Career

Kurien arrived back from the United States to India after his master's degree, and was quickly
deputed to the Government of India's experimental creamery, at Anand in Gujarat's Kheda
district by the government and rather half-heartedly served out his bond period against the
scholarship given by them. He arrived at Anand on Friday 13 May 1949 and started the work
assigned to him the very same day. He had already made up his mind to quit mid-way, but was
persuaded to stay back at Anand
[18]
by Tribhuvandas Patel (who would later share the Magsaysay
with him) who had brought together Kheda's farmers as a cooperative union to process and sell
their milk, a pioneering concept at the time.
[19]

He would brook no meddling from the political class or bureaucrats sitting in the capital cities,
letting it be known upfront,
[20]
though he, and his mentor and colleague, Tribhuvandas Patel were
backed by the few enlightened political leaders and bureaucrats of the early Independence days
who saw merit in their pioneering cooperative model.
Tribhuvandas Patel's sincere and earnest efforts inspired Kurien to dedicate himself to the
challenging task before them, so much so, that when Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was to
visit Anand later, to inaugurate Amul's plant, he embraced Kurien for his groundbreaking work.
Meanwhile, Kurien's buddy and dairy expert H. M. Dalaya, invented
[8]
the process of making
skim milk powder and condensed milk from buffalo milk
[9]
instead of from cow milk. This was
the reason Amul would compete successfully and well against Nestle which only used cow milk
to make them. In India, buffalo milk is the main raw material unlike Europe where cow milk is
abundant. The Amul pattern of cooperatives became so successful, that in 1965 Prime Minister
Lal Bahadur Shastri, created the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) to replicate the
program nationwide citing Kurien's "extraordinary and dynamic leadership" upon naming him
chairman.
As the 'Amul dairy experiment' was replicated in Gujarat's districts in the neighbourhood of
Anand, Kurien set all of them up under GCMMF in 1973 to sell the combined produce of the
dairies under a single Amul brand. Today GCMMF sells Amul products not only in India but also
overseas. He quit the post of GCMMF chairman in 2006 following disagreement with the
GCMMF management.
[21][22]

When the National Dairy Development Board expanded the scope of Operation Flood to cover
the entire country in its Phase 2 program in 1979: Kurien founded the Institute of Rural
Management Anand (IRMA).Kurien, played a key role in many other organisations, like chairing
the Viksit Bharat Foundation, a body set up by the President of India. Kurien was mentioned by
the Ashoka Foundation as one of the eminent present Day Social Entrepreneurs. Kurien's life
story is chronicled in his memoir I Too Had a Dream.
[23]
Interestingly Kurien, the person who
revolutionised the availability of milk in India did not drink milk himself.
[24]
Nevertheless, the
work of Kurien & his team in India took India from a milk importer to a milk & milk-products
exporting nation within the span of 2 decades.
Personal life, family and beliefs
Verghese married Molly and they had one daughter Nirmala Kurien and a grandson,
Siddharth.
[25]
He was an atheist.
[26]
Verghese Kurien died on 9 September 2012 after a brief spell
of illness in Nadiad, near Anand in Gujarat, India. He was 90. His wife Molly died on 14
December 2012 in Mumbai after a brief illness.
[27]

Film and its use in enlarging the movement
Veteran film-maker Shyam Benegal, then an advertising executive with Lintas Advertising,
produced Manthan (the churning of the 'milk ocean'), a story set in the cooperative milk
movement in India. Not able to finance it, Benegal was helped by Kurien who hit upon an idea of
getting each of his half a million member farmers to contribute a token two rupees for the
making of the movie. Upon its release, truckloads of farmers came to see "their" film, making it
a success at the box office. Manthan hit a chord with the audience immediately when it was
shown in Gujarat in 1976, which impressed distributors to release it before audiences,
nationwide. It was critically acclaimed and went on to win national awards the following year
and was later shown on television to the public.
The movie's success gave Kurien another idea. Like shown in the film, a vet, a milk technician
and a fodder specialist who could explain the value of cross-breeding of milch cattle would tour
other parts of the country along with the film's prints, to woo farmers there to create cooperatives
of their own.
[28]

UNDP would use the movie to start similar cooperatives in Latin America.