Ajit Kanitkar tells the fascinating story of AMUL – the White Revolution that moved India from being a net importer of dairy products in 1950s to a net exporter in a span of just over 50 years.

It was sometime in 1992 that we, a family of three (me, my wife and our three-year-old son), were walking on that road in the town of Anand in Kheda district of Gujarat. It was the only big road that connected the Anand railway station to my workplace, Institute of Rural Management (IRMA). IRMA, where I was a faculty between 1992-1995 was located away from the town, close to the campus of the Gujarat Agriculture University also known as Khetiwadi Campus. It was on one of those evenings that my son, who had started his schooling in Anandalaya (Home of Joy) noticed the blue-neon sign display outside the dairy that processed milk and milk products. “A for AMUL!” – he screamed almost in an excitement and tone that might have resembled “eureka”. We also noticed the familiar signage but now with a new vision. “Yes, it is A for AMUL, A for AMUL” – we joined in the chorus. It is almost twenty years after that evening but the memories of that evening and our stay in Anand are still vivid in our minds. ‘AMUL’ introduced my son to the world of alphabets. It also educated me! It introduced me to the fascinating story of India’s development that many of us recall as the White Revolution, a revolution that moved this country from being a net importer of dairy and dairy products in 1950s to a net exporter in a span of just over 50 years. The story of AMUL and the subsequent white revolution is almost like a modern-day Hindi movie thriller with characters that represent many dimensions of our society, a plot with twists and turns, and a story that still continues to unfold every single day, even today. There were towering an selfless political leaders  like Tribhuvandas Patel who were inpired and advised by Sardar Vallabbhai Patel and Morarji Desai, who laid the foundation of this mass movement that mobilized thousands of farmers later. There is Dr. Verghese Kurien, a technocrat trained outside India who did not even know the difference between a cow and a buffalo (in his own words) in the beginning, who voluntarily succumbed to the persuasion of Tribhuvandas to continue to stay in Anand even today, after his reluctant and mandated stay by the government of India in exchange of an award of a scholarship was over in early 1950s. There were farmers who felt cheated and exploited at the hands of the then multinationals like Polson dairy and in frustration spilled
the milk on the road as their way of Satyagraha to record their protest. They were told by the wise politicians of those times that “they should come together, organize themselves and try to reach their milk to the then Bombay market that will fetch them a better price.” There were power-hungry and self-serving Babus of the Government in the various Bhavans of Delhi, sweet talking professionals in the bilateral and multilateral aid agencies and ruthless corporate managers in India and outside, who felt threatened with the growing success of this farmer-centric cooperative movement. They made every possible attempt, tacit and overt, to scuttle the splendid growth this project was showing to serve their self-interests but in the end gave up against the staunch leadership of Dr. Kurien and his colleagues.

And then there was this prime minister of this country Lal Bahadur Shastri who heard te story of succesful , ‘AMUL’ experiment and wanted to experience personally what it meant for farmers. He decided to spend a night in a village close to Anand as an ordinary citizen of the country throwing all protocol to the winds, his host not knowing who his guest was for that night. Having seen the miracle of hundreds of small farmers pouring the milk in small quantities
of ½ or 1 litre next day to their own institution, the Dudhani Mandali (a milk cooperative as called in Gujarati), he saw the transformative potential of this movement. This visit  heralded the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), with a mandate of replicating the Anand-AMUL pattern of a three-tier cooperative structure all over the country. The peration Flood I, II and III translated this potential in reality and the rest os history.  ribhuvan Das Patel and Dr. Kurien became the new national icons and AMUL, the White Revolution is independent India’s splendid achievement, that all of us should be proud of.

The AMUL Pattern

There were a number of milestones in the long journey from a country that depended on imported milk products to a country that became the largest producer of milk. Many observers of that time would recall that at the time of the country’s independence, the
scenario for dairy industry was bleak. The Governmentmanaged
and subsidized city milk schemes were almost in shambles. Milk was rationed and citizens were issued limited quota that privileged
them to buy this essential food item. However, things started
changing, AMUL providing the drive for this change. In the first few years to be precise from 1946 till 1960s, it was the formation and strengthening of the Kheda (also known as Kaira) district  ooperative milk union. The popular name goes by AMUL. In those days, Tribhuvandas Patel the farmer leader from Kheda moved
from village to village, often on horseback, convincing the farmers to organize themselves into village level cooperatives. The members, belonging to all castes and creed came together and organized themselves into a formal village level cooperative society. Every morning and evening, they brought in small quantities of milk that was later transported to a district place.

