Verghese Kurien (26 November 1921 9 September 2012) was an Indian engineer and renowned social entrepreneur, best

t known as the "Father of the White Revolution",[2] for his 'billion-litre idea' or Operation Flood the world's biggest agricultural development programme[3] which made India, a milk-deficient nation, the largest milk producer in the world, surpassing the USA in 1998,[4] with about 17 percent of global output in 201011, which in 30 years doubled the milk available to every person,[5] and which made dairy farming Indias largest self-sustainable rural employment generator.[6] He made the country self-sufficient in edible oils too later on,[7] taking head-on the powerful and entrenched oil supplying lobby. He would brook no meddling from the political class or bureaucrats sitting in the capital cities, letting it be known upfront,[8] though he, and his mentor and colleague, Tribhuvandas Patel were backed by the few enlightened political leaders and bureaucrats of the early Independence days who saw merit in their pioneering cooperative model. He founded around 30 institutions of excellence (like AMUL, GCMMF, IRMA, NDDB) which are owned, managed by farmers and run by professionals. As the founding chairman of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), Kurien was responsible for the creation and success of the Amul brand of dairy products. A key achievement at Amul was the invention[9] of milk powder processed from buffalo milk[10] (abundant in India), as opposed to that made from cow-milk, in the then major milk producing nations. His achievements with the Amul dairy led Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to appoint him founder-chairman of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) in 1965, to replicate Amul's "Anand model" nationwide.[3] One of the greatest proponents of the cooperative movement in the world, his work has alleviated millions out of poverty not only in India but also outside. Hailed as the "Milkman of India", Kurien won several awards including the Padma Vibhushan (India's second-highest civilian honour), the World Food Prize and the Magsaysay Award for community leadership.
Contents [hide] 1 Death, family and education 2 Career 3 Film and its use in enlarging the movement 4 Books 5 Honours, awards and international recognition 6 References 7 External links

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Death, family and education

Verghese Kurien died on 9 September 2012 after a brief spell of illness in Nadiad, near Anand in Gujarat, India. He was 90. He is survived by his wife, one daughter Nirmala Kurien and a grandson, Siddharth. The chief minister of the state did not turn up at his funeral, even though he was in town that day.[11] However, the iconic 'Amul girl' wept (first time ever since she has been on billboards for decades) as her "father figure" will no more be there with her.[12] Born on 26 November 1921 at Calicut, Madras Presidency, British India (now Kozhikode, Kerala) into a Syrian Christian family, he would later turn an atheist[13][14] His father was a civil surgeon in Cochin (Kochi, Kerala). He went on to marry Molly, the daughter of a friend of his father. He graduated in Physics from Loyola College, Madras in 1940 and then obtained his Bachelors in mechanical engineering from the University of Madras. After completing his degree, he joined the Tata Steel Technical Institute, Jamshedpur from where he graduated in 1946. Later, as Kurien would say in his own words, "I was sent to the United States to study dairy engineering (on the only government scholarship left) at Michigan State University. I cheated a bit though, and studied metallurgical and nuclear engineering, disciplines that I believed were likely to be of far greater use to my soon-to-be Independent country and, quite frankly, to me."[15] He did however train for dairy technology later on, on a government sponsorship to New Zealand, a bastion of cooperative dairying then, when he had to learn to set up the Amul dairy. [edit]

Career
Kurien arrived back on 13 May 1949, after his master's degree, and was quickly deputed to the Government of India's experimental creamery, at Anand in Gujarat's Kheda district by the government and rather halfheartedly served out his bond period against the scholarship given by them. He had already made up his mind to quit mid-way, but was pursuaded to stay back at Anand[16] by Tribhuvandas Patel (who would later share the Magsaysay with him) who had brought together Kheda's farmers as a cooperative union to process and sell their milk, a pioneering concept at the time.[17] Patel's sincere and earnest efforts inspired Kurien to dedicate himself to the challenging task before them, so much so, that when Prime Minister

Jawaharlal Nehru was to visit Anand later, to inaugurate Amul's plant, he embraced Kurien for his groundbreaking work. Meanwhile, Kurien's buddy and dairy expert H. M. Dalaya, invented[9] the process of making skim milk powder and condensed milk from buffalo milk[10] instead of from cow milk. This was the reason Amul would compete successfully and well against Nestle which only used cow milk to make them. In India, buffalo milk is the main raw material unlike Europe where cow milk is abundant. The Amul pattern of cooperatives became so successful, that in 1965 Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, created the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) to replicate the program nationwide citing Kurien's "extraordinary and dynamic leadership" upon naming him chairman. As the 'Amul dairy experiment' was replicated in Gujarat's districts in the neighbourhood of Anand , Kurien set all of them up under GCMMF in 1973 to sell the combined produce of the dairies under a single Amul brand. Today GCMMF sells Amul products not only in India but also overseas. He quit the post of GCMMF Chairman in 2006 following disagreement with the GCMMF management.[18][19] Kurien, played a key role in many other organizations, ranging from chairing the Viksit Bharat Foundation, a body set up by the President of India, to chairman of the Board of Governors of Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). Kurien was mentioned by the Ashoka Foundation as one of the eminent present Day Social Entrepreneurs. Kurien's life story is chronicled in his memoir I Too Had a Dream.[20] Interestingly Kurien, the person who revolutionized the availability of milk in India did not drink milk himself[21]. Nevertheless, the work of Kurien & his team in India took India from a milk importer to a milk & milk-products exporting nation within the span of 2 decades. [edit]

Film and its use in enlarging the movement

Veteran film-maker Shyam Benegal, then an advertising executive who used to write the copy for Amul's brand, would be so inspired by Kurien while on tours with him, that he conceived a movie with actors enacting the story of Kurien's work, called Manthan (the churning of the 'milk ocean'). Not able to finance it, Benegal was helped by Kurien who hit upon an idea of getting each of his half a million farmers to contribute a token two rupees for the making of the movie. Manthan hit a chord with the audience immediately when it was shown in Gujarat in 1976, which impressed distributors to release it before audiences, nationwide. It was critically acclaimed and went on to win national awards the following year and was later shown on television to the public.

The movie's success gave Kurien another idea. Like shown in the film, a vet, a milk technician and a fodder specialist who could explain the value of cross-breeding of milch cattle would tour other parts of the country along with the film's prints, to woo farmers there to create cooperatives of their own.[22] UNDP would use the movie to start similar cooperatives in Latin America. [edit]

Verghese Kurien
Born 26 November 1921 Calicut, Madras Presidency, British India
(now Kozhikode, Kerala)

Died Cause of death Nationalit y Other names Alma mater Occupati on Known fo r Spouse Children Awards

9 September 2012 (aged 90) Nadiad, Gujarat, India Illness Indian "Milkman of India" University of Madras Michigan State University Founder of Amul - Ex-Chairman GCMMF, NDDB Widely acclaimed as the "Father of the White revolution" in India[1] Molly Nirmala Kurien World Food Prize (1989) Padma Vibhushan (1999) Ramon Magsaysay Award (1963)