| Dr. Verghese Kurien | |
|---|---|
| Born | 26 November 1921 Calicut, Madras Presidency,British India (now Kozhikode, Kerala) |
| Died | 9 September 2012 (aged 90) Nadiad, Gujarat, India |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Other names | "Milkman of India" |
| Occupation | Founder of Amul – Ex-Chairman GCMMF, NDDB,Institute of Rural Management Anand |
| Known for | Widely acclaimed as the "Father of the White revolution" in India |
| Awards | World Food Prize (1989) Padma Vibhushan (1999) Padma Bhushan (1966) Padma Shri (1965) Ramon Magsaysay Award(1963) |
Verghese Kurien (26 November 1921 – 9 September 2012) was an Indian social entrepreneur known as the "Father of the White Revolution" for his 'billion-litre idea' (Operation Flood) – the world's largest agricultural development programme. This transformed India from a milk-deficient nation to the world's largest milk producer, surpassing the United States of America in 1998, with about 17 percent of global output in 2010–11, which in 30 years doubled milk available to every person. Dairy farming became India's largest self-sustaining industry. He made the country self-sufficient in edible oils too later on, taking the powerful and entrenched oil supplying lobby, head-on.
He founded around 30 institutions of excellence (like AMUL, GCMMF, IRMA, NDDB) which are owned, managed by farmers and run by professionals. As the founding chairman of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), Kurien was responsible for the creation and success of the Amul brand of dairy products. A key achievement at Amul was the invention of milk powder processed from buffalo milk(abundant in India), as opposed to that made from cow-milk, in the then major milk producing nations. This led Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to appoint him the founder-chairman of National Dairy Development Board(NDDB) in 1965, to replicate Amul's "Anand model" nationwide. He is regarded as one of the greatest proponents of the cooperative movement in the world, his work having lifted millions out of poverty in India, and outside.
source: @ wikipedia
Operation Flood
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Operation Flood, launched in 1970 is a project of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), which was the world's biggest dairy development program,that made India, a milk-deficient nation, the largest milk producer in the world, surpassing the USA in 1998, with about 17 percent of global output in 2010–11, which in 30 years doubled milk available per person, and which made dairy farming India’s largest self-sustainable rural employment generator. It was launched to help farmers direct their own development, placing control of the resources they create in their own hands. All this was achieved not merely by mass production, but by production by the masses.
The Anand pattern experiment at Amul, a single, cooperative dairy, was the engine behind the success of the program.Verghese Kurien was made the chairman of NDDB by the then Prime Minister of India,Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri, and he was the chairman and founder of Amul as well. Kurien gave the necessary thrust using his professional management skills to the program, and is recognised as its architect.