. So every litre that becomes curd, paneer or ghee is a litre not sold at the door, and the four things have four rates in your head. By the end of the week you cannot say which of the four brought in more than the plain litre would have.
Sagar, where ghee is one of the trades
Ghee is made and sold in more than one Madhya Pradesh district, and one of them is known for it.
- Ghee processing is one of the trades of Sagar, a major road and agricultural trade centre that also has oil and flour milling, handloom cotton weaving and bidi making.
A round's month beside the centre's cheque, the guest day on the page and four things from one animal's milk
The round's month laid beside the collection centre's cheque
Every door on the round is a bill each day, so at the month's end the daily report holds the litres that went to town and what they brought. Lay that next to what the collection centre pays for the same litres by fat content, and decide whether the round is worth the early mornings, and whether the buffalo's evening milk should go to town or to the centre.
The empty Monday: a fast that is not a missed delivery
A house that fasts on Monday takes no milk that day. The page has no line for it, so on the first the house sees the Mondays it fasted, and none of them has to be explained as a delivery you missed.
The Sanchi packet is a small line beside the can, and the Sunday family shows it
On Sunday the relatives come, and the family takes a Sanchi packet beside the can; the rest of the week it takes the can alone. The page shows a Sunday that is always heavier, so you bring an extra packet on Saturday evening.
What milk sellers in Madhya Pradesh ask
A family takes a litre and a half on the day guests come. Can the bill show half litres?
Yes. Enter a litre and a half. On the week's page Sunday's line is the larger one, so a house with guests each Sunday shows as a heavy Sunday.
Some houses skip milk on the Monday they fast. Can I see which Mondays they skipped?
Yes. Open the house's page: a Monday without a line is a Monday it did not take. Read the Mondays down and you know how much to keep back for it.
The tea stall at the bus stand pays on the tenth, but the farmer wants his money before that. How do I see the gap?
Open the stall's page and read what it has taken since the last tenth. That is the money you wait for. Set it beside what you owe the farmer, and you see the gap.
After a calf is born the milk falls for a month. Can I see the litres fall and rise again?
Yes. The daily report keeps each day. Open that month and the litres of each day are in a row, so you can see the dip and the day it came back.
The Sanchi packet and the loose milk in the can
The state cooperative dairy federation, MPCDF, sells under the Sanchi brand and runs six regional milk unions at Bhopal, Indore, Ujjain, Gwalior, Jabalpur and Bundelkhand. A shop that sells both packets and loose milk keeps them as two items, each with its own rate.
Madhya Pradesh produces over 6 crore litres of milk a day, but packaged milk is only about 10 percent of consumption, says MPCDF. The rest is milk measured out into a can at the door, and that is the milk that a family's page has to follow day after day.