Verghese
Kurien, father of the “White Revolution” and founder of the cooperative dairy
movement in the country is no more . He is survived by wife Molly Kurien and
daughter Nirmala.
Anand, the small town in central Gujarat was his home for the last six decades and
which he made famous as “the milk capital of India.”
Born in
Kozhikode, Kerala, on November 26, 1921, Dr. Kurien, a mechanical engineer with
dairy engineering as a minor subject, came to Anand in 1949 at the behest of
the then Union Home Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, to solve some problems
of the local farmers. The problems were resolved, but Dr. Kurien could not
leave Anand.
From one milk project to a larger one, the “Milkman of India”
saw India emerge from a milk-deficient country into the largest milk producer
in the world, overtaking even the once milk-abundant Netherlands.
It is because of Dr. Kurien that India today contributes about
17 per cent of the total milk production in the world. Amul, with a turnover of
over Rs. 13,000 crore, is Asia’s top milk-producing brand and is counted, with
one of the best recall values, among the world’s leading brands in any sector.
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