Post # 056
India's milkman!
Revolution: A drastic, dramatic change...
A newly independent, milk-deficient nation, becoming the largest producer of milk in the world, in 30 years.
A group of rural dairy farmers, coming together as a cooperative, hiring professionals to manage it and creating India's largest food brand.
A third-world country inventing a process of making skim milk powder from buffalo milk, when dairy experts from the most advanced nations thought that was possible only from cow milk.
A Hindu man, a woman and a Harijan standing in the same queue, knowing their milk will go into the same container, because no where else will they get 70% of the price paid by the consumer.
Previously submissive women, in 18700 villages in rural Gujarat, mustering the courage to stand up to abusive, drunken husbands, because they are now part-owners of a USD 5 billion conglomerate, and can very well take care of their children's health, education and well-being, thank you very much!
A state-level, social initiative becoming so immensely successful, that a National board is created, mega-voltage dreams are dreamt, like Operation Flood and The billion-litre idea, and these dreams come true! Karnataka's Nandini, Rajasthan's Saras and Bihar's Sudha, becoming dominant regional brands!
Other countries like Russia, China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, seeking advice from an Indian, to replicate a successful socio-preunial program.
A group of 5 lakh villagers contributing INR 2 each, to create the first ever crowd-funded, farmer-produced bollywood movie - Manthan - about their own success story. (Check it out. It is an award-winning Shyam Benegal movie).
Revolutionary: One who is responsible for a revolution
Accidental revolutionary: One who didn't plan on a revolution, accidentally stumbled onto it, and committed oneself to it till death do them apart.
Varghese Kurien reluctantly took up the government job in a run-down, experimental creamery in Anand, to serve out his bond period against the scholarship the government gave him for his master's degree in US.
When he came to Anand, no one would give a non-vegetarian, Christian bachelor a room for rent. So, he converted an old garage as a living room, while he petitioned the government to transfer him elsewhere.
One frustrating day, he met Tribhuvandas Patel, the father of the cooperatives movement in India, who requested him to repair a machine belonging to the Kaira cooperative society.
Tribhuvandas Patel persuaded Varghese Kurien to stay back. He paid VK's salary. In the meantime, VK was undergoing a change of heart. Inspired by Tribhuvandas and the trust placed by the farmers in him, he established the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers Union, later to be called Amul Dairy.
VK inturn persuaded his friend from US, a dairy engineer, H.M.Dalaya to join him. Together the pioneered the process of making skimmed milk powder from buffalo milk, allowing them to compete against bigger brands like Nestle and Glaxo.
In 1965, Prime minister Lal Bahadur Shashtri tasked him with replicating the success of Amul at a pan-India level. Thus were born the National Dairy Development Board, Operation Flood and The billion-litre idea, and many dominant regional brands like Karnataka's Nandini, Rajasthan's Saras and Bihar's Sudha!
In 1979, he founded the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), because professionals from IIMs wouldn't come to dirty their hands in rural areas.
He is Ramon Magsaysay awardee, Padma awardee and a Krishi Ratna from the Govt. of India.
In 2013, ACK released a comic titled Varghese Kurien: The man with the billion litre idea.
This post salutes this accidental revolutionary!
