Star of the milky way VERGHESE KURIEN NOVEMBER 26, 1921

His first job was at Tata Steel in Jamshedpur, natural for someone trained to become an engineer in metallurgy. His aim was to specialise in nuclear physics but he ended up with something as mundane as dairy technology.
He called it ‘bonded labour’ when, on his return to India from Michigan, USA, he was compelled to go to Anand and work in a government-run dairy research centre because he was not in a position to repay the Rs 30,000 that the government had spent on his studies abroad. He arrived in Anand, hoping to leave at the first opportunity. Today, this ‘Milk Capital of India’ is still home to the Father of White Revolution, Verghese Kurien.
Tata’s loss was a gain for India’s farmers. As Ratan Tata wrote in the foreword to Kurien’s memoirs I Too Had A Dream, “He made India’s dairy industry the largest rural employment provider. The co-operatives he created have also become powerful agents of social change in empowering women and in embedding democracy at the grassroots level in the country.”
Thanks to this visionary, who pioneered ‘Operation Flood’, India is the world’s largest milk producer. The logistic chain created through a series of institutions that Kurien built and headed for decades has created one of the world’s largest food marketing businesses. Amul, the country’s largest food brand, is also its most loved. Safal and Dhara have emerged as brands coveted by the best of multinationals.
The massive network of dairy cooperatives collects milk twice a day from more than 12.6 million farmers. The milk travels through 10,000 routes to about 180 dairy plants where it is processed, packed and sent to markets in almost 800 big and small towns every day. Recent studies have shown that farmer suicides are negligible in areas where milk co-operatives are strong.
As founder chairman of the National Dairy Development Board, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation and the Institute of Rural Management, Kurien didn’t just create dairies and co-operatives. He built institutions, which are now a source of inspiration for other developing countries.