Kurien ends NDDB innings

Kurien’s 33-year long association with NDDB and a 50 year long dedication to the milk cooperatives has been successful in enabling India to emerge as the largest producer of milk in the world today. This has been made possible by the concerted efforts of the NDDB wherein the milk produced by millions of poor milk producers in lakhs of villages has been channeled to modern processing plants through producer owned dairy cooperatives.

This has benefited consumers immensely with milk and milk products being madeavailable at affordable prices. Further, NDDB has not wavered away from its task and has faced the might of multinational giants, like Hindustan Lever and Britannia.

Even today, NDDB continues to play a pivotal role in the dairy development of the country. There are 10 million milk producer families organised into 75,000 village cooperatives owning 170 modern cooperative dairy plants which are organised under 22 state marketing federations.

The network produces 12 million litres of milk a day and markets processed milk and milk products in all cities and towns of India. Over 150 million rupees are paid to rural milk producers on a daily basis for their produce by these cooperatives.

Milk, says the statement, is considered to be the most valued agricultural commodity, even surpassing wheat, rice, oilseeds and other agricultural crops.

There is some confusion over whether the government would consider appointing a bureaucrat or an insider. The thinking stems from the fact that this is perhaps the onlyindustry where the cooperatives dominate the market against competition from MNCs and other private firms. Kurien has been under pressure in the past to retain his place at the top of the organisation he literally built with his hands, but he always came through such controversial moves to replace him almost entirely on the strength of the unrelenting support that he got from the common people connected with the NDDB movement, especially the dairy-farmers all over the country.