My cousin S Nandagopal posted a thought provoking article on the Father of White Revolution in India Dr Verghese Kurien in his FB account. The article is written by Raja Bose and the views expressed by him compelled me instantly to present it to a larger audience. Hence I thought of reproducing the same in my blog.
Here are the thoughts on Dr Verghese Kurien by Raja Bose.
When 'Bharath' never saw its 'Ratna'
Dr. Verghese Kurien- Death of a Milkman
"I came to Anand on Friday the 13th." That was what Verghese Kurien would tell people who visited him.
The date or the day never mattered. What most consider evil, turned out to be India's good fortune. Over six decades since he reached Anand in 1948, a small village then in Central Gujarat, India's history of milk production has been as "utterly, butterly delicious" as the legendary slogan – It is the world's largest milk producer today and the farmers' co-operative movement he founded is worth $ 2.5 billion.
But, why did this man die such a silent death? At 90, he breathed his last early on Sunday morning in a hospital in Nadiad – close to the karmabhoomi he never left. All these years, as he toiled to put India on the world map, making it flex its muscles in the dairy sector and creating a brand with the help of farmers that took on the might of MNCs, nobody thought of conferring him the greatest prize for an Indian. Bharat forgot its prized "ratna."
Even the institutions he created did not leave him quite happy in his last days. He was unceremoniously removed from a great institution he built much ahead of its time, the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) to create managers to help the farmers. Earlier, a difference of opinion with his protégé, NDDB chairman Amrita Patel, over the issue of going into joint ventures with the private sector, left a bad taste in the mouth.
And, when he quit Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketting Federation in 2006 – which he created and headed to promote and market the Amul brand – it was a sad day in Anand's history. "I have been the Chairman of GCMMF for five decades since its inception in 1973. Do I deserve this kind of treatment?," he said.
Not that milk production dipped drastically after his leaving, or Amul brand equity taking a beating. The way he quit indicated a nation's indifference to a doer, a visionary.
The indifference is still evident in the fact that he never got the Bharat Ratna. Just three days before Kurien breathed his last, the Economic Times reported Infosys chairman emeritus NR Narayamurthy as saying: "A civilised society must show gratitude when people can sense it, or it is no gratitude at all and if our country does not stand and salute Dr Verghese Kurien with a Bharat Ratna, I don't know who else deserves it."
He was inaugurating the authorised audio book Kurien's memoirs "I Too Had A Dream" called "The Man Who Made The Elephant Dance".
Yes, the man was pompous. In the early part of the first decade of the new millennium, when I – as a reporter with The Times of India's Vadoadara bureau – met him for an interview, he invited me to join him in his car. "I will take you around Anand," he said. Soon, we stopped near a locality and he pointed his finger at a huge board. "Verghese Kurien Enclave," it read. The pride was evident on his face.
While showing his house, he would narrate how he hosted a number of Prime Ministers. And, he would say with lot of roide, how, during the high noon of Operation Flood, the then PM came to him for advice. "Mohammad doesn't go to the mountain, the mountain comes to him," he had said.
He was also known to speak his mind. When NDDB's Amrita Patel wanted to sign JVs with private players, as she felt it was the only way to remain competitive in the market, he said: "JVs will spell doom for co-operatives."
"This would lead to the movement succumbing to market forces that may lead to farmers losing control over the brand and marketing. World over, India's progress in dairy farming is perceived as a threat as we are self-reliant now and we are helping other countries replicate our model. MNCs may consider this as losing their stake in the world," Kurien has said in an interview.
"The co-operatives he created have become powerful agents of social change .. and in embedding democracy at the grassroots level in the country," Ratan Tata wrote in the foreword to 'I Too Had A Dream.'
Kurien's concern was the farmer. Doing the tango with private players will take away farmers' right, which is totally against the spirit of the co-operative movement.
And, this man should know. For, he has sowed and lived the great co-operative dream. A dream caleld the 'Anand model' that the world reveres, and even fears, now.
It was a time when the milkmen of Kaira (now Kheda district of Gujarat) were revolting, refusing to send milk to Mumbai. India had just attained Independence, but rumblings of discontent rocked the region. It was during those turbulent times that Verghese Kurien reached Anand reluctantly, as a young dairy engineer.
