Cooking oil is the primary requirement of the people. All middle class families consume roughly 1 tin (15kg) of oil per head annually. So family of 4 persons will require 60 kg of oil annually. A village of 3000 population will need 3000 x 15kg = 45000kg of oil. Or 3000 tins. Each tin of 15 kg. In lower middle class and poor people, consumption will be less, say 8 to 10 kg per head per year. But cooking oil requirement for a village of 3000 in a poor states may be roughly 2000 tins annually. So total oil requirement for entire India is about 120 crore x 12 kg per head = 1440 crore kg = 1.44 crore tonnes. OR roughly we can say 1.5 crore tonnes = 15 million tonnes. If we consider rate of Rs.100 per kg, then edible oil business is Rs. 1.5 crore tonnes x 1000 kg x Rs. 100= Rs.150000 crores .= Rs.1500 billion.

So this is the huge trade. Entire oil seeds crushing activity is handled by big and medium scale oil millers. They exploit entire India. They adulterate inferior quality oil or cheaper oil in to super quality oil and make huge money. 120 crores of people are totally helpless and is at the mercy of big oil millers. In this situation multinational companies are trying to grab entire cooking oil market and to drive out small and medium scale oil millers and they want to heavily exploit entire India by profiteering, speculation, adulteration and playing with the rates of oil seeds and oil. They advocate refined oil and issue advertisements for benefits of refined oils.

Wherever there is a centralized giant production, they always resort to falsehood and untruth about quality of their product. Moreover wherever there is centralized giant production of any food item, quality and freshness is not possible to maintain. But they always claim best quality oil. THE FACT IS THAT REFINED OIIL CAUSES CANCER. Wherever oil is heated up to 220 degree C, internal structure of oil is destroyed and oil becomes harmful to human body. Two Indian scientists made experiments of refined oil on rats and they found that entire batch of 100 rats eating refined oil died of cancer in 30 months of time, while another batch of 100 rats eating fresh natural cooking oil remained completely healthy. Nothing happened to even one rat. This is eye opening experiment for the effect of refined oil. So it is proved that refined oil causes cancer. Still multinational companies and Indian big companies hide this fact and try to promote their refined oil in the market by befooling the people.

So health point of view, only natural oil must be preferred. No any chemical should be used in oil. Oil ghani can give best quality natural oil because it expels the oil gently and gradually at minimum temperature say 50 degree C. The lower is the temperature, better is the quality of oil. This is scientific truth. So cold pressed oil is always preferred. But big multinational companies hide the facts of science and fabricate false benefits of their refined oil and they aggressively try to promote their oil. In fact Government should ban on such detrimental activity and playing with the health of the people. But big companies can always manage with big government authority by huge corruption or otherwise by political pressure etc. So ultimate victims are people.

Total oil seed production of India is 26 million tonnes. Major oil seed crop is groundnut, rapeseed, mustard, sesame, sunflower, linseed, coconut etc. All these oil seeds are high price oil seeds giving best quality oil. The highest quality oil is from sesame. But entire production of sesame is almost 100% exported and Indian people can not get best quality sesame oil. Similarly most popular and precious oil is the groundnut oil. Groundnut production in India is 8 million tonnes. It is not sufficient for our own people. But groundnut kernels are exported as a HPS groundnut and so our people can not get enough groundnut oil. So only exporters are reaping the fruits by exporting sesame and groundnut. So edible oil is always short supply commodity. So government imports hopeless quality palm oil from Malaysia and thrust upon the poor people of India. They have no other way except to eat hopeless, inferior, unhealthy palm oil. So importers of palm oil earn crores of rupees. The adverse effect of cheap unhealthy palm oil is that it is abundantly used for adulteration in to good quality oil such as groundnut oil, mustard oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, linseed oil etc. So it has become almost impossible to get really pure oil in the market. See the tragedy of India. Even though we are producer of best quality oil seeds in the world, our people have to eat dirty, imported, unhealthy palm oil.

This problem has arised from giant centralized production of oil through big oil mills and refineries. Before independence there were half million oil ghanis in villages and towns everywhere. People used to go to ghani owner with their oil seed to crush the seed on custom milling basis. This way entire India used to eat fresh, pure natural oil produced locally. There was no marketing game. So no profiteering, holding, adulteration, speculation etc. This situation can be brought back again by establishing 3 lakh modern tiny oil mills in villages wherever oil seeds are grown. Tiny oil mill consists of tiny oil expeller, cooking kettle, filter press to filter the oil and it runs with 10HP motor or diesel engine or steam engine. It can produce 5000 to 6000 tins of oil in a crushing season which will be quite adequate for 2 villages. It will provide fresh and pure natural oil to villages and also to towns.

Gandhiji has asserted that precondition of happy society is that means of production of all the primary needs of the people must be in the hands of common masses. Oil is primary need of the people. So machine to produce oil must be in the hands of people at village level. So centralized oil millers have no place in real Indian economy. Entire oil milling business can be and must be decentralized into villages through 3 lakh tiny modern oil mills and 2 lakh ghanis.

I am trying to decentralize this oil milling industry since last 30 years. I have developed all machines for tiny oil mill and I am manufacturing it and exporting it since last 30 years. My experience is encouraging. Only in Saurashtra region, my 500 tiny oil mills are working most successfully and most satisfactorily. Mostly this activity runs on custom milling which drives out all the evils of marketing from this business. Each oil mill on and average crushes 300 tonnes of groundnut in a crushing season of 200 days and produces 6000 tins of oil( 1 tin contains 15 kg). So totally 500 oil mills produce 3 million tins of oil i.e. 48 million liters of pure natural and fresh edible oil. Roughly half million families get their oil from their oil seeds on custom milling basis by paying only job work charges to the oil miller say 100 rupees per tin of 15kg.

Moreover I have exported my tiny oil mills in many countries. At present about 900 tiny oil mills are successfully and profitably running in 85 countries. I have also proved in 85 countries that “smaller is more viable” as against the dictum taught by uneconomists in universities and management schools that ” bigger is more viable”. At world level there is a huge scope of one million tiny oil mills over and above the scope in India for 3 lakh tiny oil mills.
Benefits of this activity has been separately described in detail in the next chapter.