Amul: the invaluable Kurien legacy

Dr Verghese Kurien, the man behind Operation Flood, passed away on 9^th September 2012 at the age of 90. In 1949, Kurien began the transformation of the dairy co-operative model in Anand into a nationwide institution. Thanks largely to him, India is the biggest producer of milk today. Many Indian prime ministers have recognized Kurien’s contributions, from Jawaharlal Nehru who inaugurated the first dairy “factory”, to Lal Bahadur Shastri who made Kurien chairman of the National Dairy Development Board for his “extraordinary and dynamic leadership”, to Manmohan Singh who described him as an icon of India’s cooperative movement and the dairy industry. In 1989, when Dr Kurien was awarded the World Food Prize, its founder Dr Norman Borlaug called him “one of the world’s great agricultural leaders of this century.”

We are all proud of the dairy legacy Dr Kurien has left us. But we’re equally proud of the brand behind that legacy: Amul, which comes from the Sanskrit word amulya, meaning invaluable. Amul was at the heart of the milk movement, being sold in pouches, UHT packs and as solid infant milk food. However, to cater to a largely vegetarian nation that literally drinks milk, Amul expanded to offer products such as cheese, paneer, yoghurt, ice cream and shrikhand. But the product that has caught the fancy of the nation is Amul butter.

Perhaps the brand is so popular because of its mascot, the loveable, wide-eyed girl in polka-dots who introduced us to “utterly butterly Amul” in 1967. Since then, she has appeared on hoardings across the nation posing as a cinema actress (Madhuri Dixit for example), politician, cricketer, villager, artist, wrestler or just herself, and making tongue-in-cheek observations on subjects of topical interest. The nation waits with bated breath for the hoarding to change and reveal what the sassy girl chooses as the next target of her wit (revisit this ad campaign at http://www.amul.com/m/amul-hits).

Or perhaps we love Amul butter for its remarkable taste. After all, I grew up and sideways – often adding more inches horizontally than vertically between two measurements – on it. Health and weight were synonyms in my mother’s dictionary and the fact that we did not eat much bread did not impede her: she would generously spread Amul butter on my chappatis, roll it into my masala dosai and mix it into my uppumma.

I remember the agony when I first moved to Singapore and tried three different brands of butter.

“Is this it?”  I asked my wife, my voice choking with emotion, “Are we doomed to life without Amul?”

“Yes, and I’m happy. You eat too much of it.” She smiled in an evil, Gabbar-Singh way.

Then I discovered the grocery section in Mustafa and life was complete again. Pointing to shelves replete with Amul butter, I grinned at my wife in a marked manner, demonstrating that he who laughs last laughs best.

Or perhaps sheer nostalgia is behind our love for Amul. I once asked someone I had just met how long he had been living in Singapore.

“21 years,” he replied.

“And what brand of butter do you consume?”

“Amul,” he said.

“How come?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, frowning in thought, “I’m just so used to it. When it goes out of stock in Mustafa – as it often does – I will go for days without butter rather than buy a substitute. Coming to think of it,” he continued after a pause, “maybe I love it so much because it represents nostalgia: when it’s not available on the shelf, I remember all the things that used to go out of stock in India, including gas and water, and I feel I’m home again!”

Or perhaps we are all looking for brands that stand for something and we understand the power at the heart of Amul’s cooperative movement.

Maybe it’s a combination of these factors. But whatever the reason, the fact is Amul has remained a beloved icon of a swiftly growing, fast-changing country. For the fourth year in a row, it has been ranked as the No. 1 Indian brand in the Asia’s Top 1000 Brands report by Campaign Asia magazine, ahead of the other Indian brands in the list like Apollo, Kingfisher, Big Bazaar, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India and Airtel.

Thank you, Dr Kurien, for giving us Amul.