Milkman academic revolutionary

You people know the cow has two ends and one is more important than the other, but don’t know which end that is,” said the member of the board of governors of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), to a group of us young faculty at a lunch following a board meeting in the mid-1970s. We kept quiet not just because he was a board member, but because he was Verghese Kurien. This was my introduction to the one who was already a legend of dairy development.
Kurien’s achievements in his chosen field are so monumental that his equally pathbreaking effort in another field, professional education, is treated merely as a footnote, if at all mentioned. It would be a fitting tribute to the man who passed away at the age of 90 on September 9 to recall and acknowledge them.
I continued to call on Kurien regularly after the tumultuous first encounter, for research and related purposes. I wanted to interview him in April 1979, when I was working in a leading economic daily. He graciously offered a leisurely lunch, at the end of which he asked me whether I would help him in starting an institute of rural management at Anand. I did not commit immediately. A couple of days later I found an invitation to join the board of the new institution, followed by a call from his Mumbai office with return tickets for my wife and me to visit Anand a couple of weeks later.
That was how I became a member of the team (albeit a very junior one!) of Kurien and the late Dr Kamla Chowdhry as the founding trio of the now well-known Institute of Rural Management at Anand (IRMA) in June 1979. Kurien was the chief patron and chairman, Chowdhry was the godmother-mentor and I was the general dogsbody, which was a great working arrangement. I interacted intensely with Kurien in the first two and a half years of IRMA as its head. My association with him continued throughout the next 30 years, leaving me much the wiser and richer for it.
On my very first day in Anand, Kurien talked to me long and seriously. He said that he was determined to see the institute become a reality, come what may, and I was not to worry about money or outside criticism. I had no reason to doubt the man who had built and successfully run the world’s first plant to dry buffalo milk in the face of received global wisdom that it could not be done. Buoyed by his commitment, I told him that it would take a year to have the institute running in response to his question, expecting him to provide me some guidance, staff and other resources. “Good”, he said, “I will hold you to it”, and gave me a slim file, before waving me off. The next day, two members of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) staff came to me on secondment (I was to learn later that they were not wanted by any divisions within the board). I lived that year dangerously, breathing a sigh of relief only when we had the first batch of students on our makeshift campus two days ahead of the deadline.
The late Ravi Matthai, the first full-time director of IIMA, and Kurien’s cousin, was on the IRMA board. I had grown close to Matthai towards the end of my IIMA days. I sought his advice on how to manage the interface with the board and especially the chairman. “You have a tough job on hand, with a resident chairman, who is known for his autocratic ways,” he said. “I had milder chairmen, who were never on campus except for board meetings. I wish you luck,” he concluded.
I did not need it. Kurien had said that funds, relations with the outside world and the external appearance of the buildings were his domain (meaning he would brook no interference), but I was free to do anything else. He told me that his own chairman at Amul, the late Tribhuvandas Patel, a sagacious Gandhian, had told him that Patel would publicly back Kurien no matter what and would make his displeasure, if any, known only in private. Kurien was to proceed on his own, unless explicitly told otherwise. He proposed the same arrangement with me for IRMA and never once deviated from it. My colleagues and successors had similar tales to recount.
Kurien scoffed at the expression academic freedom, but his actions ensured that he respected it. He played no role in faculty selection, curriculum design, admissions policy and practice, conduct of teaching. When asked why he chose not to involve himself in these decisions, he politely said that these matters were in good hands. It was this protection that enabled IRMA to gain credibility through its independent research, often critical of NDDB, and not confined to the priorities of its benefactors. Kurien ensured the independence of the institution by giving it a large corpus of funds and ensuring wide representation in its parent organisation, the IRMA Society.
Despite the close association of many of its early personnel with IIMA, IRMA successfully distanced itself from its illustrious neighbour to create its own space, avoiding the clone tag in the bargain. Its alumni have been recognised as pioneers in their fields. Its research brought forth sponsorship from bodies such as the World Bank and various UN agencies. Within a decade, IRMA was reckoned among the premier professional institutions of the country, a position it continues to enjoy even today. There can be no better tribute to Kurien’s vision that the grand success of a business he created, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, is today headed by R.S. Sodhi, one of the first alumni of his other creation, IRMA.
Kurien’s copybook was blotted by the controversial circumstances of his departure from IRMA. This was of a piece with his running feud with NDDB and his own hand-picked successor after his retirement.
“There are many ways to skin a cat, but we know one and we follow it,” Kurien used to say when asked about his dogged approach. Unfortunately, that way did not include fading away gracefully, leaving only the charming grin behind.

The writer taught at IIM Ahmedabad and helped set up the Institute of Rural Management, Anand. He writes on economic and policy issues.