No Indian can ever forget the taste of Amul butter on fresh bakery
bread. I won’t either. Each time we visit our neighborhood grocer, I try to
find ways to convince my wife that we should buy a packet Amul (Can’t say I
have succeeded, perhaps after reading this she will change her mind!). How
would it be, if I spent a few hours on the person behind it all, a Malayalai
born at Calicut in 1921 but knew that his life was to be made elsewhere, moving
past Gobichettippalayam, Mannargudi, Madras, Jamshedpur, Bangalore,
Michigan(USA), to finally end up at Anand, a sleepy little town in Gujarat (where
he was to remain till the end of his life)? The story would span a few days of
telling, but I will try to be concise, and make it a half hour's read.
I think I have mentioned this previously. Each of my
articles is the mostly the result of a personal journey to learn the story which
I then retell to you all. This one that follows the same route and as I picked
up each fact from books and articles, I marveled at the person behind it, none
other than Verghese Kurien, a simple man with big ideas, who wanted to make a
name for himself. He was like many of us, a person who wanted to become a
military man, a boxer, a metallurgist, an atomic scientist, a tennis player, but
ended up among the buffaloes of Gujarat, who he always maintained were his best
friends. He was as we will soon see, a person who initially wanted to flee the
dust and calm of Anand to the hustle and bustle of Bombay but remained on to become
the Dudhwalla of Bharat. That was Kurien, the man who symbolized the calmness
of milk, but was actually a powerful man of sometimes brash and caustic words and
one who never suffered fools – he was the person who herded AMUL.
I never had the good fortune to meet him, but many a year
ago, I visited the NDDB/IRMA or the Indian institute of rural management campus
which he created at Anand, while my cousin was studying there. Those were the
days when I used to shuttle to Baroda and parts of Gujarat from Bombay to visit
GEB (which as I never knew, had Kurien as a member and later as chairman, for a
brief period)!!
Verghese Kurien - He was certainly a magnificent person to
study, just consider the fact – the milkman of India never liked milk himself,
and never drank it. As one from farming stock, I can testify that buffalo milk
always tasted richer and better, and Kurien was the first to use buffalo milk
to make milk powder unlike all the other manufacturers who worked on Cow
products. And of course who can ever forget a related creation – the Amul girl.
But we will come to all of that presently.
He was certainly an interesting fellow, hailing from Calicut
who went to Madras to complete his studies at Loyola College, and later engineering
from Guindy. Like many, he too had brushes with other interesting persona in
his youth, like Gen Thimmaya who was his UTC adjutant! After his mother tore up
his military commission letter for the EME, for she had just lost her husband
and did not want a son to die in a war, he was directed to the Tata’s where his
illustrious uncle John Mathai had organized an apprenticeship. Mathai was a
director at TISCO then and eventually Kurien ended up amongst the ingots and
molten iron at Jamshedpur in 1944. His heart was not in it, and when he found
that his name was often linked to his uncle’s and he was getting special
preference, he sake a way out.
Around this time, I believe it was 1945, the British
government had sought applications to award scholarships for overseas studies
to some 500 aspiring students and Kurien applied for it against his uncle’s
wishes. He wanted to do an MS in metallurgy and Nuclear physics actually. With
all that hope he found himself in front of an interview board headed by Sir
Maurice Gwyer, of Delhi University. Expecting questions about his stated fields
of interest, Kurien was shocked when he was asked what he knew about
pasteurization. Not knowing the exact details, he blurted out that it had
something to do with boiling milk at a certain temperature. Maurice promptly
informed him that he had been selected for a course in dairy engineering.
Kurien voiced feebly his protests that he wanted to do metallurgy, which were
quickly brushed aside since only one seat was left and this was it. Kurien took
it with a heavy heart and was told that his destination would be the USA.
Heading back, his next task was to face his mighty uncle,
who immediately countered that Tata’s
could send him overseas if that was he wanted, but Kurien would have none of it.
Mathai’s parting words were that Kurien was making a stupid mistake to leave
TISCO for diary engineering, a folly. Kurien next spent a few months at the
Imperial diary institute at Bangalore to prepare himself for the course.
Soon he was headed across the seas to America, and he landed
at Boston, heading to the Ohio state university in Columbus only to realize
that he had been misdirected. He was sent then to the Michigan state university
to study under Arthur Farrell. Since they did not have an MS in diary
engineering, he ended up taking metallurgy as a major, nuclear physics as a
minor and Diary engineering as a second minor to complete the credits. He made
some good friends like Medora and Dalaya who were to play important roles in
his later life. Interestingly, his team there was beaten in the race to patent
colloidal iron, something that could have made him a millionaire, but that was
not to be.
