KOCHI: By implementing his customary law that made dairy farmers stick to a single queue for procurement at the cooperatives, Dr Verghese Kurien blurred socioeconomic divides while ushering in a white revolution in the country, Nirmala Kurien, the legendary Milkman’s daughter said.
The social entrepreneur’s insistence that farmers, irrespective of their capacity to contribute to milk production, should go by the “one queue, one can’ system was “revolutionary” in the movement the icon initiated in the 1970s, human resources expert Nirmala Kurien recalled in the Dr Verghese Kurien Memorial Lecture organised by Milma at Angalamy on Sunday.
“Into the 1990s, when India initiated liberalisation, Dr Kurien viewed the series of policy changes with suspicion. He was fine with foreign investment in industry, but not so with the farming sector,” she noted.
The function was inaugurated virtually by Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development Minister J Chinchurani. She said Milma, which is the brand name for the 1980-founded Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (KCMMF), continues to implement its programmes with the total participation of the three-tier Panchayati Raj as envisaged by Dr Kurien (1921-2012).
Milma chairman K S Mani, while recalling his personal association with Dr Kurien who went on to serve as the chairman of Amul, said Kerala had the potential to top the country’s states when it came to productivity of milk, though not necessarily in its quantity.