Verghese Kurien: The Man with
the 'Billion Litre’ 92nd birth anniversary of the 'Father of India's White
Revolution.' on November 26
“What do you
know about pasteurisation,” an interviewer asked the young man who had applied
for a Government of India fellowship for a Masters in Engineering abroad.
“Something to do with milk?” was the uncertain reply. The year was 1946. In his
biography From Anand: The story of Verghese Kurien, M.V. Kamath
recounts the story of how the youngster was selected to do a Masters in dairy
engineering by a government committee that was impervious to his pleas that he
be allowed to specialise in metallurgy instead.
As it turned out, Michigan State University did not
have dairy engineering, and Verghese Kurien was able to do metallurgy and
Physics. But when he came back to India in 1948, it was to a small and unknown
village in Gujarat called Anand that he was sent, to work out his two-year bond
at the Government creamery on a salary of Rs.600 per month. Hating his job, he
waited impatiently for his fetters to loosen. That did not happen. What it did
was that V. Kurien, by the conjunction of politics, nationalism and
professional challenge, decided to stay on. He would transform rural India.
Verghese Kurien, who became a legend in his
lifetime for building a cooperative movement that transformed the lives of poor
farmers while making India self-reliant in milk production, died on Sunday in
Nadiad at the age of 90. He was in hospital, suffering from a series of
problems associated with old age.
Born on November 26, 1921 in Kozhikode, Kerala,
Verghese Kurien studied at Madras University for a Bachelor of Science in 1940,
a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (Honours) from Madras University (1943),
and was a graduate of the Tata Iron and Steel Company Technical Institute, Jamshedpur
(1946). He took a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering (Distinction)
from Michigan State University (1948) and then went for specialised training in
dairying at the National Dairy Research Institute, Bangalore. He had 17
honorary doctorates from universities in India and abroad. At the time of his
death he was Chancellor, University of Allahabad (since April 17, 2006),
Member, Board of Trustees, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Memorial Trust, New
Delhi (since 1986), and Member, Advisory Committee, South Asian Network on
Fermented Foods — SAN FOODS (since 2004).
He was Founder Chairman of the National Dairy
Development Board (1965-1998), the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing
Federation Ltd, Anand (1983-2006), the National Cooperative Dairy Federation of
India Limited (1986-1993), (1995-2000), and (2003-2006), and the Board of
Governors, Institute of Rural Management, Anand (1979-2006), amongst several
other posts he held in his working life.
He was the recipient of several distinguished
Indian and international awards. To give a short selection of them: nationally,
the Padmashri (1965); Padmabhushan (1966); Krishi Ratna (1986); and the Padma
Vibhushan (1999). Outside India, it was the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community
Leadership (1963); the “Wateler Peace Prize” Award of the Carnegie Foundation
for the year 1986; the World Food Prize award for the year 1989; the
“International Person of the year” by the World Dairy Expo, Wisconsin, U.S. (1993),
the “Ordre du Merite Agricole” by the Government of France (in March 1997); and
the Regional Award 2000 from the Asian Productivity Organization, Japan.
Till his death, he was a bitter critic of the
policies of liberalisation in India, which he believed opened India to unfair
competition from multinational companies. He laid out his objections to
liberalisation as early as 1995.
When presented with the criticism that the
cooperative movement could not replicate the successes of the Anand model in
other parts of India, Mr. Kurien agreed but was unfazed by it, contesting it
soundly. “Is the democratic form of government successful in all parts of
India? But the solution to the problems of democracy is more democracy. There
can be no democracy in India unless you erect a plurality of democratic
structures to underpin democracy, like the village cooperative which is a
people’s institution.”
If in 2012, India is the largest producer of milk
in the world, contributing six per cent to the national GDP and 26 per cent to
the agricultural GDP, it is Verghese Kurien, with his socialist vision and
technology-led approach, who made it possible.
He is survived by his wife Molly Kurien, his
daughter Nirmala, and grandson, Siddharth.
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