Dr V Kurien. A tribute.

Thank You Dr V Kurien..... A personal tribute

(Picture alongside is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verghese_Kurien)

First impressions:

It must have been sometime during the years between 1964 and 1967 that my father, Lt Col B Papanna, who was posted as AA&QMG at the EME school in Baroda took my brother and me to visit the milk powder plant at Anand. My father had been there a couple of times before and he, along with his Commanding Officer, Brig Eugene, had met with and befriended Dr Verghese Kurien. I remember my father was extremely impressed and promised to take us to Anand. That’s how one fine after noon we landed there. Dr Kurien took us around the plant and offered us milk 'wafers' (before it was powdered) and then took us home for lunch. There I met his daughter- around the same age as me (I must have been 10 or 11). He told us some stories and then left us to listen to stories on a large radio. But something about him stuck in my little impressionable mind. I have no idea. But I do remember his booming voice- it had such pride, and his penetrating eyes- full of warm sincerity. 

Soon after, my father was posted away to Sikkim- those days a non-family station, so mother and all of us had to stay back in Baroda. Shortly after, my mother was taken seriously ill with meningitis and hospitalized. Dad was asked to rush back from Sikkim. But the intervening period was one where my childhood Asthma had ensured that I would spend far more time at home in bed then out in the playing fields with other children. My mind acquired an intense curiosity and I raided the Army Officer's Mess library for anything I could read. I read everything- children's books, periodicals, anything that the librarian would allow me to borrow. Those days every army unit showed a couple of movies a week at the outdoor stadiums. There in neatly sorted rows with separate enclosures for NCOs, JCOs and Officers we watched some Hindi film or some English one. Every film came with a Films Division documentary attached before the movie. These documentaries showed the new young nation unfolding- a Nehru busy exhorting everyone to do away with "Chalta hai" attitude, building, as he called it, the "temples" of modern India- Hydel projects and factories for steel etc. 

Post the war with Pakistan in 1967, a small frail man became the prime minister of India- Lal Bahadur Shastri. We children were electrified with the slogan he taught us- Jai Jawan Jai Kisan. Then one of the FD docus. must have reported about how he spent 3 days and nights at Anand listening to Dr V Kurien and his milk co-operative model. I have no clear idea of the source of this information. But somehow it stuck in my child mind. I started following Dr V Kurien in newspapers. Just as I had started following another legend in the making: JRD Tata. 

For me these two persons became the symbols for my emerging aspirations and I hero-worshipped them. In my mind they both stood for what I wanted to aspire to: polite, courteous, extremely talented, very hard working, straight, and impeccably honest.  As the son of an army officer who had built a reputation for incorruptibility and hard work, my own heroes were those that espoused those values in abundance. Plus both JRD Tata and Dr V Kurien were men of vision and had enormous charisma. To my child’s mind full of noble ideals, they symbolized all that was desirable for my future.

Thus it was that growing up as a young man I was awed and besotted with these two great men. I followed them in all media I could access, cut out pictures of them from newspapers and pasted them in my books and so on.

Years later these great men were to play a role in shaping my career and my life.  

1986:

I had been in the advertising industry since 1982, after having started my working life, in 1976, with Nelco, a company in which Ratan Tata also commenced his Tata Corporate career as Director in Charge.  In the October of 1981, at the relatively young age of 25 I married and soon thereafter in search for enough money to buy a home in Mumbai, I landed in Muscat. But shortly after, in the middle of 82 I returned to pursue a strong desire to manage brands and pursue a career in marketing and communications. I joined advertising with a young agency called Trikaya advertising. Primarily because they were willing to make me Group Head on the young brand Thums up and it’s older sister Gold Spot.  In the years that I was associated with these brands they became best sellers and I know when I look back I can claim, with some justifiable pride, my role in their growth as brands. In 1986 I found myself at Rediffusion and not so happy.  Then the person who had been introduced to me by a ex colleague of Nelco (Raj Kaul), Sumedh Shah sounded me out on the position of Vice President of an old advertising agency, Advertising and Sales Promotions (ASP)- a CK Birla group company, that had a long and glorious history- particularly with the brand Amul.

