The 'milk man' tells his story
By Anitha Joshua
I Too Had a Dream, Verghese Kurien as told to Gouri Salvi, Lotus, Rs. 395.
GIVEN his success story, one cannot be faulted for thinking that Verghese Kurien — the architect of "Operation Flood" — set out with a mission. But, India's most celebrated "milk man" confesses in his book I Too Had a Dream that it was with great reluctance that he headed for Anand.
Kurien's story — as narrated to Gouri Salvi — is also the story of India's dairy industry. Reaching Anand at a time when a small group of farmers were forming the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union Limited (immortalised by the name Amul), his narrative also provides an insight into the three main institutions he built. First came the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) to replicate the "Anand pattern of cooperatives" across India, then The Gujarat Cooperatives Milk Marketing Federation to market products of various milk cooperatives in the State so that they did not compete with each other, and then the Institute of Rural Management, Anand.
Though Kurien's life story hits the stands in the wake of his run in with the powers that be at the institutions he built, he does not dwell on them much; save articulate his disappointment over their chosen path which, in his view, would undermine the very soul of the cooperative movement. For the atheist, people's power is an article of faith, and cooperatives are "people's institutions".
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