Independence Day 2022 | Remembering Verghese Kurien, the Father of India’s White Revolution

Verghese Kurien with Jawaharlal Nehru

As India celebrates 75 years of independence, let’s remember the people who shaped this great nation. India as we know it today is a product of great ideas and years of hard work. Among the thousands of Indians who helped in nation building after the independence is Dr Verghese Kurien, the Father of the White Revolution in India. It was his idea that made dairy farming India's largest self-sustaining industry and the largest rural employment sector.

On India’s 76th Independence Day, a look at the man who made India the world’s largest milk producer.

Dr Verghese Kurien was born on November 26, 1921 in Kerala. As a member of an affluent Syrian Christian family in pre-independence India, he attended Loyola College in Madras to study physics before joining TISCO Technical Institute as a graduate apprentice in 1943.

Kurien later left for the United States where he completed his Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering with Dairy Engineering as a minor subject from the Michigan State University in 1948, according to the website of Amul Dairy.

In 1949, he was sent to Anand in present-day Gujarat by the government of India to its run-down, experimental creamery.

At the end of his bond period, Kurien was eager to leave Anand, but Tribhuvandas Patel, the then Chairman of Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers Union (today popularly known as Amul) convinced him to stay on for a few more days. Kurien agreed – and never really left Anand after that.

“He initially thought that he was only helping a friend to set up a small dairy. But slowly he imbibed the spirit behind the dairy and the co-operative society that his Guru Tribhuvandas Patel has started. From the engineer he groomed into a General Manager and from an excellent executive he blossomed into a fighter, a fighter for the cause of poor farmers,” explains Amul on its website.

He found that farmer were being exploited by milk distributors in the area. Kurien, a friend of Tribhuvandas Patel who trying to unite the farmers and form a cooperative movement, worked towards bringing a White Revolution in India.

The bedrock of the revolution was Operation Flood which was instrumental in transforming India from a milk-deficit nation to the world’s biggest milk producer. Operation Flood aimed to increase milk production, augment rural incomes and put the power in the hands of farmers.

“Dr Kurien has helped to lay the foundation of democratic enterprises at the grass roots and shown the way to ensure economic justice with people’s participation. He believes that by placing technology and professional management in the hands of the farmers, the standard of living of millions of our poor people can be improved,” says Amul in its tribute to the Milkman of India.

Dr Verghese Kurien died on September 9, 2012.