Verghese Kurien

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Popularly called the “Milkman of India,” Kurien was instrumental in establishing Amul as a global brand.

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Verghese Kurienwas an Indian engineer and entrepreneur who was regarded as the architect of India’s “white revolution,” which transformed the country from an importer of dairy products to the world’s largest milk producer through a system of farmer cooperatives. Kurien was popularly called the “Milkman of India.”

Kurien was born into a wealthy Syrian Christian family. He attended Loyola College of the University of Madras (B.Sc., 1940), and in 1943 he earned another bachelor’s degree, in mechanical engineering, from Guindy College of Engineering, which was then affiliated with the same university. He also trained as a graduate apprentice at the technical institute of Tata Iron and Steel Company (now Tata Steel) in Jamshedpur, in what is now Jharkhand. He undertook training in dairy engineering at the Imperial Institute of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (which has evolved into the National Dairy Research Institute) in Bangalore (now Bengaluru). Kurien received a government scholarship to study at Michigan State University, where he received a master’s degree (1948) in mechanical engineering. After he returned to India, he started working at the Government Research Creamery in Anand, Gujarat, in 1949, which he was required to do as a condition of the scholarship.

At the time, in Anand, a small cooperative of dairy farmers, the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union, was working to overcome an entrenched system in which small local dairies sold milk to a large supplier for very little money, and the supplier transported the milk to Bombay (now Mumbai) and sold it at a substantial profit. The cooperative’s chair, Tribhuvandas Patel, asked Kurien to help strengthen the organization. At first Patel enlisted Kurien’s help as an engineer to fix and look after the cooperative’s machines. Kurien had not intended to stay long in Anand but agreed to assist for a while. Gradually, he came to take a more active interest in the cooperative and the dairy farmers. Kurien became general manager of the cooperative, which later came to be called Amul, an acronym for Anand Milk Union Limited, and became one of the largest food producers in India.

Under his leadership, the organization acquired equipment to process and store dairy products and proved to be a reliable supplier. Earlier, India would import milk powder and turn it into liquid milk to meet demands in certain areas, although there was supply in the country. Kurien changed that; even though he had to fight established systems and bureaucrats often, he persevered and ensured that the milk produced by the country’s rural dairy farmers reached buyers. He helped establish a direct link between the producers and the consumers. In the process, the lives of the rural dairy farmers improved.

Other dairy cooperatives began to be formed based on the cooperative model that Kurien helped establish, and in 1965 he founded and became the first chair of the National Dairy Development Board. In 1970 he instituted Operation Flood, also known as the “white revolution,” a long-range program with the objective of increasing milk production while both augmenting rural incomes and keeping prices within reach for consumers through the expansion of the cooperative movement. Within the first two decades of the program, India’s milk production more than doubled, from about 23.4 million tons (21.2 million tonnes) in 1968–69 to more than 61.3 million tons (55.6 million tonnes) in 1991–92, and it has been steadily increasing ever since, reaching 254.2 million tons (230.6 million tonnes) in 2022–23. Kurien’s unrelenting efforts gradually transformed the small village of Anand into the “Milk Capital of India.”

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In 1966 an Indian advertising company headed by Sylvester daCunha created Amul’s beloved advertising mascot, a blue-haired girl in polka-dotted dress, with the tagline “utterly butterly delicious.” The Amul Girl has since been the face of the brand, with advertisements that have witty punchlines and comment on topical events.

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Kurien went on to establish the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Limited in 1973, which owns the Amul brand, represented for decades by its much-loved mascot, the Amul Girl. In addition, he founded the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) in 1979. He wanted the institute to train students to become professional managers mainly for rural cooperatives.

In his autobiography I Too Had a Dream (2005), Kurien recounted his life’s journey from his upbringing and education to his vast work in the dairy industry, highlighting his vision of empowering rural farmers and revolutionizing milk production and distribution. He received numerous honors, chief among them the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership (1963) and the World Food Prize (1989). The anniversary of his birth has been celebrated as National Milk Day in India since 2014. After shaping the lives of millions of farmers, Kurien passed away in 2012 in a hospital near Anand.