He did get some training at some of the Wisconsin creamery
plants and soon he was armed with a master’s degree in metallurgy. Would it now
take him back to TISCO? As you will all retort, of course not!! In fact he left
the US with an appointment letter for Union carbide after he had been
interviewed. Kurien had supposed that he would wriggle out of his commitments
with the Indian government and join UC somehow. He had also hoped to use the
special connections of his uncle who had by this time become the union Finance
minister under Nehru!
The problem was that he had signed a bond with the
government for Rs 30,000 and if he was to break it he had to pay that money for
the release, which he did not have. The ministry informed him that he was
posted to a place near Bombay. After some haggling his base salary was recommended
for increase from Rs 275/-pm, to 600/-pm, but his uncle refused to approve it. It
was 1949, Kurien was 28 years old and the date was May the 13th. He
had a job offer for all of Rs275/ p.m against the other document from Union
Carbide for Rs1,000 pm, a princely sum. That was the irony of the situation. Bu
then again just imagine if he had accepted and become part of that company
responsible for the disaster in Bhopal!! What would have been his legacy?
Anand was not a town then, it was a sleepy, dusty village
masquerading as a town with no hotels or transportation, save an odd tonga according
to Ruth Herdeia who has written the ‘Story of Amul’, and trust me if you can
get your hands on that book, buy it. It is a lovely testament to Amul and
Kurien.
Anyway Kurien found his lodgings in a garage attached to the
superintendent’s house and he even had to fashion a toilet and bath in those
confines using corrugated board, himself. The situation in the institute was
pathetic and the hundred odd people were marking time till the HQ at Bangalore
shut it down. Kurien soon had company, a cook named Anthony sent by his brother
to take care of his food. The despondent Kurien took to shabby dressing in
khaki overalls, sporting shabby a beard, chain smoking and playing cards to
while away his time (many a malayali would remember his youth, for this is still
a pretty common scene in Kerala). Weekends were a boon, and he fled to Bombay
to live it out at the Taj hotel with his friends.
Nearby, a fledgling milk cooperative was struggling to stay
afloat. But how all this came about is another interesting story. Around 1924,
a number of British in Bombay fell sick. The investigation revealed that
tainted milk was the cause. Tests at London concluded that the milk was no
better than London’s gutter water. Urgent searches for better sources were
conducted and they ended up with the Polson unit in Kaira. Now Polson was
founded by a clever Parsee named Pestonjee Edulji Dalal (Dalal’s nickname was
Polly, which he adapted into the British sounding Polson’s for this brand name)
and by then the farmers of Kaira district where Anand is situated had become
the suppliers to Polson. Getting the milk across to Bombay was no joke in those
days. Polson who had by then become the popular supplier of Polson’s Butter responded
by packing the cans in gunny bags and pouring chilled water on them during the
350 km journey to Bomaby. And thus Bombay became the trade destination for the
milk suppliers of Anand, via the Polson unit. But Pestonjee was quite a greedy
man, ever the entrepreneur, he insisted that the British allow him a monopoly
in milk procurement from the Kaira farmers. They agreed and thus was formed the
BMS of Bombay milk scheme. You can imagine what happened to the poor farmers,
for all they got was a pittance while Polson swallowed the rest. The farmers
complained to the iron man, Sardar Patel who convinced them to form milk
cooperatives. Morarji Desai was asked to set this up and he chose a visionary
named Thribuvandas Patel to lead the effort. They grouped up and naturally
Polson retaliated by finding fault with the milk, the quality and so on. Again
the farmers were thwarted, and they went back to Patel who suggested that they
get Polson out of the equation by owning their own diary. This was in 1945. Morarji
was again deputed and he organized the first strike when the BMS refused to
accept milk directly from the cooperative. The farmers went on a 15 day strike,
during which event all the milk produced were poured out on the streets.
Thus entered another interesting person of this story, on
the scene, none other than Dara Khurody who later formed the Aarey milk colony
of Bombay. He convinced the Englishmen to concede stating that the Guajarati’s
were illiterate and knew nothing about milk production. ‘After all they would
soon fail, so concede for now’ was his advice, and the farmers finally saw
victory. Thribhuvandas went about getting the various Kaira units going and
finally tied up with the government creamery (paying an annual rent of 9,000)
to make milk products in Anand).