My eyes lit up at the word Amul.  But the agency was a shell of what it once was; it had no talent of any repute in any discipline. I was told that the management wanted the agency rebuilt brick by brick. More likely, that its main account- Amul – had possibly threatened to take its business away. At any rate I said if I had the chance to rebuild the agency with a completely new team and a budget to do so then I would be interested. My condition was that I would like to meet Amul before I confirmed my acceptance.

So a meeting was set up with the Gujarat Co-op Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) at Anand.  Sometime around Aug-Sept of 1986, J (Jog) Chatterjee- the then aging President of ASP, Sumedh Shah and I arrived at Anand. We met with Mr. Bakshi, the then MD of GCMMF and various officials (Bharat Vyas was then an young aggressive in-charge of purchases). In the afternoon a meet was setup with Dr V Kurien. All my senses were tingling- a chance to meet the great man himself- a childhood dream come true.

During that fateful meet he was everything I had idolized. I told him that an opportunity to work alongside him was my primary motive to even consider the ASP assignment. He told me straight away that while ASP had been instrumental years ago in creating the Amul brand, the agency was dying and did not have what it would take to help Amul stave off competition in the new market conditions and that they were going to move the Amul business out of ASP. I was stunned. I asked him if he could hold his decision until March next year and then review the situation. If he still thought the same at the end of six months then he should shift the brand out of ASP. I told him that without this opportunity I would not consider the ASP assignment. He was gracious. He told me that given the history, he would wait for the six months. And If I turned it around he would present me to the board of GCMMF and NDDB. I was ecstatic.

In those six months I felt I had a new life; I put my heart in re-developing the old agency. Brought in several bright sparks, reviewed all Amul advertising and made new recommendations, Produced high quality work that was soon recognized in the industry, made several trips to Anand.

Yes, at the end of that six month period, Dr Kurien not only kept the brands at ASP, he added new products (cheese spread, etc.) to our range of brands. He loved our work and as promised he took me to the GCMMF board meets and showed off the work.

For me an opportunity to work with Dr Kurien was unbelievable and I reveled in it, learning by the second from the great man.

1987-1990:

In the three year period, ASP Mumbai became recognized as a center of excellence, we were written about, won accolades, ad club prizes and so on. But the one thing that stays in my mind is the growth of my own mind during interactions with Dr V Kurien. (Alas, he never could recall my childhood visit- though he remembered Brig Eugene very well!)

During those years at several meets he told us wonderful stories.

The combination of Dr Amrita Patel (daughter of veteran congress minister, HM Patel) and Dr V Kurien at NDDB was absolutely enthralling. It drove NDDB and GCMMF radically. From this fount sprang dozen’s of state co-operatives- Verka in Punjab, Vijaya in AP, Nandini in Karnataka, Milma in Kerala- all born out of the same model.

Many other products and their creators came to Dr V Kurien for his support. Once a renowned, but just retired trade unionist came to meet Dr Kurien. He was settled in the seaside town of Porbander. There he saw that salt farmers walked bare feet from one saltpan to another carrying camel skin bags of water. The salt got into the cracks in their feet and when they died their feet wouldn’t burn, at cremation, due to the salt in them. So the feet had to be thrown out at sea. He said the salt farmers were paid 6 paise per kilo of salt and lived in shacks by the sea, while the sethias sold salt to wholesalers at 60 paise per kilo. He sought Dr Kurien’s intervention. Moved, Dr Kurien set in motion NDDB’s entry into salt as a co-op. Immediately inviting the attention of Tata and other industrialists. He was dead set to put up up a 400000-ton salt factory to end the dominance of commercial firms and wholesalers over the salt trade.

He told us of the founder of Polson’s butter, which was the dominant brand when Amul entered the fray and how the brand declined. But when he spotted the frail founder of Polson’s during a time when he had lost his fortune, he invited him and also set up a statue on Anand to respect the founder of modern salted butter in India.

