P. Devarajan
Reading the book, I Too Had a Dream, the story of Verghese Kurien as told
to freelance journalist Gouri Salvi, this writer is reminded of the fervent dislike of buffalo milk in my family. "You will be like a buffalo if you drink buffalo milk; cow's milk alone stimulates the brain as cow is an intelligent animal," runs the uncontested refrain at home. One has not found anything in the cow to place it ahead of the buffalo.
In 1952, Kurien and his team at the Kaira District Milk Producers Union Ltd (Kaira Union) had to fight a strong lobby, which contended that buffalo milk could not be turned into milk powder. A problem of Indian dairying is buffaloes give double the milk in winter than in summer. In the 50s, all the milk had to be transported from Anand to Bombay, the lone consuming centre.
Dara Khurody, Milk Commissioner of Bombay, wanted a steady and not irregular milk flow into the city. At one of the many run-ins, Kurien said: "Mr Khurody, buffaloes give double the milk in winter and I don't know how to plug their udders. I'm afraid you will have to accept all the milk." Khurody retorted: "But the people of Bombay don't drink one bottle of milk in summer and two bottles in winter. It's your problem, not mine. I cannot take the milk."
The Bombay Milk Scheme preferred to import milk powder from New Zealand for conversion into liquid milk to meet the city's demand prompting Kurien to ask: "Mr Khurody, are you the Milk Commissioner of Bombay or New Zealand?" Around 1895 an Englishman started a butter factory some 15 km north of Anand in Kaira district; a German set up a casein factory nearby; in 1926, Pestonjee Edulji put up a butter making facility and marketed it under the popular "Polson" brand. The British Government pushed Pestonjee to supply milk from Kaira to Bombay (some 360 km away) to begin the government's Bombay Milk Scheme. The scheme helped everyone but the farmers. That got Sardar Patel and Morarji Desai thinking.
Kurien admits: "He (Sardar Patel) firmly believed that a revolution in marketing the farmers' produce - which would be beneficial to the farmers - was necessary. Sardar Patel was convinced that in order to save themselves, the farmers needed to control the procuring, processing and marketing of milk." They got Tribhuvandas Patel, who by his own admission "did not know anything about the dairy business", to be the Chairman of the Kaira Cooperatives to battle Pestonjee.
Morarji Desai insisted on the Bombay Milk Scheme accepting milk directly from the Kaira farmers instead of that supplied by the Polson dairy. It did not work and the farmers went on strike. "This was the famous 15-day milk strike of Kaira district during which the milk was poured on the streets but not a drop was given to Polson. Polson's milk collection came to a grinding halt and BMS collapsed," mentions Kurien.
Perhaps, Amul was born that time with Kurien joining Tribhuvandas Patel as a technical hand to run the show. To start with, Kurien hated the posting at Anand but could not quit as the government had paid for his US education and a contract bound him. It was a chemist in the laboratory who came up with the name "Amul" derived from the Sanskrit term "Amulya" and, in 1957, Kaira Co-operative registered the brand "Amul". To Kurien goes the credit of creating the country's best-known brand and that too for a product of rural India turned out by co-operatives. There is pride in seeing an Amul fronting every shop shelf with Nestle and the rest making the rear. Tracing the movement Kurien relates: "It was with butter that the Kaira Union started its career in the world of brands and Jit Kantawala who looked after the Amul butter account at Press Syndicate did an exemplary job. He managed to give Amul just the image we had in mind - that of a precious, `priceless' product that the consumer could trust completely."
Trust is precisely the word. Trust in farmers to evoke and manage the milk glut. Trust that has paid off. For this writer, the book underwrites one's belief in an alternative model of development, less destructive and more sustainable than the US model of smooth highways and speeding cars. Importantly, Tribhuvandas Patel and Kurien believed in farmers at a time when Jawaharlal Nehru and the Planning Commission drilled the Soviet model of state industrialisation into us.
Amul is India, an indigenous idea rooted in the farming community. Indian business, public and private, has yet to serve up anything better. Amul also altered human beings.
The village co-ops insisted, "that the queue for milk collection would be formed on a strictly first-come first-serve basis. Imagine the situation when 540,000 farmer members stand in line at 960 village milk collection centres across the district, irrespective of sex, religion and caste?," the author asks. He is not happy with the changes being effected by Amrita Patel whom he backed to become Chairman of the National Dairy Development Board. Somewhere he wistfully muses: "The tragedy of India is that we have no respect for Indians, for Indian efforts and for Indian successes." In dismissing Tribhuvandas Patel and Kurien, we have dismissed rural India. Will Amul follow?