That was the unit Kurien was then in and attached to, but
then again how did this very unit come about in existence? Well it was
established during the 1914 world war to supply cheese to the British troops in
Mesopotamia!! Rumors state that the quality was so bad that the cheese killed
more British soldiers than those killed by the enemy! You can imagine the
pathetic situation Tribhuvandas was in, struggling to fight Polson, and with no
knowledge of the technicalities of doing things in furthering the farmer’s
cause, all while a bored Kurien, trained in the USA was wandering around
playing cards and puffing away, counting days before he escaped this hell he
was consigned to.
What would make these two meet? What would convert Kurien’s
hell to Kurien’s heaven? What would change the situation? Would it be fate,
luck or hard work or a combination of everything? Would they receive the
blessings of their well-wishers in Delhi? Let’s go to Anand to find out.
Maganbhai Patel was the conduit, and he sought out Kurien
who he had observed to be an efficient engineer but consigned to fictitious
research work. He introduced Kurien to Thribhuvandas and Kurien started to help
out by repairing the antiquated machines and keeping the creamery running. What
they did was pasteurizing milk and chilling it before supply to others. The
machinery failed often and Khurody in Bombay kept on rejecting the milk
supplied by the cooperatives. Kurien finally told Thribhuvandas in exasperation
that they should buy new equipment to survive.
And thus came about the first of the Kurien legends – about
his visit to L&T Bombay to buy a pasteurizer. Thribhuvandas obtained a loan
of Rs60,000 from his brother-in-law with which Kurien was deputed to discuss
the procurement of a machine from L&T. Axel Peterson, the Dane in command
was not too keen to meet the scruffy looking guy who had walked to his office
and pompously asked to buy a Silkeborg Pasteurizer. Axel was taken aback and
curtly retorted to Kurien if he had any idea how much these things cost, and if
he knew what he was talking about. Kurien assured him he did and that he was a
diary engineer. Axel then asked for proof of secure finances and Kurien
responded with the bombast that was to become his trademark, he pulled out the
wad of notes from his pocket and threw it across to the Dane, stating – ‘here, you
can see it now’! The Dane naturally shocked and taken aback had no choice but
to eat his words and soon he agreed to supply the machine as soon as possible,
which he did.
As he wandered about Bombay after this event it appears that
he came across a ‘shadow’ reader who predicted that Kurien was unhappy in his
job but that he would have a phenomenal rise in his career. Kurien sniggered, returned
to Anand and sent yet another resignation letter to the government asking for
relief from the bond. Soon the reply came, this time accepting his resignation
and allowing him to do what he wanted. The jubilant Kurien was packing his bags
when a terribly upset Thribhuvandas came by. He asked Kurien is he had found
another job. Kurien replied that he had not. Thribhuvandas went about
reasoning, asking him to remain and help them get the equipment installed and
running. After much discussions, Thribhuvandas requested Kurien not to abandon
them and to remain for two months at a salary of Rs600 pm. His simple plea was
– We need you here!
Kurien says that it was these four words that held him to Anand
for the rest of his life. He just could not leave them in despair. Was it his
respect or friendship with Thribhuvandas, was it his conviction to doing something
worthwhile or was it something else? Kurien says that he was gradually pulled
deeper and deeper into the workings of the cooperative and the day to day life of
the farmers. He says – ‘I saw that when you work merely for your own profit,
the pleasure is fleeting, but if you work for others, there is a deeper sense
of fulfillment and if things are handled well, the money too is more than
adequate’.
But on the sidelines, another war was about to begin, the
one between Khurody who was setting up Aarey and who had aligned himself with
Polson, against Kurien and the farmers of Kaira. Khurody saw the Kaira
cooperative as a competitor to his Aarey plans. By this time, interestingly,
Dalaya a diary expert whom Kurien met in the US, had come to Anand, upset after
the partition and Medora incidentally worked in Khurody’s lab in Anand. The
three friends from the US were together again. Dalaya who initially worked for
Kurien without pay soon joined the dairy staff and would also stay on until he
retired. As things turned out for the better, Kurien decided to stay and
finally got the house that Desai occupied, as his lodgings.
Soon the balance was tested when Khurody, Polson and Kurien
fought for milk collection areas, but Kurien triumphed when he outwit Khurody.
Eventually in 1952, Kaira got the exclusive rights to supply milk for the BMS.
