White revolution (India)

The Amul trinity (left to right): Verghese Kurien, Tribhuvandas Kishibhai Patel, and Harichand Megha Dalaya.

The White Revolution, or Operation Flood, launched on January 13, 1970, was the world's largest dairy development programme and a landmark project of India's National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).[1] It transformed India from a milk-deficient nation into the world's largest milk producer, surpassing the United States in 1998 with about 22.29 percent of global output in 2018.[2][3] Within 30 years, it doubled the milk available per person in India[4] and made dairy farming India's largest self-sustainable rural employment generator.[5] The programme was launched to help farmers direct their own development and to give them control of the resources they create. It also promoted jersey cows and heavily increased lactose intolerance amongst Indians.[citation needed]

Dr Verghese Kurien, the chairman and founder of Amul, was named the Chairman of NDDB by Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. Kurien thrust the programme towards success and has since been recognised as its architect.[6] The making of skim milk powder out of buffalo milk, termed the Anand Pattern Experiment at Amul, was also instrumental to the program's success; the man who made this possible was Harichand Megha Dalaya, alongside Kurien.[7][8] It allowed Amul to compete successfully with cow milk-based suppliers such as Nestle.

  1. ^ Katar Singh (8 June 1999). Rural Development: Principles, Policies and Management. ISBN 81-7036-773-5. Retrieved 24 April 2017.
  2. ^ "India largest milk producing nation in 2010–11: hash". Hindustan Times. 20 December 2011. Archived from the original on 6 October 2012. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  3. ^ "Milk Production by country".
  4. ^ Kurien, Verghese (2007). "India's Milk Revolution: Investing in Rural Producer Organizations". In Narayan, Deepa; Glinskaya, Elena (eds.). Ending Poverty in South Asia: Ideas that work. Washington D.C., USA: (The World Bank). p. 52. ISBN 978-0-8213-6876-3. Retrieved 11 September 2012.
  5. ^ Pendleton, Andrew; Narayanan, Pradeep. "The white revolution : milk in India" (PDF). Taking liberties: poor people, free trade and trade justice. Christian Aid. p. 35. Retrieved 11 September 2012.
  6. ^ "Father of white revolution Verghese Kurien dies". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 2 June 2013.
  7. ^ Kurien, Verghese (2007). "India' s Milk Revolution: Investing in Rural Producer Organizations". In Narayan, Deepa; Glinskaya, Elena (eds.). Ending Poverty in South Asia: Ideas that work. Washington D.C., USA: (The World Bank). p. 47. ISBN 978-0-8213-6876-3. Retrieved 13 January 2021. If there was one technological breakthrough that revolutionized India's organized dairy industry, it was the making of skim milk powder out of buffalo milk. The man who made this possible, and who had the foresight to defy the prevailing technical wisdom, was H. M. Dalaya. While the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union is usually associated with its founder, Tribhuvandas Patel, it was Dalaya who provided the real technical backbone to the Amul organization.
  8. ^ Kurien, Verghese (2007). "India' s Milk Revolution: Investing in Rural Producer Organizations". In Narayan, Deepa; Glinskaya, Elena (eds.). Ending Poverty in South Asia: Ideas that work. Washington D.C., USA: (The World Bank). p. 42. ISBN 978-0-8213-6876-3. Retrieved 13 September 2012.