There was a scramble over social media to greet Dr. Verghese Kurian on his 94th birthday. The race to be the first to greet him was first ignited by Google – a doodle on the Google India home page showing the ‘Milkman of India’ with a milk can in his hand as a buffalo looks on and a looped rope lying on the ground saying ‘Google’.
Kurien is remembered as the man behind India’s white revolution who empowered millions of rural poor in Gujarat through the cooperative movement. And many epithets he was used to : Father of the White Revolution, the Milkman of India, and Architect of Operation Flood.
Several notable personalities including Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandra Babu Naidu to Omar Obullah to IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi took to social media to expressing their gratitude to the man who made milk available 24×7 in the country.
N Chandrababu Reddy worte “Remembering architect of white revolution, VK Kurien on his birth anniversary. He laid the foundation for India’s co-operative dairy model.”
Omar Obdullah “Love the Dr Kurien @Google Doodle, very clever.”
Dr U S Awasthi “ #IFFCO pays tribute to#VergheseKurien father of#WhiteRevolution on his birth anniversary. Implementation through#COOP model commendable.”
Amul has posted on twitter all the top tweets made on this occasion. Some of the interesting tweets read “Thank You Verghese Sir for changing so many lives #Salute to you !! #Amul #WhiteRevolution #India #TweetToFarmer.”
Another one says ”Now we get 24 hrs Milk thro out India & AMUL is an Intl. Brand Clocking 25,000 Crores ! “
A third one “On the birth anniversary of #VergheseKurien Hope there are more co-operatives like Anand Milk Union Limited or AMUL #FatherOfWhiteRevolution”
In May 1949, Kurien was appointed as the dairy engineer at the Government Research Creamery, a milk powder factory, in Anand. Just as he was preparing to leave Tribhuvandas Patel, then chairman of Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers Union, popularly known as “Amul”, with whom Kurien had developed a good friendship, requested him to stay back in Anand for some more time and help him organise his co-operative society’s dairy equipment.
And what followed is now history!