"Milkman of India Dr. VergheseKurien on his 94th Birth Anniversary

Dr Verghese Kurien


Dr Verghese Kurien (26 November 1921 – 9 September 2012) was an Indian social entrepreneur known as the "Father of the White Revolution for his Operation Flood, the world's largest agricultural development programmed. This transformed India from a milk-deficient nation to the world's largest milk producer, surpassing the United States of America in 1998, with about 17 percent of global output in 2010–11, which in 30 years doubled milk available to every person. Dairy farming became India's largest self-sustaining industry. He made the country self-sufficient in edible oils too later on, taking the powerful and entrenched oil supplying lobby, head-on.

He founded around 30 institutions of excellence (like AMUL, GCMMF, IRMA, NDDB) which are owned, managed by farmers and run by professionals. As the founding chairman of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), Kurien was responsible for the creation and success of the Amul brand of dairy products. A key achievement at Amul was the invention of milk powder processed from buffalo milk (abundant in India), as opposed to that made from cow-milk, in the then major milk producing nations. This led Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to appoint him the founder-chairman of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) in 1965, to replicate Amul's "Anand model" nationwide. He is regarded as one of the greatest proponents of the cooperative movement in the world, his work having lifted millions out of poverty in India, and outside.

Work

Kurien arrived back from the United States to India after his master's degree, and was quickly deputed to the Government of India's experimental creamery, at Anand in Gujarat's Kheda district by the government and rather half-heartedly served out his bond period against the scholarship given by them. He arrived at Anand on Friday 13 May1949 and started the work assigned to him the very same day. He had already made up his mind to quit mid-way, but was persuaded to stay back at Anand by Tribhuvandas Patel (who would later share the Magsaysay with him) who had brought together Kheda's farmers as a cooperative union to process and sell their milk, a pioneering concept at the time.

He would brook no meddling from the political class or bureaucrats sitting in the capital cities, letting it be known upfront, though he, and his mentor and colleague, Tribhuvandas Patel were backed by the few enlightened political leaders and bureaucrats of the early Independence days who saw merit in their pioneering cooperative model. Tribhuvandas Patel's sincere and earnest efforts and the trust placed in him by farmers inspired Kurien to dedicate himself to the challenging task before them, so much so, that when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was to visit Anand later to inaugurate Amul's plant, he embraced Kurien for his groundbreaking work. Dairy expert H. M. Dalaya invented the process of making skim milk powder and condensed milk from buffalo milk. In India, buffalo milk is the main raw material unlike Europe where cow milk is abundant. Later research at Amul by Dr. G. H. Wilster led to cheese production from buffalo milk.

The Amul pattern of cooperatives became so successful, that in 1965 Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, tasked Kurien to replicate the program nationwide, citing his "extraordinary and dynamic leadership", and the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was set up. Kurien agreed on condition that he will not move from Anand and it will have to be headquartered there. Kurien took on established competitors viz. Aarey dairy of the Bombay Milk and Polson Dairy, dealt with aid from donors like UNICEF and confronted the New Zealand government and a powerful 'dumping' lobby of countries which wanted to 'convert food aid into trade'.

 As the 'Amul dairy experiment' was replicated in Gujarat's districts in the neighborhood of Anand, Kurien set all of them up under GCMMF in 1973 to sell the combined produce of the dairies under a single Amul brand. He quit the post of GCMMF chairman in 2006 following disagreement with the GCMMF management. When the National Dairy Development Board expanded the scope of Operation Flood to cover the entire country in 1979, Kurien founded the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA). Kurien, played a key role in many other organizations, like chairing the Viksit Bharat Foundation, a body set up by the President of India.

 

Awards and honours

Year	Name of Award or Honor	Awarding Organization
1999	Padma Vibhushan	Government of India
1993	International Person of the Year Award	World Dairy Expo
1991	Distinguished Alumni Award	Michigan State University
1989	World Food Prize	World Food Prize, USA
1986	Wateler Peace Prize Award	Carnegie Foundation, The Netherlands
1986	Krishi Ratna Award	Government of India
1966	Padma Bhushan	Government of India
1965	Padma Shri	Government of India
1963	Ramon Magsaysay Award	Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation

Kurien has also received 15 honorary degrees from universities in India and around the world.

To commemorate his memory, Institute of Rural Management Anand has instituted the annual Dr. Verghese Kurien Memorial Lecture at IRMA to be held on his birth anniversary. The first lecture in 2012 was delivered by M. S. Swaminathan. The second lecture in 2013 was delivered by Vijay Shankar Vyas. The third lecture in 2014 was delivered by the Governor of Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan. On 26th November 2015, Google placed a doodle on its homepage, honoring him on his 94th birthday.