Kurien's Solution

In the 70’s, an aluminum card identified the number of milk bottles that one was entitled for. Yet, due to shortage of milk, only one bottle would be given at a time and one had to rejoin the queue for the next bottle. Since the early ones improved their chances of getting more bottles, some would queue up at the booth, as early as 4 am. They would ‘mark’ their position with stones and move on to do other chores. Those who came in later would throw way the stones and ‘usurp’ a better position in the queue.

During those days of early morning fights, at the milk booth, over missing stones; nobody would have believed that it was possible to have as much milk as one required. But, today India is a world leader in the production, distribution and consumption of milk. Today, milk is available in abundance and more importantly at any time of the day, anytime of the year. All this transformation was possible due to the vision of V J Kurien.

Kurien was able to identify that the shortage of milk was not in dearth of collection. The rightful returns to the farmers were denied by middlemen who exploited the marketing and distribution system. Kurien envisioned the need to do away with the middlemen and form milk co-operatives where the farmers turned sellers. Since the success story of the White Revolution in India; neighbours still fight, but not over milk!

Kurien leaves behind a legacy of problem solving: nothing is impossible if we are ready to explore the hidden solution in what seems to be an unsolvable problem. The larger picture of possibilities involves the scrutiny of crucial little details. We need to be better at unscrambling the solution by understanding the real reasons behind the knots in the maze.

let’s BE BETTER by using the Kurien solution

of identifying the real knots in the situation!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.