Dr.Vergese Kurien is an ordinary man with extra ordinary achievements that amongst others includes titles like -face of Amul
and father of operation flood. The chief organiser of
cooperative movement in rural India is brilliant hands on people centric manager in the mould of late JRD Tata. Single-handedly he made India world’s largest milk producer from being a milk deficit country, Amul- a
global brand that has constantly beaten dairy multinationals in global arena and given India to be proud of world’s largest cooperative movement. In the process he has enriched India immeasurably by providing avenues of employment to rural women and youth and bringing development to poor heartlands.
The book starts with Kurien returning from America after completing a degree in metallurgy on government scholarship that bounded him to government service for some years. The cocky foreign educated Indian was posted to a research creamery in nondescript sleepy town of Anand , Gujarat. Absence of any work culture depressed him further and he regularly petitioned Ministry of Agriculture to allow him to resign. Meanwhile to pass time, he began to take interest in activities of fledging milk cooperative in Anand that was trying to hold its own against a larger private concern. The head of Kaira cooperative Tribhuvandas Patel often approached Kurien for technical advice, as Kurien was the most educated person available in the whole town. When Kurien’s resignation was accepted then Patel asked him to stay back for a couple of months as an employee of the cooperative to help set up some new machinery. Kurien agreed and rest is history.
Kaira cooperative grew to outsmart its national and multinational competitors, began marketing its products under the brand name Amul- a brand that will soon become 50 years old and win an entry in Guinness Book of Records for longest running ad campaign in world. The Anand model was extended nationally under the name ‘operation flood’ and created a national milk grid in chairmanship of Kurien. Today Amul products are sold in five continents, it’s a world leader in many dairy categories like vegetarian cheese and the term has become generic in India for dairy products.
The multilayered structure of village cooperatives, district unions and state federations spawned by the milk cooperative movement is a fine example of development and empowerment through collective action. It is democracy functioning at its best at the grassroots level. The management works with the aid of modern business practices, drawing its managerial staff from its own management school IRMA, and information technology. Infact Amul was among the first five Indian companies that started a website in early nineties and leveraged e-commerce to conduct business even before the term become fashionable. And Amul managers are regularly poached by MNCs as they are well versed in rural marketing – a bane of all FMCG companies operating anywhere in world.
It is a very well written memoir by Dr.Kurien with Salvi and it clearly demonstrated that his faith is a faith of great force and relevance. Even His harshest critic will acknowledge that he ploughed past barriers to put India on the global map.