Recently, Ahmedabad hosted the golden jubilee celebrations of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, which owns Amul. There was controversy over the absence of a photo of Dr. Verghese Kurien, who founded the cooperative that became Amul and whose efforts earned him the title “Father of the White Revolution,'' in media advertisements.
Reading his autobiography titled 'I Too Had a Dream', it is easy to believe that the Kozhikode-born social entrepreneur was somehow destined to help India become a 'milk powerhouse'.
When Mr. Kurien was in his early twenties and working as an engineer for the Tata Steel Company, he learned that the British colonial government was planning to send 500 Indians to countries including the United States, Britain and Canada for specialized training. Knew. Against the advice of well-wishers at the time, he decided to apply.
“I applied because I wanted to go abroad and get a master's degree in metallurgy and nuclear physics,” Kurien wrote in his autobiography, adding that he was lucky enough to be selected for an interview. He describes his first steps into the world of dairy farming in a passage from his book:
“During the interview on the appointed day, the selection committee chair asked me only one question after inviting me to sit down: “What is pasteurization?”
“I didn't know exactly, so I hesitantly answered honestly, 'I don't know the process, but I think it has something to do with pasteurizing the milk…'
“That’s right,” he said. “You have been selected for a dairy engineering scholarship.”
“I was surprised. 'Dairy engineering?' I asked incredulously. 'Can you teach me metallurgy or nuclear physics?'
'no. It's either this or nothing. Make up your mind,” he said.
Kurien, who wanted to continue his studies abroad and quit his unhappy job at Tata, agreed to study dairy engineering. Before he went to Michigan State University in 1946, the authorities sent him to the so-called Imperial Dairy Research Institute (now the National Dairy Research Institute of India).
At Michigan State, Kurien actually studied metallurgy and nuclear physics, despite government orders. “To satisfy the Indian government, I took some token courses in dairy engineering,” he writes.
It is clear from his autobiography that Kurien's personal values were closely aligned with those of those who led India's freedom struggle. Of her close friend from Michigan, Klien wrote: “We were a group of five Indians. Medora was a Parsi, Hussein and Mansoor were Muslims, Daraya was a Hindu, and I was a Christian. A very objective lesson in national integration.”
Move to Anand
Returning to independent and partitioned India in 1948, he was offered a job at Union Carbide in Calcutta (later of the infamous Bhopal gas tragedy) for a monthly salary of 1,000 rupees. The Indian government, which paid for his education in the United States, refused to let him join the private sector. A government secretary told Mr. Kurien that if he wanted to be released from government work, he would have to cough up the Rs 30,000 he was paid by the government for his studies. This was clearly beyond the control of the young man.
Kurien expected to be sent back to Bangalore to work at the Dairy Research Institute, where he had spent six months, but instead he was sent to Anand, Gujarat, to work as a diary technician at an Indian government research creamery. Ta. He wrote that he felt “cheated” at that time.
In 1949, he reached Anand. At the time, he said, the town was “excruciatingly unexciting and conservative.” Kurien found it very difficult to find a house or a room to rent. “Disqualification seemed every possibility,” he wrote. “I was an outsider and a Malayali. Moreover, I was a Christian and a non-vegetarian, which was resentful to the strictly vegetarian Gujarati community. And most of all, I was single and I did! Would any self-respecting Gujarati family rent a room to an unmarried Malayali Christian?”
He hated Anand with all his heart and did not work at the dairy at all. He resigned eight months later, but ended up staying with Anand. “I was very intrigued by the tenacious group of dairy farmers and their leader Tribhuvandas Patel from Kaira Cooperative Society, which is located next to the research dairy,” Kurien writes. Although he felt that their outdated farming methods would condemn them to eternal struggle, he was impressed by their deep dedication and decided to help them.
While still working at a creamery, Kurien went to Cambay with a friend and consulted an astrologer named Chhaya Jyothishi, who can read people's shadows and make predictions. Kurien, a scientist, was skeptical of this astrologer who predicted his friend's future. But he didn't want to play spoilsport, so he agreed to let this man study his shadow and make predictions.
“Sifting through a pile of parchment-like leaves, he found what he was looking for and read aloud: 'You have no faith,'” Kurien wrote. “I told him he was absolutely right. I was an atheist.” Ignoring the skeptical young man, the astrologer read out details about Kurien's family and childhood, which were completely It was accurate. He asked if he wanted to know about his future, and Kurien, intrigued, said yes.
“You are very dissatisfied with your current job, but you will change jobs within a month. Then you should sit back and watch,” the astrologer told Kurien. “Your career is set for a phenomenal rise that you can't even imagine.” When he heard this prediction, he thought it was nonsense and smiled, but in fact it was true. There was found.
“Within a month, I quit my job at a government dairy and joined Kaira Cooperative,” Kurien wrote. The rest, as they say, is history. To this day, I have yet to arrive at a rational explanation for Chhaya Jyotishi's prophecies. Granted, it didn't turn me into a believer. I don't believe in occult things and consider this little incident to be one of life's strange accidents. ”
Coincidence or not, one cannot help but think that Kurien was destined to become the 'father of India's white revolution'. The country is all the better for it.
(Ajay Kamalakaran is a multilingual writer primarily based in Mumbai)
