DR VERGHESE KURIEN- THE FOUNDER OF AMUL & AN INDIAN SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR

NAME - Shah Aafreen Mohammed Amin, CLASS- MCOM PART-2, SEMESTER-3, SUBJECT-ENTREPRENEURSHIP MANAGEMENT.

Amul is an Indian dairy cooperative, based at Anand in the state of Gujarat, India.The word amul (अमूल) is derived from the Sanskrit word meaning rare, valuable.

The co-operative was initially referred to as Anand Milk Federation Union Limited hence the name AMUL.

Formed in 1946, it is a brand managed by a cooperative body, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), which today is jointly owned by 3.6 million milk producers in Gujarat.

Amul spurred India's White Revolution, which made the country the world's largest producer of milk and milk products.In the process Amul became the largest food brand in India and has ventured into markets overseas.

Dr. Verghese Kurien, founder-chairman of the GCMMF for more than 30 years (1973–2006), is credited with the success of Amul

THE FOUNDER OF AMUL CAMPANY

Dr. Verghese Kurien, founder-chairman of the GCMMF for more than 30 years (1973–2006), is credited with the success of Amul,The father of white revolution and The Indian social entrepreneur.

WHITE REVOLUTION

ABOUT GCMMF-GUJARAT CO-OPERATIVE MILK MARKETING FEDERATION LTD

The GCMMF is the largest food products marketing organisation of India. It is the apex organisation of the dairy cooperatives of Gujarat. It is the exclusive marketing organisation for products under the brand name of Amul and Sagar.

Over the last five and a half decades, dairy cooperatives in Gujarat have created an economic network that links more than 3.1 million village milk products with millions of consumers in India. Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd.

(GCMMF), is India's largest food product marketing organisation with annual turnover (2014-15) US$ 3.4 billion. Its daily milk procurement is approx 14.85 million lit per day from 18,536 village milk cooperative societies, 17 member unions covering 31 districts, and 3.37 million milk producer members. More than 70% of the members are small or marginal farmers and landless labourers including a sizeable population of tribal folk and people belonging to the scheduled castes.

THE THREE TIER MODEL OF AMUL The Amul Model is a three-tier cooperative

structure. This structure consists of a dairy cooperative society at the village level affiliated to a milk union at the district level which in turn is federated into a milk federation at the state level.

Milk collection is done at the village dairy society, milk procurement and processing at the District Milk Union and milk products marketing at the state milk federation.

The structure was evolved at Amul in Gujarat and thereafter replicated all over the country under the Operation Flood programme. It is known as the 'Amul Model' or 'Anand Pattern' of dairy cooperatives.

DR VERGHESE KURIEN AS SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR. 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.

DR VERGHESE KUREIN AS A FOUNDER 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.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION Kurien was born on 26 November 1921 at Calicut(now

Kozhikode, Kerala) into a Syrian Christian family His father was a civil surgeon in Cochin, Kerala.

He graduated in Physics from Loyola College, Madras in 1940 and then obtained his Bachelors in mechanical engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy affiliated to University of Madras.

After completing his degree, he joined the Tata SteelTechnical Institute, Jamshedpur from where he graduated in 1946. Subsequently, he went to the United States on a Government of India scholarship to earn a Master of Science in Metallurgical Engineering (Distinction) from Michigan State University in 1948

WORK OF DR VERGHESE KUREIN 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 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.

He would brook no meddling from the political class or bureaucrats sitting in the capital cities, letting it be known upfront,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 and the trust placed in him by farmers inspired Kurien to dedicate himself to the challenging task before them, so much so, that when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru 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 the process of making skim milk powder and condensed milk from buffalo milk instead of from cow milk. This was the reason Amul would compete successfully and well against Nestle which used only cow milk to make them. In India, buffalo milk is the main raw material unlike Europe where cow milk is abundant. Later research at Amul by Dr. G. H. Wilster,saw cheese from buffalo milk.

WORK OF DR KUREIN The Amul pattern of cooperatives became so successful, that in 1965 Prime

Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, tasked Kurien to replicate the program nationwide, citing his "extraordinary and dynamic leadership", and the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was set up. Kurien agreed on condition that he will not move from Anand, and it will have to be headquartered there and not in Delhi, away from bureaucratic and political meddling and closer to farmers. Shastri agreed. Kurien took calculated risks and took on established competitors viz. Aarey dairy of the Bombay Milk Scheme and Polson Dairy, and was bold to the face when dealing with aid donors like UNICEF, and confronted the New Zealand government, and was ambitious against a powerful 'dumping' lobby of countries which wanted to 'convert food aid into trade'.

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.

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.Interestingly Kurien, the person who revolutionised the availability of milk in India did not drink milk himself.

PRESTIGIOUS AWARDS AND DISTINGUISHED HONOURS 1999 Padma Vibhushan Government of India

1993 International Person of the Year Award World Dairy Expo

1991 Distinguished Alumni Award Michigan State University.

1989 World Food Prize, USA. 1986 Wateler Peace Prize Award Carnegie

Foundation, The Netherlands. 1986 Krushi Ratna Award Government of India. 1966 Padma Bhushan Government of India. 1965 Padma Shri Government of India. 1963 Ramon Magsaysay Award Ramon

Magsaysay Award Foundation.