The chairman of Nestle offered him a position of choice in Switzerland and untold riches in order to abandon his foray into chocolate. But was stunned to see the ultra modern chocolate factory setup by Amul.

The same story for tetra pack milk.

An outstanding raconteur, he would love to regale us with stories of the logo of NDDB (a Bull)- why is it a bull and not a cow he would ask- and with a flourish answer that unless the bull did his work the cow wouldn’t yield milk!

He hated the typical urban and filmy view of farmers as singing in fields at harvest. He considered rural folk far more clever then urban folk and reminded us often that most of the wiliest politicians come form rural India. He told us that after the artificial insemination center was setup, he would organize trips for rural women and men to see it. There rural folk were shown how semen is stored and how it was used to impregnate cows to generate hi-yielding cows. He told of how rural folks saw this and understood that it could mean the same among humans- giving a push to population control programmes among rural populations.

The tributes I have seen in papers after his death do not reflect the changes he wrought in rural India.  You have to visit Anand and see what the milk co-op movement has brought in.

At one time he and Dr Amrita Patel decided that they must help the farmers of psyllium husk (Isabgol) by setting up a modern plant to manufacture finished products. That would enable farmers to earn a better price than selling their husk as raw material to US firms who reaped profits from converting the husk into powders/tablets etc.

He called me and briefed me. Since I had had some experience of Isabgol for a GIDC unit, I ventured that before NDDB could take up the project an extensive market research was needed. He did not believe in market research. He used to say, ask your wife and I shall ask my wife. That’s all the research we need. But I persisted. Finally he accepted to conduct a large-scale research. I commissioned IMRB. The findings showed a very mixed market for laxatives.  We churned the data in every possible way.

Some years later Thomas Puliyel of IMRB told me he had met Dr Kurien and was told that he had never believed in MR until one young man, Nishit Kumar, came and did some brilliant research for them on the laxative market in India and convinced him not to launch any large-scale unit in that sector.  After that, Dr Kurien told Thomas, he became a believer in MR.

It wasn’t just milk and milk products. The Mother Dairy initiative in Delhi for vegetables and fruits – brought low cost fresh vegetables and fruits to average Dilliwalas and changed the market economics in that city.

At one time we did some study and went to him with the concept that his splitting the Amul brand among different agencies (Radeus headed by adman Kurien and DaCunha headed by Sylvester Da Cunha- both fallouts of ASP had several brands) wasn’t such a hot idea since the brand was the same. We came up with the concept that Amul needs a composite branding- that product related advertising could easily be dissociated from Amul Brand advertising. At that time I had a copywriter at ASP that I had pulled out of Bangalore- Kanan (he hated being called by the common pronunciation of that spelling in India and preferred the westernized ‘Canon’). Kanan came up with a line based on something he had originally written for HMT as “Times of India” but one that was never bought by HMT: Taste of India. Shortly after I left ASP, Amul launched this campaign.

Once we went to him and suggested that since Amul was not willing to advertise its Milkspray formula for infants (IMF), perhaps he should consider that the space occupied in medical and kirana shops by Amulspray as legit advertising space. He asked us how. What we had done was to redesign the Amulspray tin design in pastels with a teddy bear on it against a white background. Then we did research using dummy packs. We presented our findings to him. He was quite stunned. Then approved it. That change in the pack design had a huge impact in the market. Some female activists wrote to him that he had made the pack “irresistible” to mothers and they were buying the brand and abandoning breast-feeding!!!

He told me I was changing 30 years of his work!

As a manager he was very through and kept telling his team that when they hired outside consultants they should listen or else they should do the work themselves. This insistence on professional approach is one of his legacies.

