India has the largest cattle population in the world ,it has overtaken the US and is now the largest producer of milk in the world.The first Amul cooperative was the result of a farmers' meeting in Samarkha (Kaira district, Gujarat) on 4th January 1946
The vision was to organise farmers, to have them gain control over production, procurement and marketing by entrusting the task of managing these to qualified professionals, thereby eliminating the middle men, the bane in farmers' prosperity.Dr. Verghese Kurien , "The father of the white revolution" in India is credited with architecting Operation Flood , the largest dairy development program in the world. He set up the Anand model of cooperative dairy development, engineered the White Revolution in India, and made India the largest milk producer in the world.
He then went to USA on a government scholarship to do his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University. When he came back to India, he was posted as a Dairy Engineer at the government creamery, Anand, in May 1949.
Around the same time, the infant cooperative dairy, Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union Limited (KDCMPUL), now famous as The AMUL Dairy was fighting a battle with the Polson Dairy which was privately owned. Young Kurien, fed up with being at the government creamery which held no challenge, volunteered to help Shri Tribhuvandas Patel, the Chairman of KDCMPUL, to set up a processing plant. This marked the birth of AMUL and the rest is history.Dr. Kurien has since then built this organization into one of the largest and most successful institutions in India. The Amul pattern of cooperatives had been so successful that Dr. Kurien setup NDDB (National Dairy Development Board) to replicate it across India.
Kurien and his team were pioneers in inventing the process of making milk powder and condensed milk from buffalo's milk instead of cow's milk. This was the reason Amul became so successful and competed well against Nestle who only used cow milk to make powder and condensed milk. In India buffalo milk was the main raw material unlike Europe where cow milk is abundant.Kurien, plays a key role in many other organizations, ranging from chairing the Viksit Bharat Foundation, a body set up by the President of India to chairman of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand's (IRMA) Board of Governors in India. Kurien was mentioned by the Ashoka foundation (www.ashoka.ca) as one of the eminent present Day Social Entrepreneurs.
| For his contribution to the dairy industry Dr. Kurien has received top awards not only in India but also overseas. | ||
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