Category Archives: india
The Journey That I Can Never Forget
Last weekend was an important anniversary for me.
October 13.
That date, in all of its bittersweet glory, is indelibly marked on my brain.
It was the day that I set off on a very long journey, embarking on a fresh, new life to a different continent – with fear and confusion uppermost on my mind.
Picture an unsophisticated, super-naive just-turned seventeen year old girl from quite a few years ago in India.
It was an India that was before economic reforms, its first “shining”/”rising” periods and before we had the emancipated Indian youth of today. Oh yeah, it was also definitely before personal computers, the internet and global connectivity had made their arrival on the scene. I know, I know, that’s tough for some of you young ones to imagine.
And social media meant tea and a newspaper with your neighbor. It was not even a gleam in anyone’s eye. (Hint: Mark Zukerberg – born: May 14, 1984 – had not been conceived. In fact, had his parents even met yet?).
In case you didn’t get it, I’m giving you just enough information so you can guess at the general time frame and visualize that environment. Got it?
So, this girl was a typical teenager but one who had led a fairly sheltered life with a loving and protective family, and therefore you could say that she was not quite grown-up and certainly not worldly yet, especially when compared to similar aged kids of now. Or then.
Before she knew it or could absorb its impact on her future, she found herself engaged to be married to a person that her parents had picked out for her. He happened to live and work in the United States of America, an Indian immigrant in that too-faraway land of dreams.
When she got engaged, she had completed her tenth grade and done a few months of “Pre-University-PUC” in college, essentially the beginning of what would have been her junior (11th) year of high school.
A few months after the engagement and right before the wedding, lo and behold, for the very first time, she actually met the guy who would be her husband. [I know, I know – its simply mind-boggling how this sequence of events unfolded, like it was the dark ages – which it most certainly wasn’t. Even I’m bewildered whenever I think about it! ]
And then, before she knew what hit her, the wedding festivities came and went.
She was left in a complete daze, this teenage bride.
The process to get a green card when you marry a legal immigrant living in the United States takes a protracted amount of time today – a couple of years. If you’re lucky. I have met many people in this situation, always, always complaining about this delay.
That year, however, it took only a few weeks. That young bride, she just wanted to weep in frustration at the speed!
I still remember how she prayed that this milestone would be delayed, wishing that it would take much longer – so she would not have to leave behind her parents, her friends, her family, her country so soon – everything that she was familiar with in her life.
At that point in time, the very last thing she wanted to do was to abandon her comfort zone and race off to that distant and mysterious country and a brand new life.
To make matters worse, an entire army of family members came to the airport in Madras to wish her Bon Voyage. I mean, she was actually leaving all of them! And everyone and their mother (literally!) were weeping away to glory. 😦
How could this have happened?
As she sobbed and boarded her maiden flight (fumbling with her seat belt, not knowing what that contraption was there for, or how to unobtrusively figure out how the darned thing opened and closed…), there was no hope, no joy and very little expectation
Uppermost in her mind were fear, uncertainty and confusion – about what turns her life was about to take.
Landing amid the ocean of chaos that was JFK airport at the other end of the journey was not designed to calm her either. Pure culture shock!
The feelings of that journey are all so strongly etched, that no matter what happened afterwards, the heavy-duty emotions of October 13th endure still. Even more surprising – smaller memories such as the smell of that Air India aircraft when I first entered – even these have not faded away!
Fast forward and retrospect.
Yet, without that unwanted journey many years ago, there’s so much in life that she would have missed out on. (Yes, it’s so easy to say. Now).
Little did the young girl of that time realize that this journey would be one of the best things to happen to her!
That she would reach adulthood away from India and all that she was familiar with, but that everything would work out just fine. That she would survive. And that she would embrace (practically inhale!) each and every break that the land of opportunity would throw her way. And even some that it didn’t.
And that her most precious coup would be creating and nurturing a family, together with that long-ago stranger.
Little did she know.
[Hmmmmmmm…I guess my parents knew what they were doing after all. 😉 ]
Emotionally, that was one heck of a wrenching experience.
Which is why October 13 is such a red-letter day for me. It’s one that I will never forget.
Leaving her ties to India was truly heart-breaking for that green girl. Yet what wonderful cards life dealt her after the fact – with so many ways in which to learn and grow. Not all ups, mind you, but ups and downs.
The yin and yang.
What did I tell you? That’s what this life of ours is all about!
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P.S. And who ever imagined that I would be back as an expat for any period of time? To experience and savor the yin and the yang of (a new) India…I’m soaking it up like a sponge! Lucky me.