A very simple person, he was happy to live in the simplicity of Anand. The Mercedes car was an unusual aberration. So we asked him one day about it. He told us the story of how the first car was a gift and was insisted upon. Then the day it arrived his driver started the car and drove it into the gate. The car was sent for repairs but was immediately replaced with a brand new Merc. On the very first day, his driver drove it and crashed it again. The car was then replaced yet again, and believe it, the nervous driver yet again crashed it! That, he told us, was the story of how his driver had crashed three Mercs. on their very first drive!!

His relationship with Ravi J Mathai (whose son Vivek, I think still runs GCMMF’s Mumbai office), founder director of IIM Ahmadabad was legendary.  We were told that when John Mathai told Dr Kurien that IIMA graduates did not want to work in the rural sector, Dr Kurien persuaded him to join him in setting up IIRMA- Indian Institute of Rural Management in Anand.  I was invited once to lecture there and I found the campus just as invigorating as the IIM in Ahmedabad. This was his pride. 

One of the things that was always on display with Dr Kurien was his huge vision for India. He was out and out nationalist. He did not much care for the crafty politicians but had huge faith in ordinary Indians. He believed India could achieve what no other nation has achieved without ever pandering to cunning industrialists. One of the untold stories of Dr Kurien is how he has fathered the modern Indian Co-operative movement. Of course the Co-operative wasn’t something new. Gandhiji was always extolling virtues of the model. But Dr Kurien recognized the extraordinary efforts of politicians in wresting control of any body of rural folk.  Dr Kurien was a past master at understanding the methods politicians used to manipulate elections at co-op societies. And he resisted all efforts, over the decades, of politicians who tried to take control of GCMMF and the milk producer’s co-ops. Just look at the emulation of the Gujarat model across India and it is clear that this is an extraordinary achievement.

In fact take a look at the concept of a marketing co-op- the GCMMF was setup as an alternative to the diabolical control of distribution networks by businesses. Dr Kurien determined that milk producer  co-ops should focus on production and could not understand market dynamics. He was defied to set up an independent marketing network and he did.  GCMMF was setup in 1973 and never looked back. He was clear that moving milk and milk products effectively into the market to reach the smallest consumer was critical to the success of milk producer co-ops.

The story of Dr Kurien’s involvement with Oil has not been mentioned in the newspapers at all.  Gujarat has been India’s dominant producer of oilseeds particularly groundnut. The state’s politics has always been controlled by ‘Telia Rajas’ – as much as Maharashtra politics was/is controlled by Cotton and Sugar barons.

The traditional practice of ‘telia rajas’ was to buy oil seeds at hugely depressed prices when the crop comes into the market, and then store the crushed oil until a huge scarcity built-up.  Besides rampant mixing of oils- even now in India, oil adulteration can only be determined at 2-3 centres across India.

Dr Kurien told us of how you can call up the oil exchange in Mumbai and ask for the prevailing price only to be asked if the price sought was for 2-3-5 or for 4-6 (2 parts castor oil, 3 parts vegetable oils and 5 parts ground nut oil and so on). The oil mafia, as he put it was bleeding India. He was determined to end it.

The union government gave him the mandate by setting up a ‘Market Intervention Operation’ (MIO) and asking NDDB to manage it. NDDB conducted in-depth studies and came up with a plan. I remember arguing with Dr Kurien that given the no-adverse health impact, the mixing of certain vegetable oils should be allowed provided the condition was that the packaging could not be tampered with and the labeling indicated everything clearly. There was a lot of debate and a lot of studies on this point. Dr Kurien and his staff at NDDB were already developing just such an approach.

Thus was born Dhara-the tetra packed oil- that was pilfer proof and also offered consumers a choice of cheaper mixed vegetable oils. NDDB created a huge furore with its oil management and marketing operations. The oil mafia tried everything to sabotage the operations – at one time trying to set fire to the modern Dhara tetra pack factory.

For the first time consumers were told clearly the difference between filtered (oil crushed and filtered using simple cloth filters) oil and refined (sediments are removed by using chemical solvents) oil. (I shifted to Dhara’s double filtered groundnut oil immediately-and we never looked back). The MIO was not just about Dhara. It was about the management of imported oil stocks procured by the government.  The godowns where these were stocked became targets for oil mafia.  Enormous pressure was brought upon Dr Kurien to abandon the MIO or to change it and declare where oil stocks were kept and how much. Dr Kurien steadfastly withstood all pressures.