Then came the milk powder story and a bitter fight between Pestonjee and
Kurien. It was also the time when Aarey milk colony became operative and
Khurody cut back on Kaira supplies. Kurien would not reduce supplies to BMS,
but increased it and had an interesting argument with him where he retorted
that it was not possible for him to plug the udders of his buffaloes when he
had too much milk. Khurody was in the meantime importing milk powder from
Switzerland, and well, as things stood, the Kaira guys were unable to reverse
the situation, for Bombay would simply not buy all their milk. Thus came about the decision to make milk powder.
Kurien left for New Zealand to figure out how. By chance he found out that the
New Zealanders were selling substandard powder to India. When confronted, they immediately
reduced prices for the said powder and eventually promised support to Kurien
and Kaira for developing their dairy technology to the tune of 10,000 pounds
sterling.
May 1953, that was when the next turning point in his life
occurred. Kurien met Susan (Molly) Peter
from the MM family. By June they were married and the next day they were off to
Anand. Soon came the UNICEF proposal for aid and Kurien accepted it, albeit
with some reluctance. It was here that the idea of making milk powder from
Buffalo milk, never attempted before, came about. Aarey had a spanking new
plant, Kurien and Patel still had their ramshackle unit in Anand. Yet he
invited Unicef for a demonstration of milk powder production from buffalo milk.
Dalaya showed them how with a spray gun and an air heater. But UNICEF would not
take a decision immediately based on this bench experiment. Dalaya and Kurien
then decided to use an experimental spray drying unit they had seen at L&T.
The very same Axel Petersen came to help and Dalaya proved that they could do a
large scale production with that unit. Khurody continued to try and hijack the UNICEF
officials with ifs and buts, but the decision had been taken. UNICEF then tried
to force Kurien to buy a Dutch plant when they had planned for a Danish Niro
unit. After some stiff back and forth communication and backed up by HM Patel
principal finance secretary, Kurien refused to relent and finally the plant was
under construction. Kurien said later that it was an important lesson – that
with adequate support, confrontation pays. Another person who worked with them tirelessly
all this time was Maniben Patel, Sardar’s daughter.
The plant was being set up and the president Rajendra Prasad
came to lay the foundation stone, when horror of horrors, a mouse jumped on the
stone and scampered through. Kurien was aghast, but the villagers were
overjoyed, Lord Ganesa had appeared to assure good fortune!
In the meantime another salvo was fired between Polson and
Kurien, this time over butter. Ridiculing Kurien that nobody could beat Polson,
the old Pestonjee dismissed Kurien who had come for discussions, from his
office. But Kurien simply went ahead. Soon came up the grand occasion when
Nehru came to inaugurate the plant. It was a touch and go scene for there were
many a hiccup in the process. L&T’s Soren Kristian Toubro, Morarji Desai,
all pitched in to get the problems sorted out. Dalaya was the star, the man who
could get the solutions to various technical problems that cropped up. Nehru
was happy, he hugged Kurien and said, ‘I am glad there are people like you in
the country to do the things you have done’.
Kurien thus hit the limelight. He found new friends like TT
Krishnamachari, and HM Patel. Kurien was made the GM of the new plant. By this
time, the milk production had gone up from 200kl to 32,000 kl in 1953. Then
came the fight to break the Polson butter monopoly. MRF’s KM Philip, Molly’s
brother in law gave Kurien some fine marketing ideas. He insisted that Kurien needed
a brand name and thus came about the name AMUL (from Amulya, also as an acronym
for Anand Milk Union Ltd). To get the distributors set was the next challenge,
TTK, Akberallys, Spencer & Co and so on were finally roped in, but the many
hundred Irani restaurants of Bombay would not initially give up Polson.
Eventually Amul succeeded.
Then came the demands of the armed forces and the
manufacture of condensed milk. Here Kurien had another multinational to fight,
Nestle the incumbent supplier whose lofty Swiss managers assured that such
things are not done by measly natives and you could not make condensed milk
from buffalo products (when Kurien visited them to ask for development support).
What those people forgot was that Kurien was a crafty and determined Malayali
who had also become a Gujarati (entrepreneurial- go getter spirit) by adoption.
He took up the challenge and produced the necessary samples for approval. The
government quickly curtailed Nestle imports. Later Nestle apologized to Kurien
and provided Amul the technical assistance to make chocolates. Nestle was not
the only one, next came Glaxo and the long drawn fight over baby’s milk powder.
