Verghese Kurien, fondly called “the milkman of India”, was once in a meeting with a British delegation. Kurien was explaining the projects that the National Dairy Development Board had submitted to Britain through the Union government. The leader of the delegation interrupted: “Dr Kurien, your projects sound fantastic, but how do you propose to fund these fancy projects?” His response was quick: “Since we have common pockets, the fund will never be a problem for me.” He spoke with amazing charm and wit, says R.K. Nagar—Kurien’s work associate for 30 years—in the book The Utterly Butterly Milkman.
Curated by Kurien’s daughter, Nirmala Kurien, the book commemorates the birth centenary of the legend who made India the world’s largest producer of milk with his Anand Model, and Amul one of the most respected brands globally. It offers rare anecdotes about Kurien’s life and interesting details about the White Revolution he engineered. The book is divided broadly into eight segments, each one exploring a distinct facet of Kurien’s life through the eyes of friends, family and former colleagues.
Nirmala writes her Dada was ruthless when it came to protecting the interests of farmers; he had faced roadblocks, resistance and even treachery at every stage of his professional life, but took them as “puzzles” that needed to be solved. From middlemen, who wanted to break the cooperative movement in the dairy sector, to multinational companies who wanted to stall Amul’s growth, his adversaries were aplenty.
He faced difficulties from ministers and bureaucrats, too. He was denied a government grant of Rs30,000 to start the NDDB, so he had to borrow the money from Amul. Former Union agriculture ministers like Jagjivan Ram and Rao Birender Singh wanted to fire him from the NDDB. But nothing stopped him, and by the time he left the NDDB in 1998, its coffers were richer by Rs3,000 crore.
Though born into a conservative Malayali Syrian Christian family, Kurien turned out to be an atheist. His grandson, Siddharth Sheth, shared a common joke in Kerala: The only time Kurien entered a church on his own was to marry his beautiful wife. Nirmala says that her father believed in the farmers of India, and that that was his religion. The Utterly Butterly Milkman surely is a great tribute to the good fight of faith that Kurien fought at the service of his farmer gods.
The Utterly Butterly Milkman
Curated by Nirmala Kurien
Published by: Westland Books
Pages: 328 Price: Rs699