As the man who brought in the country’s white revolution, the ‘Milkman of India’ Verghese Kurien for me is more than a legend. He truly deserves the Bharat Ratna as suggested by a columnist in these pages.
Kurien was a reluctant genius. As the saying goes, ‘some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them’. Kurien fits into the last two. The responsibility to fix Gujarat’s milk producers’ cooperative was thrust upon Kurien after he completed a Master’s degree in Dairy Engineering in the US on a government scholarship post-Independence. It was an obligatory bond of service that brought him to Gujarat and he was in a hurry to complete that and move elsewhere.
He was never promised the Biblical land of milk and honey when he was sent to Gujarat. But over the years with his sheer, grit, conviction and perseverance, he turned it into one. He saved ordinary dairy farmers from milching middlemen and turned them into self-respecting social entrepreneurs long before the term entered the business lexicon. He thought ‘out of the humble milk can’. His model became a lasting template for cooperatives both in the country and abroad. He deftly kept self-seeking and credit usurping politicians at bay which ensured that the movement he created and the institutions he built didn’t curdle.
My first brush with Kurien unknowingly was as a teenager in Delhi when we bought his Mother Dairy milk from vending machines using metal tokens. Later, it was a personally signed letter from him complimenting me on “my incisive and excellent analysis of the Indian dairy industry’s export potential that was untapped and the challenges that went it.” This was his response to a feature I did for my magazine in the mid 1990s post liberalisation as India became the largest milk producer in the world. He added that he hadn’t see any journalist analysing the dairy industry from that angle.
Further, he invited me to Anand. Like any professional journalist, I wanted to do a face-to-face interview with him. Instead, I had to settle for a sour fax interview as my editor turned down my proposal citing cost reasons. Then, Amul butter became a staple on the breakfast tables of millions of Indian urbanites. And its ads with the Amul girl punning on topical issues were simply catchy and became folklore in Indian advertising and inspired us communicators. Kurien gave the country Amulya (priceless) Anand and more which we all relish and savour. Here’s a humble toast to him—albeit a butter one.