Dr. Verghese Kurien
was born on November 26, 1921 to an affluent Syrian Christian family in Calicut
(now Kozhikode), Kerala. His father Puthenparakkal Kurien was a civil surgeon
in British Cochin and his mother was a highly educated woman as well an
exceptional piano player. He was named after his uncle Rao Sahib P.K Verghese.
Dr Kurien joined Loyola College in Madras and attained his degree in B.Sc in
Physics. He was also very active in sports and represented the college in
cricket, badminton, boxing and tennis. He went to the United States of America on
government scholarship where he pursued his degree in Master of Science in
Mechanical Engineering (Distinction). He returned to India after completion of
his studies and on May 13, 1949 he headed for Anand, a place in Kaira district
of Gujarat where he was supposed to spend five years as an officer of the Dairy
division in return for the scholarship paid by the government. On arriving at
Anand, he found that the farmers were being exploited by the distributors of
milk and the entire region was controlled by a shrewd but clever businessman
called as "Pestonjee Edulji" who marketed Polson butter.
Inception of Amul
About some 100 kms from Ahmedabad lies a small city named
Anand. The city is known as the Milk Capital of India due to presence of the
famous Amul Dairy there. Amul – one of the most famous Dairy brands of our
country came into existence in 1946. During that time there was only one dairy
in the district of Anand and in Gujarat known as Polson Dairy which had been
established in 1930. Polson Dairy was providing superior quality dairy products
to up-market consumers. However it was involved in the exploitation of Indian
farmers by not providing sufficient amount to them for milk and also not allowing
them to sell milk to other vendors. Indian national leader Sardar Patel along
with agitated farmers of that area initiated a non-cooperation movement against
this process in the year 1946 and this lead to the foundation of Amul on 14th December
1946. Initially it supplied milk and other dairy products without any
formalized distribution network or any supply chain in place. The brand name
Amul had not been adopted at that time and it was called KDCMPUL (Kaira
District Cooperative Milk Producer’s union Limited). It started initially with
two dairy co-operative societies and 247 liters of milk only.
Dr. Verghese kurien and Amul
It was on 13th May 1949, a young engineer
who had just completed his Masters Degree in Dairy Engineering arrived at Anand
to serve the bond period against the government scholarship for his education.
His name was Mr. Verghese Kurien, later to be known to the whole world as Dr.
Verghese Kurien. At the start of it all, he served there just to complete his
required period and was ready to leave Amul after that but he was persuaded to
stay back at Amul by Mr. Tribhuvandas Patel – the founder of KDCMPUL. He along
with Mr. Patel started developing co-operatives in the Kheda district. The role
of co-operatives was to procure the milk from the farmers and to pay the
farmers their appropriate amount according to the quality of milk. Further
detailed operation cycle of the co-operatives is explained in the following
section. Mr. Kurien however wanted to give KDCMPUL a unique name which could be
easily pronounced by all and which could also help in growth of the union.
Suggestions were asked from various employees and farmers for an appropriate
name. Soon, a quality control supervisor recommended the name “Amulya” which is
derived from a Sanskrit word meaning priceless and implies unmatchable
excellence. The name was modified to “Amul” to make the union also a part of
this name and hence brand AMUL- Anand Milk Union Limited, came into existence.
Operation of Co-operative Model
Amul formed several co-operative societies for a group of
villages. These co-operative societies had the task of collecting milk from the
village farmers twice a day. The payment was made to the farmers according to
the fat content in the milk. Sufficient steps (such as standard fat measurement
machine, surprise checks, educating farmers etc.) were taken to prevent
malpractices and enhance the overall process. These milk cans were then
transferred to nearby Milk Chiller Unit on the same day. It was kept in storage
there for few hours then they were transferred for the pasteurization and
finally to the cooling and packaging unit. After that milk was delivered to the
wholesale distributor and then to the retailers and finally to the consumer
thus following two-level distribution marketing channel. The upstream
supply chain was entirely designed by Dr. Kurien and Mr. Tribhuvandas Patel –
as a result of which the co-operative mechanism kept getting better and by the
end of 1960 Amul had become a success story in Gujarat.
Operation Flood – The white Revolution
The year was 1964 when our Prime Minister Mr. Lal Bahadur
Shastri was invited to Anand to inaugurate the new cattle-feed plant of Amul.
He was supposed to return back by end of the day but after reaching Anand he
insisted to stay there to learn about the success of the co-operatives. He
visited almost all the co-operatives with Dr. Kurien and was impressed with the
process with which Amul was sourcing the milk from farmers and at the same time
helping them to improve their economic condition. Later, he returned to Delhi
and asked Dr. Kurien to replicate the Amul pattern across the country. The
combined effort resulted in creation of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB)
in the year 1965. Dr. Kurien took charge of NDDB and began the herculean task
of replicating the overall pattern of the working at Anand to other parts of
the country. By this time the demand for milk was growing at a faster rate than
the supply of milk. India could have easily become the largest importer of milk
like Sri Lanka were, had sufficient steps not been taken at that time by the
Indian government and NDDB. Money was the biggest problem faced by NDDB during
that period and was a critical resource needed to revolutionize the milk
industry. To deal with it, NDDB tried to pursue World Bank for loans and other
grants with no conditions at all. When the President of World Bank came to
India in 1969, Dr. Kurien told him – “Give me money and forget about it”. A few
days later, World Bank approved the loan for NDDB without even a single
condition. This help was part of an operation, later known as Operation Flood –
which was done to replicate the Anand working pattern across India. Operation
Flood was subsequently implemented in India in three phases adding around 0.1
million co-operatives and 5 million milk producers. Dr. Kurien also took
several other measures such as developing milk powder, developing several
varieties of dairy products, emphasis on the health of cattle and development
of vaccines etc. In 1973, he also set up GCMMF (Gujarat co-operative milk
marketing federation) – an individual marketing unit of Amul to sell the Amul
as a brand in India as well as abroad. He also founded IRMA – Institute of
Rural Management Anand in 1979, to pass on the gained knowledge to future
generations and to place rural India on the front map.
As a result of these combined efforts, Amul currently boasts
of 15 million milk producers pouring their milk in 1,44,246 dairy co-operative
societies across the country – a huge chain that has resulted in us being
the largest milk producing country today.
This has been the story of a young engineer who was born in
Calicut and was later known as the father of White Revolution and was honored
with some of the most prestigious Government awards like Padma Vibhushan, Ramon
Magsaysay and Krushi Ratna etc. He took his last breath on 9thDecember
2012 but he will always be remembered for his immense contribution to the
farmers, to the Amul Brand and to the millions of consumers of dairy products.
Tel :+918554015860
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