HE CAME, he saw the plight of farmers, and crafted a highly successful cooperative ladder to bail them out. His vision, his marketing skills, and more importantly his courage to defy any kind of political meddling, turned Amul into a household name. But that's not the end of it. The passing of Dr Verghese Kurien, the milkman of India, certainly brings down the curtain on the era of milk self-sufficiency.
Verghese Kurien died unhappy.
Ever since he left National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) after being its chairman for 33 years, and passed on its reins to his own prodigy Dr Amrita Patel, Kurien realised that it was the beginning of the end for the dairy cooperatives. The women he groomed to take over from him, and all the efforts to get her installed despite stiff opposition from bureaucracy to pass on control to yet another IAS officer, Kurien was in for a shock when he found that Amrita Patel was beginning to undo what he had done all these years. But that's a story for a different day.
He stepped down from NDDB at the age of 76. And within the next few years, he was eased out from the board of Indian Rural Management Institute (IRMA) and also the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation. His nomination to the National Cooperative Dairy Federation of India was also rejected.
