Milk in India: Touching the Lives of Millions

Milkmen from surrounding towns delivering milk to neighbourhoods across the national capital. (Photo: AP)

At 4:30 am, the New Delhi train station is already bustling with milkmen from surrounding towns, who arrive carrying cans of milk that they deliver to neighbourhoods across the capital. Most were up hours before the sun’s first rays.

Milkman carries milk canisters outside a train station in New Delhi. (Photo: AP)

India is the world’s largest producer of milk and also the largest consumer, producing about 140 million metric tonnes of milk per year by the end of 2014.

Couple milks a cow at the Sandesar village of Anand district, about 85 kilometres (52 miles) southeast of Ahmedabad. (Photo: AP)

Every day, milk touches the lives of millions of Indians.

A woman carries empty canisters after selling milk in Jammu. (Photo: AP)

Milk supports the livelihood of many in different parts of the country.

Srimoti Mandal, 24, carries milk in a bucket as she holds her one and half year old son Rakesh after milking a cow in Gobhali village, about 35 kilometers (21 miles) east of Guwahati. (Photo: AP)

The one thing common across this large and diverse country is the morning cup of milky tea commonly sold in tiny tea stalls in the early hours of the day, usually to migrant labourers.

A tea vendor pours milk into a vessel of tea in the old part of New Delhi. (Photo: AP)

Hindus use milk and its products for religious purposes because it is believed to have purifying qualities.

Devotees perform rituals around a Shivling, a representation of Lord Shiva, pouring milk on it during an offering at a Shiva temple in Guwahati. (Photo: AP)

Milk is used to bathe Hindu idols on special occasions.

Hindu devotee pours milk on to an idol of Nandi, the bull that serves as a mount of Hindu God Shiva, at a Shiva temple in Guwahati. (Photo: AP)

If you are in the country, you cannot escape calorie-filled sweets made with milk.

Indian workers make Sandesh, a sweet made with milk, in Kolkata. (Photo: AP)

Sweets made with milk and ghee, or clarified butter, displayed for sale in the Old Delhi. (Photo: AP)

Ghee, or clarified butter, is used in lamps for rituals.

A Hindu priest holds an earthen lamp filled with ghee, or clarified butter, during a ritual in Bhagawatipara village, about 45 kilometres (28 miles) west of Guwahati, India. (Photo: AP)

Milk accompanies so much of Hindu life, in rituals from an infant’s first food to the last rituals after death.

Manas, 17, pours milk as he performs rituals after his father’s death at Bhagawatipara village, about 45 kilometres (27 miles) west of Guwahati, capital of the northeastern Indian state of Assam. (Photo: AP)