The district cooperative milk union was the second tier in the cooperative structure. The union owned a processing plant that processed raw milk collected from village cooperatives who were its members. The processed milk and milk products were then sold to urban markets as far as Bombay (now Mumbai). Thanks to the vision and foresight of Dr. Kurien, the immense challenges in marketing of a perishable commodity like milk were solved by converting the liquid milk into milk products and also connecting the farmer organizations with the market that was ready to offer a decent price. As one marketer later put it, “Bombay market was a bottomless pit and lapped up any amount of supplies that traveled overnight, thanks to the railway network that connected Anand to Mumbai.”

Many readers probably do not know that there are at least six to eight ‘AMULs’ in Gujarat! As the Kheda district Union started flourishing other district co-operative unions. came into being. They were inspired by the success and the potential that the AMUL (later also known as the Anand model of Cooperatives) model offered. As many AMULs Started flourihing in other parts of Gujarat. It was Dr. Kurien’s statesmanship that forged a long-lasting collaboration in a situation that had the potential of becoming a destructive competition. Dr. Kurien convinced the leadership of the district  cooperative unions in Gujarat that while it made sense to establish multiple entities all across Gujarat to  espond to the needs of the farmers, they needed to market their products under a common  brand, a brand that was shared by all collectively. “United we stand, divided we fall” – so easy preach but so difficult to practise in a real world. But the sagacity of the farmer leader of Gujarat who understood the perils of competing brands stuck together. Thus, ‘AMUL’ became the flagship brand of all the gujrat co-operatives.

Operation Flood
Another important landmark in the journey was replication of the ‘AMUL’ or the Anand pattern of cooperatives all over the country. In an interview that appeared in India Today (December 31, 2007), Dr. Kurien shares the dramatic events that led to the formation of a national institution National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) that became the torch-bearer of India’s white revolution for the next two decades. NDDB’s sole mandate was to replicate the Anand pattern (read AMUL) of cooperatives all over the country. In Dr. Kurien’s words, “It was the mid-60s when I got a call from senior Gujarat cadre IPS officer informing me that union Home Secretary I.P. Singh was in Gujarat and wanted to take a look at the operative milk model at Anand. Singh was very impressed when he visited Anand and saw the impact of the movement. He asked me why this model, which had created a win-win situation for both the farmers and consumers, couldn’t be replicated at the national level. I told him that my proposal titled ‘Operation Flood’ was facing bureaucratic hurdles and the officials of the Union Agriculture ministry were not interested in it. Singh was surprised and he promised to put everything in order. On reaching Delhi, he arranged an informal meeting with the Union secretaries and asked me to give a presentation on my proposed scheme. At the meeting, I explained to them how the scheme aimed at recovering its initial cost by asking European countries to donate excess powdered milk and butter oil, which they otherwise disposed of as waste, to us. I also informed them that seeking aid for the project was a short-term arrangement aimed at a self-sufficient and farner friendly model for India. In other words, once the model was fully operational, financial aid for the project was to end. Singh, who was already keen on implementing the model at the national level, urged other bureaucrats to lend their support. And thanks to his efforts, the project not only took off but started moving at a fast pace. “Once the project got the clearance, my next task was
to get Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) approval
for the proposed cooperative milk model. Accompanied by the then
Union Agriculture Secretary B.R. Patel, I went to Rome to negotiate
with FAO for excess powder milk and butter oil from the European
countries and to explain how it will benefit and make farmers in India independent. We met several delegates to garner support for our proposal. Most of them resisted but two stood out- Australia and Pakistan.
The lady heading the Australian delegation was initially
opposed to our proposal because she was of the opinion
that India would become dependent on aid. But on hearing
she changed her stance. The Pakistan Delegates on the other hand, copied our proposal and presented it to FAO. But thankfully, our proposal had been cleared by then. In Rome, Patel was aked the question how the project would function without the  government’s involvement. To which he replied that the government would give me five years for the project and in
case it failed, they ‘would shoot me down’.” What AMUL did to Gujarat in the 1950s and the 1960s, the NDDB in implementing the Operation Flood did to the entire country in the next thirty years!

