Read this amazing book about an extraordinary person, who by chance came to Anand in Kaira District, Gujarat because of a government scholarship, with no plans to work in a village. But the motivation of the local leaders and their vision for rural people encouraged him to stay back and be part of a great history which helped the country in many ways for many decades. Like few others, he touched & improved millions of Indians lives & livelihoods by his honest strong-minded nationalist entrepreneurship attitude. Below are some of the important snippets from the book about him, his journey & contribution.

• He is known as Milkman of India, Father of White Revolution of India.
• Converted a garage, in Kaira village, into his Office & house.
• Worked for rural people, like (dairy) farmers, who are the backbone of our society & improve their per capita income, eradicate caste system, improve sanitation, provide healthcare for villagers & cattle etc.
• Followed the path and vision of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Tribhubandas Patel and later by PM Lal Bahadur Shastri to empower rural India.
• Made impossible to be possible by creating the World’s First Buffalo Milk Powder Plant on Sardar Vallavbhai Patel’s Birthday, inaugurated by then PM Jawaharlal Nehru.

• Led the Operation Flood (also known as the White Revolution) to replicate the Anand Model throughout the country, as suggested by then PM Lal Bahadur Shastri.
• Knew the dependency between production and marketing. There would be no Anand if there was no Bombay.
• Linked producer and consumer directly by removing the middleman, who used to take commission in between.
• Implemented a Herculean task/mission, i.e. Operation Flood, in three different phases over 25 years. Phase 1: Get surplus products from the European Union by the World Food Program and distribute efficiently across four metro cities. Phase 2: Add new milk sheds and outlets. Phase 3: Expand the dairy cooperative with infrastructure for plants & cattle.
• Substituted Import with Export to make the country self-sufficient & self-reliant. In 1955, butter & baby food imports were 500 tonnes and 3000 tonnes per year. By 1975, all imports had stopped. By 2004, cooperatives alone produced 12,000 tonnes and 38,000 tonnes of butter & baby food respectively. This helped in many ways, but one important point was to stop the outflow of foreign exchange.
• Made Delhi Milk Scheme (DMS) corruption-free with his honest & energetic teammates on the government’s request.
• Started small, from a village with few farmers and scaled up to international standard with more than 3.6 million farmers (producers) with 18 cooperatives spread across 18.5K villages of Gujarat, eliminating the middleman.
• Proved without any hesitation that the biggest asset of our country is its people by creating Kaira cooperative.
• Resisted easy entry of multinational companies’ surplus products in our lucrative market by giving tough competition with quality and better indigenous products.
• Maniben Patel, daughter of Sardar Vallabbhai Patel and close friend of Dr Kurien, told to Molly Kurien, “You must always remember that you are Kurien’s second wife. His first wife is dairy. Don’t make yourself miserable by being jealous.”
• Worked with many PMs over many decades, starting from Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Moraji Desai, Rajiv Gandhi to PV Narasimha Rao & respective ministries.
• Opted for the role that gave him great pleasure and satisfaction instead of moving to the (foreign) city with a lucrative offer.
• In 1998, a World Bank published report revealed that of Rs 200 crore the World Bank invested in Operation Flood, the net return into India’s rural economy was a massive Rs 24,000 crore each year over a period of ten years.
• Received many national awards (Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan, etc.), international awards (World Food Prize, etc.) and appreciation from other developed countries leaders.
• Faced with a high-powered L K Jha investigation committee to evaluate performance and process of Operation Flood, but he & his associates came out with the head held high and appreciation.
• Confronted with both internal & external challenges. Like dealing with corrupt bureaucrats, ministers, private companies, & pressure from multinational companies like Nestle for exports to neighbouring countries.
• Amul brand name derived from Amulya, meaning priceless. Also stands for Anand Milk Union Ltd. Its famous utterly butterly girl came to the ad limelight after it’s competitor Polson’s ad icon girl.
• Created a similar cooperative for edible oil, known as “Dhara” and used GCMMF’s (i.e. known as Amul brand name) distribution network to reach consumers.

• Inspired by Dr Kurien and his cooperative society, a Hindi Movie “MANTHAN” directed by Shyam Benegal, which won National Film awards for Best Feature Film in Hindi.
• Now this company aka cooperative society is sponsoring reputed international teams(South Africa’s Cricket team etc) in international events (WCT20 2024).

We should not stop here, instead read the complete book to know the great work done to uplift millions of rural farmers with different types of famous household products from ground zero.

Read the Kaizen principle and its impact in 5 Mins.