Afternoon news

• Dr Varghese Kurien has officially announced his resignation plans

Mumbai, Jun 7: Father of the White Revolution in India, Dr Varghese Kurien on Monday resigned from the chairmanship of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA).

Kurein officially announced his resignation in the city among a large group of reporters about his future plans.

He said that he would be officially sending the resignation when the IRMA Board meets on Thursday. The 84-year-old Kurien has been facing stiff opposition from IRMA board members to quit the chairmanship since a year.
In March this year, Kurein was forced to quit from the chairmanship of Gujarat Milk Marketing Federation (GMMF) after the board members decided to oust him from his post.

Announcing his resignation, Dr. Kurien said, “The genesis of IRMA was in response to the need for rural producers’ organisations for professional managers. For over 57 years that I have been involved with development, I have worked from a simple premise. The farmers know what is best for them, what they need is professional support to help them achieve full development potential. I believe that the success of Amul, which triggered large-scale dairy development efforts making India the top milk-producing country in the world today, can be repeated in many other fields. What we need to do is to help rural producers build institutions owned and controlled by them.”

Speaking about IRMA, he further said, “In IRMA, the two-year course in Rural Management was started to train young women and men to work for farmers and the rural poor. I believe that a co-operative – an enterprise of, by and for users – is the institution that can work best. IRMA trains the youth to be multi-faceted innovators and catalysts of rural change in the broadest sense of the term. More than 2000 rural management professionals trained by IRMA are now working in wide-ranging rural organisations across the country and beyond.”

Recalling his journey from a local Malayali (Keralite) to become the Milkman of India, he further said, “I came to Anand (Gujarat) 57 years ago, to be precise, on Friday, 13th May, 1949.

The government of India sent me to the Government Research Creamery at Anand on my return from the United States after my post-graduate studies at the Michigan State University. Since the government of India had sent me to the United States on a scholarship, immediately after I came to Anand, I realised that there was hardly any work for me at the Research Creamery. And, Anand then was a sleepy small town with hardly any infrastructure. I could not get a place to stay; in fact, being born Christian, a non-vegetarian and a bachelor, no-body was willing to rent me a house. I, therefore, had to stay in the garage of the dairy. I wanted to leave Anand.

However, soon I was lucky to get in touch with great freedom fighters like the founder Chairman of Amul, late Tribhuvandas Patel and Morarji Desai. Patel, for some reason, liked me and got me increasingly involved in the running of the Amul Dairy.

The rest is history. By 1997 India had become the largest milk-producing country in the world, surpassing the United States.”

IRMA was set up to support institutions like Amul. Today, there are more than 11 million cooperative dairy farmers all over India under the Amul-Model Dairy Co-operative.