Unknown Faces Behind White Revolution
The human side behind the success of AMUL is rather unknown to the outside world. The AMUL story is full of heroic deeds of literally hundreds of professionals consisting of dairy technologists, veterinary doctors, extension workers, marketing managers and above all thousands of farmers who all worked with grit and determination when India was not ‘so shining’, not only for the external world but also for its own citizens. These were the decades of 1960s and 1970s when songs like Mera Joota Hai Japani ruled over the public psyche. But these people had an amazing Hindustani dil that made the AMUL story possible. There is no dearth of literature on Dr. Kurien, the architect of the white revolution. But there are literally hundreds of unsung heroes, his many colleagues, who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with him to give shape to the dream of making India self-sufficient in milk and milk products. This human side behind teh success of AMUL is rather unknown to the outside world.

The town of Anand when we lived was full of such stories about these people. There was this gutsy dairy technologist Mr. H. M. Dalaya whose professional skills made it possible to use the surplus milk collected during the winter month. Many Indian and international experts had dissuaded him saying that it was impossible to make milk powder out of buffalo milk given its high fat content. No such technology existed before and he should not waste his efforts in inventing one. But he persisted and succeeded! It was a major breakthrough in the initial years of AMUL because it removed the most important bottleneck in collecting liquid milk. AMUL could collect technically any amount of milk from its farmer-members as long as it had the facility to process the ‘raw/fresh’ milk into milk powder and thus extending the shelf life of milk from a few hours to at least a few years. When we were in Anand, there was a sort of competition among the AMULs of Gujarat to create records in milk procurement. I clearly recall when one of the managers from Mehsana District Union (the dairy is named Dudhsagar, Sea of Milk!) politely corrected my factual mistake in the presentation. AMUL was no longer the largest procurer of milk. He told me that it was Mehsana which created a new record of sorts by collecting 11 lakh litres of milk per day, overtaking AMUL’s score of 10 lakhs litres!

In the initial days of AMUL, there was one Mr. Chotani who was spearheading the team of AMUL, visiting villages in Gujarat and trying to convince farmers that they use a better variety of cattle feed so that the productivity of the cattles could increase. Farmers did not seem to be convinced. They thought that the traditional feeding practices (green and/or dry fodder) were the best; the feed from the factory would harm their precious livestock. In one meeting in a village, Dr. Chotani began addressing the meeting of farmers chewing a few tablets of the feed, the feed that he wanted the farmers to adopt! Just as a cattle would do, he spent the next one hour chewing and explaining to the farmers that he did not die after eating that tablet. No further convincing was needed!
And there is story of another officer of NDDB. Dr. Malhotra returned to Anand after completing his three years assignment in Punjab spreading the message of Operation Flood. One day, Dr. Kurien had to face an interesting delegationof farmers in punjab. There were sikhs farmers wielding swords outside their office in Anand. They were angry with Dr. Kurien and wanted to know why such an efficient and farmer friendly officer like Dr. Malhotra was moved out of punjab. They wanted him to be posted again in Punjab.

Dr. Amrita Patel was the first woman veterinary graduate who opted to work with the farmers in Kheda district. She later on shouldered many responsibilities and is currently the chairperson of NDDB. There were many veterinary doctors, who in the initial days of Operation Flood travelled miles at night to attend to an ailing cow or buffalo just in return for a grateful smile of the owner of that animal. I had the fortune of meeting a number of these individuals during my stay in Anand. They were from all states, different religions, varied age groups but the common bond that brought them together was the magic and the persuasive vision of Dr. Kurien. Operation Flood is a success not only of Dr. Kurien but also of his professional colleagues and managers.

AMUL’s Contribution : More Than Just Milk

What did the AMUL movement contribute to the country?

