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