The Amul Magic
Cheese and Childhood Memories
I love cheese!
All kinds of cheese – brie, provolone, goat, blue, parmesan, mild cheddar, extra sharp cheddar, gouda, mozzarella….and on and on and on, from the mundane to the exotic ones.
There are thousands of varieties of cheese to enjoy and I must have tried a couple of hundred of them in my adult years. I think it’s fair to say I’ve enjoyed virtually every single one that I have tried. For someone who ranks smelly old blue cheese at the top, you better believe it!
But the story of my childhood and cheese is very different indeed.
There was only one type of cheese that I can remember ever eating when I was growing up in India. Amul Cheese.
Cheese simply meant Amul then. Nothing else.
[Any reader from outside India no doubt doesn’t have a clue what I am talking about! It’s okay. That’s a story for another day].
I did not fully understand the back story of Amul until fairly recently.
As I was digging up everything and anything to do with innovation in India, it did not take long for me to figure out that although innovation in India is not abundant, Amul could be safely categorized as innovative, and further as one of the top, most successful business innovations that came out of this country.
The White Revolution
The great man behind the huge success of this innovation, Dr. Verghese Kurien, died very recently at age 90, after having lived a rich and fruitful life.
He is touted as the father of India’s “white revolution”. This is my homage to him.
So just what did Dr. Kurien accomplish?
Just before India became independent, many milk producers in the state of Gujarat began a protest against unfair practices by middlemen where they were losing their fair share of the business.
To address that problem, a milk co-operative (Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. – GCMMF) was ultimately created eliminating the middlemen –
…of the farmer, by the farmer, for the farmer.
Dr. Kurien founded it and was credited with its ultimate success. Most people only know it by the brand Amul that stands front and center.
Today, this is the largest food marketing organization in the country.
On the procurement side, it purchases milk from 3.1 million milk producers.
From village cooperative to district to state level cooperative, this chain works!
On the distribution end, the resultant milk products are sold under the Amul brand to millions of Indian consumers.
Amul By The Amazing Numbers
Numbers tell the story once again. Starting in Gujarat with 2 village co-ops and a mere 250 litres of milk, today the state boasts –
- 3.1 million milk producer member families
- 15,760 village societies
- 9.4 million liters of milk procured per day
- US$2.84 million disbursed in cash daily
- GCMMF is the largest cooperative business of small producers with an annual turnover of US$2.5 billion
As a result, other states (22 in all, including Gujarat) have followed the model with success. Overall, here are the numbers for all the milk cooperatives across the country:
- 177 cooperative diary unions
- 145,000 dairy co-ops
- 15 million farmers
- 190 dairy processing plants spread across India
- 23 million kilograms of milk collected per day
The Amul model has helped India to emerge as the largest milk producer in the world.
Impact Felt Everywhere
Milk production multiplied over the years providing great economic benefit to the rural areas. Of particular importance is that these dairy cooperatives have been responsible in uplifting the social and economic status of women in particular as women take this on as their primary vocation while men are busy with their agriculture. This has also provided a definite source of income to the women leading to their economic emancipation.
Milk consumption more than doubled providing excellent health and nutritional benefits to people
Now, that’s what I call a success story! The supply chain success and the distribution chain success. All ultimately owned by the farmers.
There are very few industries in India that can say the same about providing such vast benefits to such broad swathes of the population.
There is a fitting tribute to Dr.Kurien in The Economist. Here is an excerpt of how he worked to empower the poor –
This was democracy: producers running everything themselves, the selling, the processing and, most of all, the marketing.
Empowerment of the rural poor was his real aim, and milk merely the best tool available.
Utterly, Butterly Amul
Lest we forget – along the way, Amul picked an absolute winner of a marketing campaign and mascot. [You can read the story of Amul’s 4000 utterly butterly ads here].
Amul continues to produce its mischievous, tongue-in-cheek “hits” today – always good for a chuckle. Let me end with a couple of recent ones –
And a poignant tribute to the founder on his passing earlier this year-
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Finally, according to its website:
The Amul brand is not only a product, but also a movement. It is in one way, the representation of the economic freedom of farmers. It has given farmers the courage to dream. To hope. To live.
This is the awesome story behind the Amul cheese that I loved as a kid. What a beautiful back story and reality it is!
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Photo Credits:
Cheese:By Eva K. / Eva K. (Eva K. / Eva K.) [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html) or FAL], via Wikimedia Commons
Verghese Kurien: By Jogytmathew [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Amul logo and Amul hits: Courtesy http://www.amul.com.
The Yin and Yang of Life Anywhere 