Apart from demonstrated and quantifiable results in milk production, milk availability and so on, it brought about and facilitated a new paradigm in development interventions.  AMUL demonstrated that a solid partnership among farmers and professional managers personified in Tribhuvandas Patel and Verghese Kurien was the way forward if the coutry believed in working with its farmers. The AMUL model placed farmers, its milk  producer members, at the centre and all the rest at periphery. Thanks again to the ‘buziness’ mindset of the Gujaratis that places progress an pragmatism above everything else . Till very recently, politics and politicians were kept at an arm’s distance (unlike its  neighbouring state of Maharashtra, where sugar cooperative barons used the instrument of cooperatives to further their political careers, at the cost of the health of the cooperative enterprises). The dairy cooperatives in Gujarat and many other states grew in strength without having to deal with the politics of politicians! AMUL showed a third alternative that was democratic, decentralized and yet had the potential to be efficient and sustainable, an alternative that was not lethargic and insensitive such as that of the ‘public sector and profiteering and exploitative like the ‘Private sector’.

The cooperatives were owned by the farmer-milk producers and managed by professionals that were accountable to them. The surplus at the end of the business transactions were distributed to producers in addition to the remunerative prices that they received for the milk-produce. It was a ‘new model’ of development. The AMUL model also demonstrated that farmerfriendly structures need not be against consumer interests. While it rewarded farmers with handsome procurement price that encouraged higher fat percentage quality milk (unadulterated); the urban consumer had access to fresh milk round the year. The AMUL pattern cooperatives produced butter, ghee, paneer, milk powder, ice-cream, chocolates and even traditional sweets like rosgulla and shrikhand that delighted the customers with consistently high quality tastes. The advertisements that featured the AMUL girl dotted the city landscapes; it established new standards in creative advertising, literally year after year, and even today. AMUL is one of the top brands of the country today recalled fondly by consumers all across the country. It all began in 1966 when Sylvester daCunha, then the managing director of the advertising agency, ASP, clinched the amount for AMUL butter. The butter, which had been launched in 1945, had a staid, boring image, primarily because the earlier advertising agency which was in charge of the account preferred to stick to routine, corporate ads. For 30 odd years the ‘Utterly Butterly’ girl has managed to keep her fan following intact. So much so that the advertisements are now ready to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for being the longest running campaign ever. The ultimate compliment to the butter came when a British company launched a butter and called it Utterly Butterly. Last week, AMUL came up with yet another advertisement coinciding with the visit of the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, its punch line aptly titled ‘wonton more maska?’ (want more buttering?) During our stay in Anand, we must have visited the AMUL dairy at least a dozen times. It was like a spiritual ritual that we looked forward to whenever we had visitors and guests. We would visit the AMUL dairy (factory) in the morning. There were many visitors like us from all parts of the country, men and women of all ages, farmers with their families. AMUL staff would escort us in small groups around the factory showing how the liquid milk collected from the villages of Kheda district in the morning was processed. Behind the glass partitions, tons and tons of butter was being produced and packed and we watched that scene in awe. At the end of the visit, all of us were offered a glass of fresh milk! What a way to conclude the visit! But more was in the offing of the evening. We would often go to a near-by village to see the functioning of the mandali (meaning cooperative in Guajarati). At that time, often the only building with a twostoried concrete structure was that of themandali. Women and men of the village would have lined in front of their cooperative and the business was brisk. Each member collected his or her ‘passbook’ after pouring the milk, a passbook that faithfully recorded milk poured, fat percentage and the money due to the farmer. The site of a mandali was as inspiring as the dairy of the morning.

Institution-Building at the Core

The AMUL and the NDDB experiment is an outstanding innovation of modern times. It showed how aid, if used creatively and with diligence, can galvanise a dairy economy of the entire country unlike in other countries of the global south where massiv aid flows permanently disabled, and in some cases wiped out the local enterprise and the entrepreneurship. Dr. Kurien and his team zealously protected the  nstitutional autonomy of NDDB by deliberately keeping it away from the plethora of Bhavans and  epartments of power-hungry Delhi  and locating it to Anand, a remote corner of the country; where no bureaucrat would have the courage to lobby for posting leaving the corridors of power! NDDB in Anand drew from the immense expertise that AMUL had accumulated. It was a living laboratory that offered many lessons not just for Gujarat but for the country and NDDB amplified the voice of the Anand pattern of cooperatives.