His first job was at Tata Steel in Jamshedpur, natural for an Engineer in Metallurgy (from Michigan University), which he quit. His aim was to specialize in nuclear physics.
But Kurien says that during an interview by a government panel for a scholarship, he was asked: "What is pasteurization?"
"I answered – It's something to do with milk", he would say and then break into a laughter – "The others did not even know this. And, I got the job."
But, he called it "bonded labour" when he was compelled to go to Anand and work in a government-run dairy research centre as he was not in a position to return the Rs 30,000 that the government spent on his studies abroad. But, Kurien said he would wait for an opportunity to "flee" Anand.
"I was single and a non-vegetarian in Gujarat. Nobody would let me say in their house. I would spend days in a garage," he would say and show the garage where he began his life in Anand. He would mention how, one night, a dog ran away with his pair of shoes that he had to keep outside the garage.
But, he did not flee. For, history overtook him.
Kurien was soon drawn into a movement that was to change the course of his life. And, with it, the lives of thousands of milkmen in Anand. And almost the whole Indian countryside.
For the young man, it was difficult not to be drawn into the struggle as trouble was brewing nearby, with the first co-operative union Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union Limited now famous as Amul, inspired by Sardar Patel and led by Tribhuvandas Patel, being formed.
Kurien then revived an old dairy and there began a great association of Kurien and Patel.
While the fledgling co-operative union took on the might of Polson Dairy, it worked wonders, spawning the White Revolution that changed the face of dairying in India. It also gave cooperatives the power they never thought they could have.
For, it was Operation Flood the largest dairy development programme in the world designed by Kurien that was replicated across the country as the Anand Model. It also propelled India towards sufficiency in milk-production and made it the largest producer of milk in the world.
He created Amul at a time when brands were hardly known and not only turned it into the 'Taste of India' but its 'utterly, butterly, delicious' force gave multinationals and private Indian brands a run for its money.
Anand, now called the "milk capital of India," became his home.
And, it is in Anand that a museum stands in his name, built when he turned 80 in 2001.
"Men have museums in their memory after they die. I had mine while I am very much alive," he had said while it was being built.
Verghese Kurien will certainly be remembered – as we butter our bread and our children sip milk.
Our government and our politicians may not have seen a votebank emerging in conferring the Bharat Ratna on him, but Kurien will remain, always, the "toast of India."
Link to original article
Here are the thoughts on Dr Verghese Kurien by Raja Bose.
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When 'Bharath' never saw its 'Ratna'
Dr. Verghese Kurien- Death of a Milkman
"I came to Anand on Friday the 13th." That was what Verghese Kurien would tell people who visited him.
The date or the day never mattered. What most consider evil, turned out to be India's good fortune. Over six decades since he reached Anand in 1948, a small village then in Central Gujarat, India's history of milk production has been as "utterly, butterly delicious" as the legendary slogan – It is the world's largest milk producer today and the farmers' co-operative movement he founded is worth $ 2.5 billion.
But, why did this man die such a silent death? At 90, he breathed his last early on Sunday morning in a hospital in Nadiad – close to the karmabhoomi he never left. All these years, as he toiled to put India on the world map, making it flex its muscles in the dairy sector and creating a brand with the help of farmers that took on the might of MNCs, nobody thought of conferring him the greatest prize for an Indian. Bharat forgot its prized "ratna."
Even the institutions he created did not leave him quite happy in his last days. He was unceremoniously removed from a great institution he built much ahead of its time, the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) to create managers to help the farmers. Earlier, a difference of opinion with his protégé, NDDB chairman Amrita Patel, over the issue of going into joint ventures with the private sector, left a bad taste in the mouth.
And, when he quit Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketting Federation in 2006 – which he created and headed to promote and market the Amul brand – it was a sad day in Anand's history. "I have been the Chairman of GCMMF for five decades since its inception in 1973. Do I deserve this kind of treatment?," he said.
Not that milk production dipped drastically after his leaving, or Amul brand equity taking a beating. The way he quit indicated a nation's indifference to a doer, a visionary.
The indifference is still evident in the fact that he never got the Bharat Ratna. Just three days before Kurien breathed his last, the Economic Times reported Infosys chairman emeritus NR Narayamurthy as saying: "A civilised society must show gratitude when people can sense it, or it is no gratitude at all and if our country does not stand and salute Dr Verghese Kurien with a Bharat Ratna, I don't know who else deserves it."
