The tariff adjustments, enacted under KMF’s state-wide price revision, applied uneven pressures across dairy categories. While liquid milk prices rose by a uniform ₹8 per litre across all variants—lifting toned milk from ₹46 to ₹54 per litre—value-added cultured products saw a significantly sharper upward correction. The retail price for a 1-kilogram curd pouch surged by ₹14, climbing from ₹54 to ₹68 (a 25.9% increase), while the widely purchased 500-gram pouch increased from ₹28 to ₹34 (a ₹6 rise, or 21.4%).

Addressing reporters in Bengaluru, Shivakumar confirmed that he used a meeting with congratulating KMF leadership to issue clear directives regarding retail affordability: “I have instructed KMF office-bearers, who came to congratulate me, to reduce the price of curd.” However, while urging restraint on value-added dairy lines, Shivakumar stood firmly behind the ₹8 fluid milk price revision, pointing out that urban critics rarely scrutinize commercial price inflation in non-agricultural consumer segments: “No one speaks up when bottled water prices rise,” he remarked, emphasizing that the fluid milk revision directly safeguards the livelihood of more than 11 lakh (1.1 million) rural dairy farmer families across Karnataka facing severe cattle feed and fodder inflation.

From an agribusiness and cooperative economics perspective, the split policy approach highlights the complex tension between protecting rural farmgate realizations and managing urban retail price sensitivities. Of the ₹8 per litre fluid milk increase, the state government mandated that ₹7 flow straight into farmers’ accounts, lifting base procurement payouts to ₹40 per litre (or ₹47 when combined with the state’s direct ₹5 incentive subsidy). However, applying aggressive markups on curd—a daily staple in South Indian household diets and commercial food services—threatened to depress domestic consumption and invite retail backlash in key metropolitan centers like Bengaluru and Mysuru.