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Had your morning coffee? Ever thought about milk production process? Do you know India is the leading milk producer of the milk in the world? Do you know how India became top milk producing country? If you dig into the details then you will definitely know about Dr. Verghese Kurien – popularly known as “Milk man of India”. Google celebrates Dr. Verghese Kurien’s 94th birthday with a nice doodle showing him with a milk can in his hand as a buffalo looks on and ‘Google’ spelling was creatively depicted though the rope.

Few decades back India was struggling to achieve food security and was a milk deficient country. Today, India is the largest milk producing country surpassing the mighty US and EU to become the number one milk producing nation. A lot of organized effort has been put in by great leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri and the Govt of India through people like Dr. Verghese Kurien to achieve this transformation.

Indian White Revolution – five decades back the prime minister of India; Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri visited a village cooperative society near Anand. He was impressed by the it’s success as well as how it benefits the milk producers, mostly farmers to the maximum extent and he extended his visit and spent the night understanding how they achieved it. To know better, we should understand how the village cooperative society started.

The seeds of the successful village cooperative society were planted in the state of Gujarat in the 1940s. It was a response to the exploitation of marginal milk producers by the private diaries and middle men. Farmers of Kaira protested these unfair trade practices and approached Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel under the leadership of local farmer leader Tribhuvandas Patel. Sardar, the great visionary, advised them to form a cooperative society and supply milk directly to Bombay Milk Scheme. The cooperative was further developed and managed by Dr.Verghese Kurien who renamed it to “Amul” and the success they achieved is what impressed Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri wanted to replicate the Anand pattern experiment at Amul throughout the India. Dr. Varghese Kurien was made the chairman of NDDB and entrusted the responsibility to him. NDDB launched “Operation Flood” in 1970. The bedrock of the “Operation Flood” was the co-operative society model and it helped farmers across the country to launch co-operative societies placing the control of resources in their own hands. The key point to note here is that they succeeded not merely by mass production, but by the production of masses. What they did is

• They decentralized milk production by the small milk producers.
• Milk procurement was handled to village level diary co-operative societies.
• Centralized milk processing by the district-level unions.
• Marketing of milk and milk products by the state level federation..

By eliminating the middle men they helped farmers enjoy the fruits of their labour. The results were extraordinary. The scheme helped millions of landless, marginal and small farmers engaged in production of milk and more than 70 million Indian households continue to enjoy the benefits even today. This phenomenal increase of milk production is referred to as Indian white revolution and Kurien is recognized as its architect. He is known as the “Father of the White Revolution” for his “billion-litre-idea” – the world’s largest agricultural development programme.

Dr. Verghese Kurien was honoured with various prestigious awards.

We hope this inspires you all. We would like all parents, teachers and home tutors to tell children these kinds of success stories to motivate them. Please share this to your friends and family members to give them their bit of inspiration.

Have a nice day!

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