Glaxo stated that it was not possible to or safe enough to make such things in
India. Here he had a tougher fight since Glaxo had embedded support in the
bureaucracy. After a torrid fight, Amulspray was launched in 1960 and Voltas
became their dealer in South India to ensure success.
It is time to wind up the story for you need reams of paper
to tell all I learnt, and so a few more paragraphs in closing. By 1957 the Kurien’s were blessed with a daughter
Nirmala. Time went by, NDDB was set up in 1965, IRMA was formed and Operation
flood came about. Michigan state university conferred a doctorate and Kurien
became Dr Kurien. Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s one night stay incognito
at a farmer’s house in Ajarpura village in 1965 demonstrated the nature of the center’s
political commitment to Anand’s success. This led to the establishment of the
National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), to replicate the Anand Pattern
countrywide. It is said that NDDB was entirely created by the funds gifted by
the Amul and Kheda farmers, perhaps the only instance where a national body was
created by a cooperative of the farmers. All unheard of in India until then.
Anand’s experiment was replicated in other parts of India,
milk vending machines were manufactured, and as the support and opposition for
Operation flood increased, an interesting event occurred when Beatrice, the
queen of Netherlands and Margret Alva her official escort visited. After
introductions, Alva piped up stating that Kurien was an MCP because the crest of
the NDDDB symbol was a Mohendajaro bull, not a cow. The queen looked
questioningly at Kurien who retorted, ‘no bull, no milk’!! The queen burst out laughing.
Kurien became the NDDB chairman in 1965 and eventually retired in 1998, but not
without grooming a successor. That was Amrita Patel, daughter of the
illustrious HM Patel. As he retired, he also picked up a slew of awards
including the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan. Anand and Kaira
had hit a high of a whopping 122 MMT of milk produce as they moved into the 21st
century. His trips to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Moscow make interesting reading,
and provide some amusement.
Later when many people called Kurien the father of Anand, he
replied to clarify – ‘It was Thribhuvandas who made Amul, not I.I only helped
him. Working with him taught me to see things as he did’. He was also a funny
man, of quick wit, in a seminar, Professor of Economics, CT Kurien from Kerala
apparently introduced himself to Dr. Kurien. “Hello, I am C T Kurien” for which
Dr. Kurien immediately retorted “I am V Kurien – Village Kurien!”punning on
City.
But Kurien’s final days at Anand were not rewarding, as
events unfolded, and Kurien was soon convinced that appointing Amrita Patel was
his mistake. Patel had a view that
NDDB had to be corporatized as the marketing set-up was in a shambles. Kurien
felt this would be tantamount to backdoor privatization. It was time for him to
go. As reports stated - His protégé,
Amrita Patel, who succeeded him as the Chairman of NDDB in 1998 was
spearheading the move to turn co-operative to producer companies and hiving off
marketing side of business into separate entities. Kurien bitterly opposed the
move as he feared the private players like Nestle and Britannia will eventually
take over the marketing yet again. In a
sense, he felt his life’s work was being destroyed.Never one to support
bureaucratic ways and indifferent fools, he crossed swords with anybody he felt
were in his opinion not having the plight of farmers in their plans. Since
1998, his life was spent in many a quarrel, first with Amrita Patel, his own
protégé, when the new brand ‘Mother diary’ Sugam was created competing with
Amul. In 2005 IRMA board members also protested on his autocratic style and as
a result, in 2006, he left the organization he created.
AH Somjee concurs - In
building India's dairy industry, he had a lifetime fight with the bureaucrats
of New Delhi. Till the very end, they created hurdles and tried to bring him
down, but they did not succeed. He knew how to play the game of beating down
the bureaucrats of New Delhi, and practically every other week he was in New
Delhi, pleading his case. As greater and greater success came his way, his
critics dwindled. His last few years were not very happy. The people of Gujarat
had matured, and wanted to know what was next after the dairy business. In
addition, he had no answer. Curiously enough, living in the west, some of us
felt that Guajarati’s had moved beyond dairying, but we could never convince
Kurien of it. The death of
Tribhuvandas, the Congress’ demise in Gujarat and the failure of the
cooperative movement to sustain the democratic process led to a scenario where
the cooperative is no longer a movement.
