The man who made the taste of India

India’s best known Milkman did not like milk, but, he made India a nation of milk drinkers. He became the brain behind the success of the largest Diary Development Program in the world. Is it not surprising?

At the morning breakfast table, in every house hold of India, no bread is served without the utterly butterly delicious Amul butter or other Amul milk products. He braved the tremendous odds to set up Amul and created the milk revolution that ended up taking India from a milk deficient nation to a net exporter of milk.

“What do you know about pasteurisation?” an interviewer asked the young man who had applied for a government of India fellowship for masters in engineering abroad. “Something to do with milk?” was the uncertain reply. The year was 1946.

It is fashionable today to talk about a double bottom line, about shared values, corporate social responsibilities and the like. But it was Dr. Verghese Kurien who first taught the nation that business could not only make profits but also benefit the society. Amul lifted millions of farmers out of poverty which is very difficult to be replicated anywhere else in India.

In 2012, India is the largest producer of milk in the world, contributing six percent to the national GDP and 26 percent to the agricultural GDP, it Verghese Kurien, who did not like milk, who hardly knew the term pasteurisation, who made it possible with his socialist vision and technology-led approach.

The man who taught the people to pool their resource and achieve together, what they could never achieve alone, is no more. Good bye to the man who converted threats in to opportunities and transformed millions of lives.