** spoiler alert ** Wow! Here is the story of a man who turned India from a milk importing country to self-sufficient and the largest producer of milk in about three decades!
This man was interested in physics and metallurgy, but was ‘forced’ to study dairy engineering by a bureaucrat under a Govt. of (British) India scholarship to study in Michigan State University. Returning to Independent India, he was posted to a good for nothing government dairy in a sleepy town of Gujarat. He went there only because, if he refused, he would owe the government 30,000 rupees that was paid as his scholarship.
And then, remaining is destiny.
He quit his government job as he successfully persuaded officials that government was paying him for doing nothing. As he was leaving the place, he was in turn persuaded by Tribhuvandas Patel to run the cooperative dairy that serves farmers in the district.
He embarked on a mission to make India a self-sufficient country in milk production. As with genuine missionaries, success is only inevitable, in spite of numerous obstacles they face. He empowered farmers to establish cooperatives in their villages, districts and states, and helped them market their products across India through Amul brand. And received well deserved awards like Ramon Magsaysay and Padma Vibhushan.
Very interesting is how multinationals like Nestle and dominant milk-surplus countries like New Zealand tried to sabotage the mission through various means. And why food aid is bad and only helps multinationals in possibly creating a need and later prying upon the ‘need’.
Nestle’s demeaning attitude towards ‘natives’, New Zealand’s entitlement to dairy market, Europe’s ‘food aid’, Pakistan’s piracy of Operational Flood proposal, to mention a few, were the clutches/problems he had to break out of to make the nation self-sufficient in milk and milk products.
Barring a few bureaucrats and politicians at the top who helped him run things his way and stood behind him, bureaucrats and politicians were generally against handing control to the farmers. The way he fought bureaucracy and multinationals was outstanding. Unfortunately the successor he chose deviated from the very principles he believed in, so it’s a dream that’s not fully realized.
Inspiring story of a great nationalist! And this is what democracy should be.