Source: http://www.blonnet.com/2006/05/07/stories/2006050701991600.htm
Reading the book, I Too Had a Dream, the story of Verghese Kurien as told
to freelance journalist Gouri Salvi, this writer is reminded of the fervent dislike of buffalo milk in my family. "You will be like a buffalo if you drink buffalo milk; cow's milk alone stimulates the brain as cow is an intelligent animal," runs the uncontested refrain at home. One has not found anything in the cow to place it ahead of the buffalo.
In 1952, Kurien and his team at the Kaira District Milk Producers Union Ltd (Kaira Union) had to fight a strong lobby, which contended that buffalo milk could not be turned into milk powder. A problem of Indian dairying is buffaloes give double the milk in winter than in summer. In the 50s, all the milk had to be transported from Anand to Bombay, the lone consuming centre.
Dara Khurody, Milk Commissioner of Bombay, wanted a steady and not irregular milk flow into the city. At one of the many run-ins, Kurien said: "Mr Khurody, buffaloes give double the milk in winter and I don't know how to plug their udders. I'm afraid you will have to accept all the milk." Khurody retorted: "But the people of Bombay don't drink one bottle of milk in summer and two bottles in winter. It's your problem, not mine. I cannot take the milk."
The Bombay Milk Scheme preferred to import milk powder from New Zealand for conversion into liquid milk to meet the city's demand prompting Kurien to ask: "Mr Khurody, are you the Milk Commissioner of Bombay or New Zealand?" Around 1895 an Englishman started a butter factory some 15 km north of Anand in Kaira district; a German set up a casein factory nearby; in 1926, Pestonjee Edulji put up a butter making facility and marketed it under the popular "Polson" brand. The British Government pushed Pestonjee to supply milk from Kaira to Bombay (some 360 km away) to begin the government's Bombay Milk Scheme. The scheme helped everyone but the farmers. That got Sardar Patel and Morarji Desai thinking.
Kurien admits: "He (Sardar Patel) firmly believed that a revolution in marketing the farmers' produce - which would be beneficial to the farmers - was necessary. Sardar Patel was convinced that in order to save themselves, the farmers needed to control the procuring, processing and marketing of milk." They got Tribhuvandas Patel, who by his own admission "did not know anything about the dairy business", to be the Chairman of the Kaira Cooperatives to battle Pestonjee.
Morarji Desai insisted on the Bombay Milk Scheme accepting milk directly from the Kaira farmers instead of that supplied by the Polson dairy. It did not work and the farmers went on strike. "This was the famous 15-day milk strike of Kaira district during which the milk was poured on the streets but not a drop was given to Polson. Polson's milk collection came to a grinding halt and BMS collapsed," mentions Kurien.
Perhaps, Amul was born that time with Kurien joining Tribhuvandas Patel as a technical hand to run the show. To start with, Kurien hated the posting at Anand but could not quit as the government had paid for his US education and a contract bound him. It was a chemist in the laboratory who came up with the name "Amul" derived from the Sanskrit term "Amulya" and, in 1957, Kaira Co-operative registered the brand "Amul". To Kurien goes the credit of creating the country's best-known brand and that too for a product of rural India turned out by co-operatives. There is pride in seeing an Amul fronting every shop shelf with Nestle and the rest making the rear. Tracing the movement Kurien relates: "It was with butter that the Kaira Union started its career in the world of brands and Jit Kantawala who looked after the Amul butter account at Press Syndicate did an exemplary job. He managed to give Amul just the image we had in mind - that of a precious, `priceless' product that the consumer could trust completely."
Trust is precisely the word. Trust in farmers to evoke and manage the milk glut. Trust that has paid off. For this writer, the book underwrites one's belief in an alternative model of development, less destructive and more sustainable than the US model of smooth highways and speeding cars. Importantly, Tribhuvandas Patel and Kurien believed in farmers at a time when Jawaharlal Nehru and the Planning Commission drilled the Soviet model of state industrialisation into us.
Amul is India, an indigenous idea rooted in the farming community. Indian business, public and private, has yet to serve up anything better. Amul also altered human beings.
The village co-ops insisted, "that the queue for milk collection would be formed on a strictly first-come first-serve basis. Imagine the situation when 540,000 farmer members stand in line at 960 village milk collection centres across the district, irrespective of sex, religion and caste?," the author asks. He is not happy with the changes being effected by Amrita Patel whom he backed to become Chairman of the National Dairy Development Board. Somewhere he wistfully muses: "The tragedy of India is that we have no respect for Indians, for Indian efforts and for Indian successes." In dismissing Tribhuvandas Patel and Kurien, we have dismissed rural India. Will Amul follow?
Source: http://www.blonnet.com/2006/05/07/stories/2006050701991600.htm
