In this article we will discuss about the contribution of Dr. Verghese Kurien towards AMUL.
Dr. V. Kurien is considered as the father of “White Revolution”. He was the founder of the cooperative dairy movement in the country. He was born in Kozhikode, Kerala on November 26, 1921 and at the age of 90, he expired on 9th September 2012 in Anand, Gujarat, India.
Basically he was a Mechanical Engineer with a degree in Dairy Engineering. He came to Anand in 1949 at the behest of the then Union Home Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, to solve some problems of the local farmers. The problem was solved but Dr. Kurien could not leave Anand. He fell in love with this place.
In 1949 Dr. Kurien formed Anand Milk Union Limited (AMUL) and started to solve the milk producers’ problems. From one milk project to a larger one, the ‘Milkman of India’ saw India emerge from a country into the largest milk producing country in the world, overtaking even the once milk-abundant Netherlands.
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It is because of Dr. Kurien that India today contributes about 17% of the total milk production in the world. AMUL, with annual turnover of Rs. 13,000.00 crore, is Asia’s top milk-producing brand and is counted with one of the best recall values, among the world’s leading brands in any sector.
The success of AMUL experiment attracted the then Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Sastri, who requested Dr. Kurien to help him replicate the AMUL model across the country. The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was born in 1965 with the famous “Milk man” as the founder Chairman.
As Chairman he led “Operation Flood” to make India the biggest milk producer. He served for 33 years in this board. Now the board is promoting and establishing close to 1.50 lakh village co-operatives, with over 15 million members to make India the largest milk producer in the world.
Not only was the NDDB, Dr. Kurien also was the pioneer founder of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) in 1979. It is still the only institute of its kind in the country providing management training in rural technologies.
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The Indian Government had conferred on him Padmashri’ in 1965, ‘Padmabhushan’ in 1966 and Padma ‘Vibhushan’ in 1999. A great man, now lies in peace at Anand, where his last rites were don.
