"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible."

– T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

I had heard of the dairy co-operative of Kaira district and of Dr. Kurien, but it was through news reports, and distant. Milk turned into tasty butter was real. The Polson quarter pound butter pack was ubiquitous on the family breakfast table, rather than Amul. In the mid-60s, despite the “utterly butterly delicious” masterly mix-up of words in Amul’s attractive advertisements, it was not easily available.

Dairying, producers’ co-operatives, village development, growth with equity and justice for farmers and social change were not buzzwords for me but active catalysts of tangible ideas worthy to be made practical. Why? After four years of graduate studies at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, I took a year-long break and turned to be a real farmer, albeit a novice. 

Before long, I witnessed farmers' travails. Most small farmers were completely dependent on the vagaries of the market. Buying cheap and cheating farmers were commonplace. Were there solutions? Possibly, producers’ co-operatives where primary producers were not only suppliers but also shareholders, I reasoned with myself.

I was searching to work in a real experiment where farmers received a remunerative price,  united in a co-operative, and grounded in a democratic institution. Kaira was on my mental radar. Out of the blue, I heard through the rural vine that Verghese Kurien needed an executive assistant who would work in Anand. I was interviewed and selected. It was mid-1973, I was 22 and this was my first job. 

Kurien had resigned from Amul – short for Anand Milk Union Limited – after leading it with rare rectitude and considerable acumen for almost a quarter century and turning its valued and varied dairy products into prestigious quality brands. Amul’s phenomenally profitable co-operative was now synonymous with Kurien’s name. His management style conclusively eliminated private enterprise in dairying, replete with dalaals (middle men) and babus (bureaucrats), and replaced with direct suppliers and ingenious ancillary producers organisations. There was no scandal in his arduous business.  

Danger, however, regularly lurked large from corporate marauders of India who deftly co-opted the state, with both its monopoly pricing mechanisms and its coercive powers, to control the market and intimidate farmers. Dreaming in daylight to form formidable and resoundingly profitable farmer organisations with social conscience and equity was neither easy nor simple, but they were clearly on the rise in Gujarat.

Amul’s success reverberated in the corridors of political power in Delhi and Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1964 tasked Kurien to replicate the “Anand pattern” all over India. How did this happen? Shastri stayed overnight at the simple home of Ramanbhai Patel, a dairy farmer and co-operator, at Ajarpura. 

Shastri saw how a diverse village of Hindus, Muslims and Christians united and lifted itself from poverty, with women at the forefront. Seeing was believing, wasn’t it? He asked Kurien to replicate the “Anand pattern” all over India. Kurien was the nominal chairperson of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) in 1965 and danger was now magnified.

It speaks volumes of Kurien’s honesty to publicly acknowledge that, as in any social or scientific experiment, the success of all the organisations he led – Amul, NDDB, Indian Dairy Corporation and Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation – were the fruit of co-creation.  He was the CEO of an enterprising community of small farmers with deep roots in Kheda’s historic freedom struggle.

Kurien’s new task was exceptionally colossal. It had immense challenges and they took him regularly out of India. Operation Flood-I begun in 1970 was financed by the sale of skim milk powder and butter oil donated by the European Economic Community, through the World Food Program. Its goal was to provide milk to urban consumers in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, while creating “Anand pattern” producer organisations in select, prime milk sheds with a major share of the urban market.

I joined NDDB when my boss was out of India. Our offices were adjoining and his absence impelled me to peek within. It was beautifully inlaid with flat grain teak panels. These were well polished to a light golden-brown colour and other hallmarks of excellent workmanship were distinct. A fairly large, simple work table filled one corner of the room and a comfortable settee with upholstered, commodious sofas and chairs were at the other.

Each of these mute features when translated gave me a portrait of the absent occupant. They were: simplicity, attention to high quality, perhaps natural resilience in consonance with the wood paneling and a certain luring charm. This proved true over time.

Yet, what jolted me was the absence of any photograph. This was de rigueur. I wondered, was Kurien an iconoclast? Not paying obeisance to political demi-gods was a sure careercide.  I would know well in the years to come, but for now the walls spoke!

In the course of the week, the chairman returned. Now I mused, who was Kurien really?  Were his personal values in accord with his public stature as an icon of probity? What are the dissonant elements?

Two factual anecdotes may perhaps be illustrative as true responses. The first was in 1978, in Paris, during the XX International Dairy Congress. Kurien led the Indian technical delegation. I was doing doctoral studies and had left NDDB. In the hiatus, we weren’t in touch and to my utter surprise, Kurien called.

He wanted to shop for pearl necklaces as gifts for Molly, his wife, and Nirmala, his only child. He requested my assistance. I was intrigued, yet obliged. My colleague Beatrice – who drove a Renault 4L, a rather small car – and I drove him to Place Vendôme, in the very heart of Paris. The purchase made Kurien invite us for tea to a noted patisserie in appreciation and then we bade him adieu. I never met Kurien again. 

The questions which arose in my mind were: why is Kurien, who negotiates huge lucrative contracts with multinational dairy machinery manufacturers, such as Alfa Laval and Tetra Pak, and can have a stretch limousine at his disposal, twisting himself into a Renault 4L? Couldn’t he call upon astute pearl appraisers to assist?”

Bureaucracy made Kurien cynical, and invariably riled him. Therefore, he specially requested Shastri to locate NDDB in Anand, and not Delhi. On many occasions, he asked me in exasperation: “Pinto, who am I meeting today? A joint or a dis-jointed secretary?”

It cracked me up to say, “Not today, sir.”  

“Well then, I can happily go for lunch,” he would reply.

And yet, a few senior bureaucrats in Delhi came to Kurien’s and Op Flood’s rescue when there were crises and firm opposition. Why? A recent e-mail by E.A.S. Sarma’s, former Union finance secretary (1999-2000), quoted below with permission, may be an answer.

“Dr. Verghese Kurien belonged to a rare breed of visionaries who realised that true development could take place only if prosperity could be brought to the rural areas and the only way to move in that direction would be by placing the rural community in the driver's seat. I always held him in high esteem.

When I was Secretary, Union Ministry of Power [1997-98] in Delhi, I was keen to adopt the Kurien model in the electricity sector by empowering rural electricity cooperatives in spearheading electricity development. When I contacted Dr. Kurien, his response was extraordinarily cordial and, on his own, he visited me at Shram Shakti Bhavan (my office). While he appreciated my idea in principle, he said that he would be willing to get involved in running electricity cooperatives on lines similar to his milk cooperatives provided I could assure him that the government could place at his disposal young IAS officers with a tenure not less than five years to assist him in that effort. In government, there are very few IAS officers who are willing to specialise in that kind of work. Moreover, neither the Centre nor the States had any placement policy for civil servants. I knew that I could not give such a commitment.

I still remember my colleagues in Washington narrating the meetings that Dr. Kurien used to have with the officials of the World Bank on loans for milk development in India. The Bank officials always looked upon Dr. Kurien as an exceptional kind of a visionary and treated him with a great deal of respect.”

In this vein, Kurien’s strengths became dangerous and overcame weaknesses. His greatest advantage was his genuine and bone-deep integrity and utter dedication. Even those who disliked him saw that his public persona was not, as with so many public figures, fraudulent. 

He was who he seemed and said what he meant. He did not retreat from hard learned truths and experiences which listeners and brown-nosed proteges did not wish to hear.

Vivek Pinto is a visiting fellow, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan.

This article is an excerpt from 'The Utterly Butterly Milkman: A Birth Centenary Commemorative' (Westland, 2021), edited slightly for readership.

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