Dr. Verghese Kurien , known as the 'Father of the White Revolution' in India, was a social entrepreneur whose billion-litre idea, Operation Flood – the world's largest agricultural dairy development programme, made dairy farming India's largest self-sustaining industry and the largest rural employment provider, being a third of all rural income, with benefits of raising incomes and credit, riddance of debt dependence, nutrition, education, health, gender parity and empowerment, breakdown of caste barriers and grassroots democracy and leadership. It made India the world's largest milk producer from a milk-deficient nation, which doubled milk available per person and increased milk output four-fold, in 30 years.He pioneered the Anand pattern of dairy cooperatives to replicate it nationwide, based on using suitable 'top-down' & 'bottom up' approaches simultaneously, to essentially a low-input, low-output Amul, his standalone cooperative then, and today India's largest food brand, where no milk from a farmer was refused and 70–80% of the price by consumers went as cash to dairy farmers who controlled the marketing, the procurement and the processing of milk & milk products as the dairy's owners, while hiring professionals for their skills and inducting technology, in managing it. A key invention at Amul, the world's first, was the production of milk powder from the abundant buffalo-milk, instead of from the conventional cow-milk, short in supply in India. Keen on a strong linkage between town and country, he surmounted skepticism and adversity with his indefatigable fighting spirit and outmaneuvering skills to capture a commanding share of the market of the city of Bombay , which got him wide attention. He had the foresight to shrewdly use the clout resulting from its recognition, by employing his networking skills and resources at his command effectively, in negotiating international help and support from the governments of at least 9 prime ministers of the country over more than 5 decades, all on terms set by him, making everyone who mattered come to Anand in Bombay's hinterland, where he stayed put, to see his showpiece venture, rather than meet them in the capital cities. Termed a crocodile who swims in milk, he would steadfastly stave off meddling by politicians and bureaucrats while building his cooperatives to national scale and founding institutions, and encroachment by multinational companies on markets nurtured by him. He also made India self-sufficient in edible oils, taking on a powerful, entrenched and violently resistant oil supplying cartel. Regarded as one of the greatest proponents of the cooperative movement in the world where, by unleashing the power of the people through people's own institutions, production by masses triumphs over mass-production, his work has lifted millions out of poverty in India and outside.
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