Dr. Kurien and NDDB had to fight relentlessly with the politicians and officials of many state governments that wanted technical expertise and financial resources from NDDB but never let function  the  cooperatives as institutions that were autonomous. A true cooperative movement that was not subservient to the political masters was perceived as a threat by all of them and in the process Dr. Kurien and his team often became the ‘bad boys’. Reforming the almost defunct dairy development departments and urban milk supply schemes of many state governments was a thankless task that Dr. Kurien and NDDB accepted but only on their terms, terms that allowed emergence of a truly farmer-centric cooperative movement. NDDB management had to also face lobbies and interest groups that did not want development of indigenous dairy machinery and packaging equipment, which challenged their complete monopoly of the trade. Thanks to Dr. Kurien, indigenous manufacturing enterprise was  established that produced and marketedvaccines for cattle at one third the price offered by a few multinational enterprises built institutions. Indeed, modern India can give credit to this master institution-builder. It was the entire ecosystem that grew around milk and the milk capital – Anand. It was not just the cooperatives and milk processing infrastructure but a host of other institutions were conceived, thanks to the positive spin offs.

The indigenous dairy machinery equipment manufacturing facility flourished in and around the township of Vallabh Vidyanagar, as also the low-cost, high-quality vaccine manufacturing facility that threatened the overpriced multinational corporations. New advances were made in processing and packaging  echnologies. A rail milk tanker  designed specially to transport liquid milk (when the outside temperature was at 45 degree in peak summer months) travelled over 48 hours from Anand and yet successfully stored and delivered milk-supplies at 4 degrees at Kolkata. A new technology marvel! New cattle feed factories were established, the country’s human capital increased with hundreds of professionals qualifying in multiple disciplines such as dairy technology, food processing, and veterinary sciences. The AMUL model was also tried out with varying success in other sectors such as groundnut oil and fruits and vegetables.

When Dr. Kurien realized that he needed a talent pool to mange the fledging cooperatives enterprise being set up  across the country, he approached his cousin, Dr. Ravi Mathai, at IIM Ahmedabad, hoping that he would be able to recruit and retain professionals from this prestigious institution. It wasn’t the case to be. The challenge gave birth to a new institution – Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), an institution whose mandate was to train professional managers who will work in the cooperative and rural

enterprises. I had the priviledge of being a faculty member  in IRMA. Many IRMA alumni do us proud when I see them across the length and the breadth of the country contributing their skills in many development organizations. Many more IRMA-type institutions were later set up all over the country.

IRMA was indeed a trend-setter in many ways. It ‘placed’ its students in villages for over two months as a part of the two year curriculum. Often, the faculty accompanied students and engaged in a collaborative research. While the academic and the political community in India in 2010 is debating about the need to have an ‘Indian’ version of a convocation and getting rid of the colonial legacy of wearing gowns and so on; we in IRMA had a solemn convocation ceremony as early as 1980s. Everyone including the chief guest, the faculty and the graduating students dressed in white kurta/salwar kameez wearing kolhapuri chappals. The convocation was a solemn occasion when the chief guest blessed the graduating students with an Angavastram! I have vivid memories of those convocation ceremonies. The AMUL story continues even when some of its founding members and professionals have retired from the scene. The GCMMF with its flagship AMUL brand, had a turnover of close to 10,000 crores per annum in the recent years making it the largest food product marketing company in the country. AMUL consistently topped as the most popular brand.

The institution-building story of the AMUL model will not be complete without reference to the recently established Tribhuvandas Foundation (TF). The genesis of TF is equally dramatic. It was set up much later in the evolution of AMUL in the memory of its founder. The story goes like this – In one of  the general body meetings of the cooperative union, AMUL’s management was challenged by a farmer from the audience, “Sir, you have taken so much efforts for our cattle. You have placed mobile teams of   eterinary professionals that reach our villages within hours if a distress call is given to them through the wireless system about the ill-health of the cattle.

But what about us? What about our ill-health?” The question stirred the management. The TF was a  response to provide medical services to thousands of AMUL members, especially to children and women in villages. Its network is spread over Kheda district with a hospital in Anand.

