The flood of media eulogies for the late Dr. Verghese Kurien, former chairman of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF, owner of brand Amul) and architect of Operation Flood (which transformed milk-deficient India into the world’s largest producer of milk and dairy products), is in sharp contrast with his vilification in the media three decades ago.
When Operation Flood was getting into its stride in the early 1980s, Pritish Nandy, then editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India, in his eminently questionable wisdom published a cover story in the Weekly trashing Dr. Kurien’s pioneering work. Written by Claude Alvares, an archetypical jholawala, the multi-page cover feature alleged that Kurien was an agent of foreign dairy multinationals, paid off to wreck India’s nascent milk cooperatives. The weekly’s story generated a storm in Parliament, with communists and fellow travelling leftists seizing the opportunity to sabotage Operation Flood.
The commotion prompted your correspondent — then editor of BusinessWorld — to hotfoot it to Anand (Kurien’s HQ) to investigate. In a rejoinder cover story titled ‘Operation Flood: Case for the defence’, BW revealed that far from being a mole of foreign dairy MNCs, Kurien was an implacable foe of foreign multinational and urban private companies which bought farmers’ milk production at distress prices and sold it dear. Through an ingenious strategy of purchasing the flush winter months’ milk production of farmers (whom he organised into cooperatives) at remunerative prices and converting surpluses into durable milk powder utilising high technology, and subsequently ‘recombinating’ it into liquid form in the lean summer months, Kurien succeeded in stimulating the growth of rural milk cooperatives and augmenting the supply of milk and dairy products in urban India beyond the imagination of intellectually barren bureaucrats and lefties. Hence the vilification.
Fortunately, the public cottoned on to this disinformation campaign and Kurien, who also promoted the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (1979) metamorphosed into a national icon and hero. But it was a near thing and Operation Flood might never have happened if these faux intellectuals and lefties had succeeded.
Great institutions builder
Even at the risk of this tittle-tattle page transforming into an obituaries column, the death of an architect/engineer of several great institutions of higher education must not remain unsung. Prof. N.S. Ramaswamy, the founder director of National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Bombay; the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies; the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (estb. 1973); and CARTMAN (Centre for Action, Research & Technology for Man, Animal and Nature), passed away in Bangalore after a brief illness on September 17.
Prof. Ramaswamy’s monumental institution-building achievements were seldom mentioned, let alone lauded after he relinquished office as director of IIM-B in 1983, and transformed into an animal and nature lover and promoter-director of Cartman in Bangalore. Indeed most of the work he did within Cartman — particularly his invention of an animal-friendly bullock cart — was studiously ignored by government, industry and even by the great institutions he had built from ground-up.
In EducationWorld, we particularly remember this visionary and out-of-the-box thinker. Way back in November 1999 the very first issue of this publication was formally released by him. Moreover in the early years when EW was friendless and aroused the hostility, rather than gratitude of selfish leaders of Indian industry who were — and remain — ignorant of the vital importance of a vibrant and constantly improving education system for national development, Prof. Rama-swamy always offered praise and words of encouragement, and often contributed insightful columns. A committed educationist who believed the prime purpose of education is to build character, integrity and commitment to larger causes, Ramaswamy died a disillusioned man, lamenting the steep decline of morality and ethics in public life and of the nation’s middle class.
The sad end of a great life. RIP.
Faint praise damnation
As a qualified albeit lapsed, barrister, business India publisher Ashok Advani should know that there are two types of untruths — suppressio veri (suppression of truth) and suggestio falsi (false suggestion). In the latest Business India to commemorate the 900th issue of India’s very first business magazine which took the initiative to transform the groveling supplicants of Indian industry into men of substance and national heroes, this is what he has to say about your correspondent who was the first editor and driver of the now tired, lacklustre business fortnightly: “Dilip Thakore was our first managing editor. He had been working at the bar with me and had got tired of working as an underpaid junior lawyer.”
The suppressio veri is that I joined Business India after six years of experience in industry (Rallis India). Moreover I wasn’t merely the managing editor in an administrative capacity (suggestio falsi). In fact, I was the editor-in-chief and led from the front, writing 54 cover/lead stories in the 66 issues published during my tenure, apart from fully rewriting the entire magazine. Attracted by the success of Business India, some of the biggest names of Indian industry launched competitive publications. But the Economic Scene (Tata) and Eastern Economist (Birla; editor: Swaminathan Aiyar) fell by the wayside in this grueling marathon. But after BI was firmly on the rails, I was ousted in a boardroom coup. Unkindest cut: I was denied my gratuity of Rs.9,000 on a legal quibble.
Admittedly, this recitation sounds boastful, for which my apologies. Yet this old wound is being re-opened to make the larger point that the pervasive practice of damning with faint or grudging praise — de rigueur in India Inc, and the media business in particular — needs to be condemned and abrogated. I am proud I was the first editor of Business India and Businessworld, India’s pioneer business magazines, which in my opinion catalysed the liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in 1991. Why is this not unsubstantial achievement — a historical fact —unacknowledged or damned with faint praise?