Verghese Kurien

Who was Verghese Kurien?

Verghese Kurien was a renowned Indian social entrepreneur and is best known as the "Father of the White Revolution", for his 'billion-litre idea' — the world's biggest agricultural development programme. The operation took India from being a milk-deficient nation, to the largest milk producer in the world, surpassing the United States of America in 1998, with about 17 percent of global output in 2010–11, which in 30 years doubled the 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 head-on the powerful and entrenched oil supplying lobby.

He founded around 30 institutions of excellence which are owned, managed by farmers and run by professionals. As the founding chairman of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, 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, as opposed to that made from cow-milk, in the then major milk producing nations.