Verghese Kurien, the "Father of the White Revolution", passed away on Sept 9, 2012. His milk-cooperatives and the 'billion-litre idea' brought about the world's biggest agricultural development programme, enriching lives of millions.
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Is the white revolution dead? The country recently lost its greatest hero in its war against malnutrition and rural poverty. But the revolution lives. It lives in the lives of millions of milk producers and a billion of India’s citizens, it lives in lakhs of healthy disease free cattle and it lives in thousands of cooperatives and hundreds of state-of-the-art dairies that dot this land. The country lost one of the greatest nation builders a few days ago, Verghese Kurien, illustrious son of the land, the man who delivered a nutrition-deficient, import-dependent country from the clutches of multinationals and depths of malnourishment to a place of pride in the world. He left behind a country, where the proverbial milk and honey flowed once again, an India which now ranks as the largest producer of milk in the world.
Before Dr Kurien achieved the previously unthinkable feat, milk came in cows. Milk still comes from cows, but in my childhood milk walked up to our doorsteps actually riding in a cow. The milkman, as a daily ritual, would march to my house every morning with a cow ambling alongside. My neighbours wanted their milk delivered in the evening. No problem with that! Since cows can be milked twice a day, the milkman and the poor cow would do the round of my neighbourhood again in the evening, repeating several miles of round trip from the cow shed to the Point of Sale (POS) and back. What a change from those days! The cow of today has all her meals delivered at her place of residence. She has no choice of plucking out a clump of grass from the roadside or a clutch of blossoms from the neighbour’s flowerpot. The cow’s diet today is confined to the industry standard oilcakes, husk and some grains past their use-before dates. No fun in eating, none in giving milk either – everything has been industrialised, even the milking is done by machines.
Back to our milkman. As soon as he arrived, one of us children would be deputed to supervise him, to ensure that he did not mix water in the milk on the sly. The milkman would always carry two steel buckets, one of them contained water, which he claimed was to wash the other bucket with. He drew milk from the cow’s udders in the empty bucket. In case the child deputed to keep an eye on the process of milking slipped up, the milkman would quickly pour some water from the other bucket into the milk bucket. A wink or a momentary lapse of attention was enough for him to perform the crafty act. His measure, the “paav” or the “pauua” as he would call it, was said to be a quarter of a seer and was always an object of suspicion. I was sure that unlike simple arithmetic, four of his quarters did not add up to a one, but to a substantially lower quantity. Our neighbour was smarter. He had his own “paav”, which he wanted his deliveries to be measured with. But that was not to be. In his case the milkman insisted upon measuring the milk with the froth, which came naturally in the milking process. You could never win against the wily fellow – if he used his paav he delivered less and if he used your paav he still delivered less, which you discovered once the froth settled down. The cow, oblivious of the devious ways of her master, strode along delivering a seer here and half a seer there, till she was ready to go home.
Milk in the Kurien era began coming in bottles and polythene pouches. No, the polythene that modern cows eat by the roadside does not package the milk inside the cow. Milk is now processed in large dairies, which Dr Kurien seeded. Milk is collected from the doorsteps of the milkmen, organised in cooperatives, carried from the nooks and crannies of the hinterland to the processing dairies in a matter of hours, filtered, standardised and pasteurised, packaged and delivered quicker than the time it took the cow of my childhood to do one round through her multiple retail outlets. The modern milkman, on the other hand gets a fair price for his produce, the cow gets better fodder, we get better quality milk, curd, cheese and butter, all proudly produced in India at affordable prices.
Gone are the days when one depended on imported milk powder and the poor just couldn’t think of providing the white elixir to their young ones. We have also forgotten the days when the cows were skinny, milkmen impoverished while milk would just go bad waiting to be marketed. All this while there were millions waiting and willing to buy it. Dr Kurien did indeed change the lives of millions like few others. He alone brought cheer to the millions of producers and consumers linking them through innovative cooperatives and modern dairies.
But, Dr Kurien! You also changed lives of many others – the cows do not go on their morning and evening walks, the milkman now sits at home and has almost become a paragon of virtues. Gone also are the days of endless fun from the lives of children out of the game of detective they loved to play against the shrewd milkman. But, on the whole, there is a huge surplus of good that you have done to us. The nation needs many more like you.
We will miss you Dr Kurien!