Some Blemishes, Shortcomings and Controversies

There are many authors, who have praised and adored the AMUL experiment, but there are equal number of critics who claim that Operation Flood and the AMUL model has done more harm than good. These critics (call them eternal cynics?) argue that the model promoted intensive dairying compared to the earlier dairying practices prevalent in Indian villages. The high input dairying model replaced the diverse local breed of animals with artificially inseminated breed that was more vulnerable in our climatic conditions, it needed intensive care. They argued that the model promoted feeding practices that meant a constant burden on scarce water and other natural resources that generate limited green fodder. More importantly, some of these critics tried to show the imbalance that AMUL story caused by taking away the

precious milk from rural areas to feed the ever-expanding urban population, thereby depriving rural  children and infants of their only source of nutritional diet. Statistics is cited showing how while on one hand, per capita milk consumption on an average has increased, the same when disaggregated for rural and urban population has not changed. Dr. Kurien and his team saw a ‘conspiracy theory’ in these allegations. They listened to this criticism for over thirty years, saying that the international lobby  interested in promoting exports and dumping their surplus milk in developing countries was at play. They ridiculed this criticism citing similar examples when indigenous efforts that could lead to self-reliance and

economic freedom for countries like India would always be jeopardized by the so-called world supreme powers. India’s experience in nuclear and space science apartheid till the recent years makes one believe in Dr. Kurien’s arguments. However, it is equally true that the White Revolution started and almost ended in areas which were already ‘milk surplus’or ‘milksheds’ (NDDB’s description) that had marketable

surplus of milk. Many parts of Gujarat, Western Maharashtra, Haryana, Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh, flourished but eastern India still depends on either milk tankers that ferry milk in railway or by road or on milk that is reconstituted from milk powder. Vidarbha region of Maharashtra sources its milk from drought prone Ahemadnagar and Solapur regions of western Maharashtra! Rajasthan, Northern  Karnataka, Telangana did not have the kind of success stories that its citizens can proudly narrate. There are many unfinished agendas of the white revolution.

In last few years there have been many hude conflicts between the very institutions that worked in closed

collaboration over the years. There were newspaper reports that even some of the Gujarat Milk Unions wanted to reclaim their AMUL brand from GCMMF and others. The heads of the Institutions that were once proud members of one joint family, motivated by one common mission and advised by Dr. Kurien were pitted against one another. Institutions that championed the cause of cooperation and collaboration have been bitterly competing against one another, call it the era  of privatisation or age of personality clashes, individuals on egotrips, inability of human beings not letting go or whatever. As a member of the AMUL-NDDB-IRMA community and a citizen of Anand which opened a new world view for me and  nurtured me in my formative years of professional life, I feel sad watching the unfolding of these unpleasant events, often the battles being fought in the media. I worry about the future of these institutions, especially when so much human investment has gone into building of these institutions. It has taken years to build these institutions; it will take only a few days to destroy them. However, these shortcomings do not take away the credit of what AMUL, GCMMF, NDDB and the entire ecosystem of the dairy industry did in a span of 60 years.

The AMUL story is more relevant today than it was in 1950s and 60s, especially during the current regime, when market evangelists preach privatization as the only  aradigm that can solve all problems of poverty and inequality. In times when food has become a  commodity for trading, farming an activity that is done by a faceless group of people that are passive recipients of ‘contract’, markets that are ruthless and have no space or time for the small and the marginalized, economies that grow at 9% leaving behibd a  vast number of its constituents and financial systems that collapse like a pack of cards leaving the poor more vulnerable, the AMUL cooperative model of enterprise offers a viable choice between the private and the public sector, a humane and empowering mechanism for a larger number of farmers, aa model enterprizethat can combine efficiency  and business effectiveness and still can meet the aspirations of its members-producers. AMUL offers many valuable learnings for the present as also the past. AMUL is thus a Amulya (very precious) experience that we need to learn from.

Thanks to these pioneers of AMUL in independent India; my son, a representative of the new generation of Indians, was fortunate to learn his first alphabets – A for AMUL  and of course M for Milk…! (Photo Courtesy: NDDB)

Dr. Ajit Kanitkar works as a Programme officer with FORD Foundation in New Delhi. He is working in the development sector for the last twenty years. Financial access and livelihood promotion are the two key areas of his expertise. <ajitjyoti@vsnl.com>