Four decades ago, the then president of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad, laid the foundation stone of a modern dairy, the dairy of the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producer's Union. The inspiration for the dairy, which came into existence after a struggle against great odds, was provided by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Morarji Desai. Tribhuvandas Patel, with his dedication and integrity, was the power behind the farmer's organisation.

Varghese Kurien, then hardly 33, gave the professional management skills and necessary thrust to the cooperative. Over the years the cooperative prospered. Later, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was to give further impetus to the dairy cooperatives by inviting Dr Kurien to replicate what came to be known as the Anand Pattern, after the township of Anand, in Gujarat.

The fascinating saga of the success of first AMUL and then Operation Flood, which was to make India a major milk producing country, has been told by M.V. Kamath in all its complexity. It is an exciting piece of work and a story that has never been told before, rich in anecdotes and revelations of how India's White Revolution became possible.

M.V. KAMATH, 73, a senior columnist and commentator on a whole range of national and international issues is an author of over 35 books on diverse subjects such as journalism, travel, history and culture, biography, politics and philosophy. Starting his career in journalism, after a brief stint as a chemist, Kamath has successively worked as a reporter in the Free Press Journal, editor of Free Press Bulletin and Bharat Jyoti, Contributing Editor United Asia and Sunday Editor of The Times of India.

A former president of the Bombay Union of Journalists, Kamath is a founder-member of the Foreign Correspondents Association, Washington DC and has covered every important international gathering between 1953 and 1978. He retired in 1981 as editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India and currently writes for over a dozen newspapers and journals. He is actively connected with a number of social and public institutions in Bombay and Karnataka and was recently nominated as member of the Executive Board of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education.

The fascinating saga of the success of first AMUL and then Operation Flood, which was to make India a major milk producing country, has been told by M.V. Kamath in all its complexity. It is an exciting piece of work and a story that has never been told before, rich in anecdotes and revelations of how India's White Revolution became possible.

Back to Entertainment