He was inaugurating the authorised audio book Kurien's memoirs "I Too Had A Dream" called "The Man Who Made The Elephant Dance".
Yes, the man was pompous. In the early part of the first decade of the new millennium, when I – as a reporter with The Times of India's Vadoadara bureau – met him for an interview, he invited me to join him in his car. "I will take you around Anand," he said. Soon, we stopped near a locality and he pointed his finger at a huge board. "Verghese Kurien Enclave," it read. The pride was evident on his face.
While showing his house, he would narrate how he hosted a number of Prime Ministers. And, he would say with lot of roide, how, during the high noon of Operation Flood, the then PM came to him for advice. "Mohammad doesn't go to the mountain, the mountain comes to him," he had said.
He was also known to speak his mind. When NDDB's Amrita Patel wanted to sign JVs with private players, as she felt it was the only way to remain competitive in the market, he said: "JVs will spell doom for co-operatives."
"This would lead to the movement succumbing to market forces that may lead to farmers losing control over the brand and marketing. World over, India's progress in dairy farming is perceived as a threat as we are self-reliant now and we are helping other countries replicate our model. MNCs may consider this as losing their stake in the world," Kurien has said in an interview.
"The co-operatives he created have become powerful agents of social change .. and in embedding democracy at the grassroots level in the country," Ratan Tata wrote in the foreword to 'I Too Had A Dream.'
Kurien's concern was the farmer. Doing the tango with private players will take away farmers' right, which is totally against the spirit of the co-operative movement.
And, this man should know. For, he has sowed and lived the great co-operative dream. A dream caleld the 'Anand model' that the world reveres, and even fears, now.
It was a time when the milkmen of Kaira (now Kheda district of Gujarat) were revolting, refusing to send milk to Mumbai. India had just attained Independence, but rumblings of discontent rocked the region. It was during those turbulent times that Verghese Kurien reached Anand reluctantly, as a young dairy engineer.
His first job was at Tata Steel in Jamshedpur, natural for an Engineer in Metallurgy (from Michigan University), which he quit. His aim was to specialize in nuclear physics.
But Kurien says that during an interview by a government panel for a scholarship, he was asked: "What is pasteurization?"
"I answered – It's something to do with milk", he would say and then break into a laughter – "The others did not even know this. And, I got the job."
But, he called it "bonded labour" when he was compelled to go to Anand and work in a government-run dairy research centre as he was not in a position to return the Rs 30,000 that the government spent on his studies abroad. But, Kurien said he would wait for an opportunity to "flee" Anand.
"I was single and a non-vegetarian in Gujarat. Nobody would let me say in their house. I would spend days in a garage," he would say and show the garage where he began his life in Anand. He would mention how, one night, a dog ran away with his pair of shoes that he had to keep outside the garage.
But, he did not flee. For, history overtook him.
Kurien was soon drawn into a movement that was to change the course of his life. And, with it, the lives of thousands of milkmen in Anand. And almost the whole Indian countryside.
For the young man, it was difficult not to be drawn into the struggle as trouble was brewing nearby, with the first co-operative union Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union Limited now famous as Amul, inspired by Sardar Patel and led by Tribhuvandas Patel, being formed.
Kurien then revived an old dairy and there began a great association of Kurien and Patel.
While the fledgling co-operative union took on the might of Polson Dairy, it worked wonders, spawning the White Revolution that changed the face of dairying in India. It also gave cooperatives the power they never thought they could have.
For, it was Operation Flood the largest dairy development programme in the world designed by Kurien that was replicated across the country as the Anand Model. It also propelled India towards sufficiency in milk-production and made it the largest producer of milk in the world.
He created Amul at a time when brands were hardly known and not only turned it into the 'Taste of India' but its 'utterly, butterly, delicious' force gave multinationals and private Indian brands a run for its money.
Anand, now called the "milk capital of India," became his home.
And, it is in Anand that a museum stands in his name, built when he turned 80 in 2001.
"Men have museums in their memory after they die. I had mine while I am very much alive," he had said while it was being built.
Verghese Kurien will certainly be remembered – as we butter our bread and our children sip milk.
Our government and our politicians may not have seen a votebank emerging in conferring the Bharat Ratna on him, but Kurien will remain, always, the "toast of India."
Link to original article
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