On the local political front, Kurien never got along well
with Narendra Modi unlike Amrita. He got on Modi’s wrong side when he said "At
the time of Gujarat's formation in 1960, there was only one CM and seven
ministers. It is important to reduce the size of the government because a
government is best that governs the least."Modi retorted -The people
(Congressmen) with whom you (Kurien) have been for years, are responsible for
this". Soon Modi was CM and his government was working hard to ensure that
Kurien was forthwith denied some of his well-earned privileges like a cook, his
car and a security guard.
Kurien's detractors have often said he could never let go of
Amul and that he was not prrepared to allow the next generation to run the
show. A former GCMMF senior executive says Kurien should have left in a
dignified way. He could have still contributed in the capacity of an expert.
"But Amul is his life. His baby. It was impossible for him to walk away from
something he made. The coup to remove him, however, is unfortunate, given the
work he has done."
Mitu Jayasankar - a student of IRMA recollects - His name was taken in reverence, in awe and
in fear. He was a tyrant and a dictator, and he was extremely proud of IRMA’s
beauty. We were ordered not to walk on the lawns, or go near the flowerbeds
because Daddu (as he was called on campus) didn’t like it. We were told not to
dry our clothes on the balconies because he hated that. He liked order and
discipline and the price of breaking that was severe. This year in January as
our batch headed back to the campus for our 20th reunion, we noted that IRMA’s
beauty had faded. The grass didn’t look so green, and the campus looked a bit
run down. Dr Kurien had long retired and although his presence on campus could
still be felt, it was very feeble now.
As things turned out, Kurien now advanced in age and showing
signs of Alzheimer’s, the man who preferred to wear a "Chaudhary slippers"
and short half sleeved shirts, was utterly and bitterly alone, not how it
should have been for one created for us the utterly butterly butter. By 2012,
he has left the world, after problems with his liver and kidney.
Thribhuvan Das retired as Amul Chairman in 1970, he passed
away in 1994 after even more philanthropic contributions to his farmers and the
women of Kheda.HM Dalaya originally from Karachi, Kurien’s friend and a Tech whiz,
passed away in 2004, it used to be said that if Mr Patel was Amul's Father, Dr
Kurien was the Son and Mr Dalaya the Holy Ghost! Kurien said then – “My role
was mainly in marketing, external affairs and handling politicians, bureaucrats
and other establishment people. The internal and technical affairs of the dairy
was entirely with Dalaya”.Not a lot is known about the last days of Pheroze
Medora, but Dara Khurody a Parsee, who but naturally had strong Parsee connections,
went on to join Voltas and the Tata’s. He is still doing the lecture rounds. Eustace
Fernandes the creator of the Amul girl passed away in 2010.Amrita Patel, Kurien’s
protégé has just announced that she will be soon retiring from NDDB. Perhaps
the events have caught up with her!
Molly Kurien, his life partner left the world in Dec 2012, a
few months after her husband, after being the bedrock in his life. Nirmala
their daughter works for the Taj and Siddharth his grandson with the corporate financial
sector.
The Amul girl however lives on, the cute little girl in
polka dots, created in 1967 as a response to Amul's rival brand Polson's
butter-girl. This little girl in polka dots, literally helped Amul butter win
over an entire nation and became the country's darling.
The Amul moppet has
featured in hoardings for almost 43 years, making it the longest running ad
campaign ever in the world. The hoardings display one-liners that constitute a
veritable commentary on contemporary political and social events, with each
week featuring a new theme, captivating Indians of all ages. Sylvester da Cunha,
the then managing director of the advertising agency, ASP, states - "The Onida devil died away, the Liril
girl did not live long and we don't really know how long the Air India maharaja
will live. But innovation, in the Amul girl's case, was never really needed. We
never had to really play on the way she looked. Because along the way, she became
the country's darling."
People still snigger looking at India’s scrawny cows &
buffaloes, who are allowed much freedom, and India is now the world’s biggest
producer of milk with production close to 130 million tons while the US is the
next biggest, producing around 85 million tons.
The cows and buffaloes of Kheda don’t care about all these
things or the people fighting and dying over them, they munch their grass, chew
their cud, moo often and live on serenely while continuing to provide ample
milk in return, no questions asked!
References
The Amul India Story – Ruth Heredia
I too had a dream – Verghese Kurien as told to Gouri Salvi
Milkman from Anand – MV Kamath
Various newspaper reports – Hindu, Indian Express, FT, BS,
Onlooker etc acknowledged with thanks
"There are always opportunities floating by. Grab them,
all of them. You can drop them later if they don’t turn out well.” - Kurien
Dear readers – Wish you
all a very happy Onam……
