OUR PRESIDENTS—Dr. R. P. Aneja - Indian Dairy Association

Dr. Aneja with the then President of India
Giani Zail Singh
After a successful assignment in Kenya, Dr. Aneja joined
a Commonwealth Secretariat Team to look at the situation
of the dairy sector in Jamaica and make recommendations
on exploring its full potential. The Government of Jamaica
requested the Commonwealth Secretariat to depute Dr.
Aneja to assist in implementing the recommendations.
Dr. Aneja moved to Kingston, Jamaica for three years
to work for the Commonwealth Secretariat, as the Dairy
Development Adviser to the Government of Jamaica.
During this period, he helped set up the Dairy Board of
Jamaica as well as the Jamaica Dairy Farmers Federation.
One of the advisors to the Jamaican Government was
the Chairman of the Dairy Farmers of Canada, Mr.
Jacques Lafarge who subsequently invited Dr Aneja to
assist in setting up a new project for the New Brunswick
Dairy Farmers Cooperative in Miramichi, NB Canada
for production and marketing of traditional Indian dairy
products. Dr. Aneja was in Canada from 2001 to 2003.
Mr. V.S. Behla with his vast experience in
implementing Operation Flood replaced him in Jamaica
to strengthen the newly formed Dairy Federation.
While in Canada, Dr. Aneja along with Dr. R.C.
Chandan, Dr. B.N. Mathur and Dr. Asim Kumar
Banerjee, completed a well-illustrated book on Technology
of Indian Milk Products at the request of Mr. P.R.
Gupta whose labour of love saw this book published.
Since 1983 Dr. Aneja had encouraged and assisted
Mr. Gupta to bring out an annual compendium on the
Indian dairy industry entitled “Dairy India”.
OCTOBER 2012
Man with a mission…
Dr. Aneja was always interested in natural
resource utilization and energy conservation. One
of his earlier papers published in the Indian Dairyman
was on the intensity of energy use in milk processing
and packaging, comparing glass bottles, poly pouches,
bulk vending etc. The development of energy efficient
processing equipment particularly condensing and
drying machinery was a natural part of the R&D
efforts at NDDB.
One of the most significant (and least known)
academic works done at the NDDB was to study
the efficiency of energy conversion in India's milk
production system. The study carried out in the early
seventies under the leadership of Prof. Michael Halse,
FAO Advisor to the NDDB had pointed out the
possibilities of increasing India's milk production multiple
times without the need of sparing much land for milk
production by merely increasing the conversion
efficiencies. Dr. Aneja was one of the contributors to
the study by which Prof. Michael Halse subsequently
completed his Ph.D. requirements at the Harvard
Business School.
Career milestones
Dr. Aneja says that he started with the planning
of Operation Flood Project and manpower development.
Preparing perspective plans for dairy development in
the participating states was a great challenge in the
absence of reliable data. They were able to achieve
this task with the cooperation of the state agencies
setting up a comprehensive Management Information
Service (MIS) that helped monitor the implementation
of these plans and operate the National Milk Grid (NMG).
The renowned scientist says that the satisfaction of
seeing the emergence of the milk grid right before
their eyes would not have been possible without the
hard work put in by Shailendra Kumar, R.K. Nagar
etc.
Dr. Aneja was always interested in research and
development, particularly product development. Steve
Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc, once famously said —
INDIAN DAIRYMAN
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