1990:

In 1990, after a series of run ins with CK Birla’s remote managers from Kolkatta, I decided that I must leave ASP and attempt to start on my own. I met with Mr. Kurien of Radeus advertising. He advised me to go meet Dr Kurien and seek his approval. I went with great trepidation to Dr Kurien in Anand.

Dr Kurien and Dr Amrita Patel both heard me out and he promptly agreed to support me with a massive press campaign. He offered me a campaign to counter the oil mafia via a series of press advertisements across India. I accepted the challenge and returned to Mumbai to develop the “Myths and Reality” campaign on MIO. Dr Kurien was gracious enough to write to leading publishers guaranteeing them payments for campaign released through the new, as yet unregistered advertising agency, Folklore Communications and management Services Pvt. Ltd.

Nothing could have boosted a new agency as much as that campaign.  I personally wrote the advt. copy and discussed in detail with Dr Kurien. The campaign had an immediate fallout- threats were received from oil mafia everywhere. Many places NDDB staff were beaten up. But the public was told the truth of what was happening and encouraged NDDB. Ordinary consumers wrote appreciating NDDB’s efforts and the moment of crises for MIO was over. Dhara was here to stay.

For me, the campaign allowed me to launch an agency. We fought with publications for rates. Some months later we wrote to NDDB offering to return some staggering sum as savings generated by our negotiation with publications. The head of NDDB’s communication, told me it was an unprecedented move and NDDB deeply appreciated it.   That was the impact of the values that associating with Dr Kurien had had on me.

Post my stint with Ratan Tata at Nelco I was very proud of my integrity and the value systems I had imbibed with the Tata’s’. But in my association with Dr Kurien those values had been raised to a nationalistic fervor.  I believed in the India story with a deep conviction. Primarily because of Dr Kurien.

As he did to millions of others, Dr Kurien shaped my mind and my values and built a belief in me that we in India can achieve anything.

Much was made out in the media of his fallout with Dr Amrita Patel at NDDB. But it wasn’t some huge ego issue as it was made out. He was opposed to NDDB launching brands in direct competition to Amul. Dr Amrita Patel, on the other hand, believed the competition would only help the co-op brands in becoming better brands.  Both of them were right of course.

Years later, around 2002, when I had just entered the development sector, I had the chance to visit Dr Kurien in Anand at his IIRMA office. He had retired from NDDB and was badly affected by Alzheimer’s. He spoke and recalled some names but sadly he couldn’t recall me at all!! I wasn’t affected and could only reflect on what he had meant to me.

 

I see many newspapers and TV channels reporting on the passing away of Dr Kurien but I don’t see the depth in most reporting. Most of it is superficial brushing of the milk story facts. Dr V Kurien has been one of the greatest builders of modern India. He nourished the co-op movement, drove deep stakes for the animal husbandry sector, impacted every market segment of milk and milk products, revolutionized the vegetable markets of Delhi, changed India’s oil industry and brought respect and dignity to the marginal farmer. His contribution to India is immeasurable. It is a measure of his power that no modern politician ever had the guts to bring Dr Kurien into the union ministry and hand over a major ministry to him- so afraid were they of him and his integrity and what it could mean to their little power blocks. (Of course it must be argued that he would never have ventured into politics)

Yes he was acknowledged- to my mind he was the first living person in whose honour the postal department brought out a postage stamp.

Just as we name one street in every city, after Mahatma Gandhi, we ought to name one square in each of India’s half a million villages to honour this great son of India.  Every agricultural college should have a seat named after him and every pack of Amul and NDDB product must carry a tribute to Dr Verghese Kurien.  His story must be part of every school textbook in every language.

Thank you, Dr Verghese Kurien. India will never forget you.

Nishit Kumar p

Sept. 2012