Monday, September 10, 2012

When 'Bharath' never saw its 'Ratna' - Tribute to Dr Verghese Kurien

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.

Image Source

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 

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

India.. The myth of Super Power

Image Source:  http://sanhati.com/excerpted/4697/



“A slower-growing India will be more financially vulnerable, poorer, full of frustrated young people and taken less seriously by the rest of the world”

This quote from the Economist (source mentioned below) should send warning signals to people who play a major role in shaping the destiny of our country.  I began to dig deep on this subject and found quite a good number of sources which gave me an insight into the problem. The three major book/articles which motivated me to write this post are:

1) I started reading Breakout Nations by RuchirSharma – In search of Next Economic Miracles a few days back. He talks about nations which could flourish or disappoint in the era of diverging economic prospects. He gives a perspective on many countries and identifies certain indicators which will determine where a nation is headed towards.
2) An article which appeared in the Economist titled India’s economy – Losing itsmagic
3) An article by Harshwardhan Gupta titled 40Years of "Innovation" in India

Over the last few years, India has often been touted as the next big super power, emerging nation, will go past China and so many other good adjectives. We all get elated with these tags.

All of a sudden, some have started raising serious doubts about India. Reasons attributed for this are many: number of scams surfacing day in day out across the nation, coalition politics, lack of decision making ability at the top and many more.

But I am going to focus on something more fundamental – the lack of investment on core Research and Development (R&D) by Indian firms.  

Wikipedia defines 2 models for R&D. In one model, the primary function of an R&D group is to develop new products; in the other model, the primary function of an R&D group is to discover and create new knowledge about scientific and technological topics for the purpose of uncovering and enabling development of valuable new products, processes, and services.

Are we spending enough on R&D? Answer is straight “No”. Let us look at the numbers. 

We are just spending 0.9% of GDP on R&D and are in 8th position among all countries. The global R&D total for 2011 was $1.2 trillion. United States leads all countries by funding one-third of global R&D in 2011. US spends about 405  billion $, China 153 billion $, Japan 144 billion $, South Korea 45 billion $ and India 36 billion $. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending )

Harshwardhan Gupta in his article 40Years of "Innovation" in India says that Pre-Liberalization (prior to 1991) was better than post-liberalization in terms of R&D scenario in our country. Earlier we could not import industrial machinery. This forced us to engage in large amount of real engineering design and innovation, especially in smaller companies; and usually they grew much faster. But when Liberalization arrived, all these small companies and entrepreneurs started importing machines at the cost of indigenous design and innovation.

The other Asian giants like China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea initially also imported these technologies from the west but they quickly learned the underlying engineering and design philosophies behind these sophisticated machines. They then started improving upon the originals and started mass manufacturing them at a low cost. Within a couple of decades, many of the Eastern companies overtook their Western counterparts.

But most of the Indian companies did not follow this. We imported and started using it. Majority of them where not ready to invest in R&D to understand what goes behind the design. We are becoming increasingly dependent on imported technology and machinery, losing entire vital indigenous industries in the process.

Take the case of Indian IT companies. We pride ourselves in IT field but there is hardly a notable global product from our IT companies. The revenues from IT are from services sector and if any other country can emulate our achievements, we will struggle to maintain the growth in this sector.


Let us consider the case of South Korea. They have so many global brands in the world market. Samsung & LG in consumer electronics sector, Hyundai & Kia in automobile sector, POSCO and many more. They are global players in everything ranging from cars, steel, industrial machinery, robotics, aerospace, biotech, rechargeable batteries and so on.  They are the world's largest and best shipbuilder.

Let us focus on Indian global brands. If you look at the Indian brands in top 500 global brands in 2012 (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/countries/India.html ), there are 8 Indian companies. Among them 5 companies (ONGC, HP, BP, RIL and Indian Oil) are in the oil and energy sector which is making huge losses presently. The other three are Tata Motors, Tata Steel and SBI.

Fact is we hardly have any global brands in the world. We are a nation of billion plus population who are just consumers of the global brands of other companies. Everything from TV, washing machine, computers, industrial machinery is of brands of other nations.


I do not see this trend changing in the near future unless companies start investing in core R&D. We need to invest in research to build future technologies. If Indian companies do not take this risk we can never ever hope to be a Super Power.