Verghese Kurien Quotes & Sayings

I have always believed that once you identify the best person for a particular project and tell him or her exactly what you expect, you must put your complete trust in that person, allowing him or her to work independently without interference. If you do, the project is bound to succeed. — Verghese Kurien

I may be old-fashioned in my thinking but I have always believed that it is only when you get less than you are worth, that you can look for respect; if you are paid much more than you are worth you will get no respect. The one thing that I have never had a complaint about is the amount of love and respect which my dairy farmers showered upon me. — Verghese Kurien

I have found, in over fifty years of confronting governments and defending cooperatives from political and bureaucratic interference, that when you begin demanding what is rightfully yours, there are many people even within the bureaucratic system who ensure that you retain those rights. — Verghese Kurien

In India, all along, development as a process was always affected from the top down style of functioning. Naturally, because along with our freedom we had inherited a bureaucracy, which was designed by the British to rule, not to serve. The British way of doing things had always been to get things done through a government department and after independence we Indians merely continued this system. — Verghese Kurien

I was to learn yet another valuable but sad lesson: that the technical advice of 'experts' is all too often dictated by the economic interests of the advanced countries and not by the needs or ground realities in developing countries. Without exception, technical experts from England and New Zealand told us that buffalo milk could not be converted to milk powder. We showed them how it could be done. — Verghese Kurien

As far as multinationals are concerned, money always was and always will be their only God. I once told the Chairman of Nestle during a meeting, 'I've been in this game for fifty years and I know your modus operandi well. Your problem is that in India you're running into people who know more about dairying than you will ever know. Your problem is that there is a Kurien here and you are unable to find out what his price is, so you're unable to buy him out, which is what you'd normally do. But you can't buy me out; you can't buy off Amul. Keep in mind that all your usual, unscrupulous procedures that bring you success everywhere else will not work here. — Verghese Kurien

I am one of those who firmly believe that our cities thrive at the expense of our villages; that our industries exploit agriculture. — Verghese Kurien

In every crisis, if you look carefully, you will spot an opportunity. My insistence is on finding and seizing that opportunity. I never try to side-step a crisis. Rather, the more monstrous the crises, the more I am tempted to rush at it, grasp it by the horns and man-oeuvre it until it gives me what I want — Verghese Kurien

I realised, in all humility, that chosing to lead one kind of life means putting aside the desire to pursue other option. — Verghese Kurien

India's place in the sun would come from the partnership between wisdom of its rural people and skill of its professionals — Verghese Kurien

If the situation demanded autocracy, I gave it autocracy. — Verghese Kurien

Long hours of working barefoot in the pans saturates their legs so much with salt that these farmers cannot even have a satisfactory cremation after death because their lower limbs do not burn. It is a miserable existence. — Verghese Kurien

The way to improve productivity is not to bring in experts to talk about inputs - seed, equipment and materials, pesticides or water supply. The way to start is to provide an assured market, a fair price, and a system through which rural producers can market their produce which is reasonably efficient and can transfer to them the maximum share of the consumers' money. If such a structure is erected, the producers will then seek the inputs and materials they need to increase their production and productivity. — Verghese Kurien

You must always remember that you are Kurien's second wife. His first wife is the dairy. Don't ever forget that and don't make yourself miserable by being jealous. And never, never try to snatch your husband away from his first wife. — Verghese Kurien

a person who does not have respect for time, and does not have a sense of timing, can achieve little. — Verghese Kurien

I began to see then that when the government enters business, the citizens of India get cheated. The greatest repercussion of the government entering into business is that instead of safeguarding people from vested interests, they themselves become the vested interest. — Verghese Kurien

It made the sheer incompetence of my colleagues at the research creamery in Anand even more intolerable to me. I could see that they had no interest in doing anything, not even the most elementary of jobs. They employed twenty people to run two small roller-dryers when in any other country twenty such roller-dryers were run by one man. I was the new dairy engineer to the Government of India Research Creamery and I realised very soon that I had no work at all. My frustration at this deadening job began rising and I started to write to the Ministry of Agriculture in Delhi every month, submitting my resignation, saying that I was drawing a salary of Rs 350 for doing no work and instead of wasting government money I should be allowed to go. After some eight months of this they must have felt that I was becoming a nuisance and they finally wrote back accepting my resignation. — Verghese Kurien

We Indians are an extremely intelligent people but we can progress as a nation only when we learn the secret of unleashing this positive power of the people. Whenever this happens it disturbs a lot of people - because they know that a giant is waking up. — Verghese Kurien

Interestingly, at one stage, Glaxo approached us, willing to give a manufacturing contract for its baby food to Amul. I said we could consider it on the condition that it would carry the Amul brand name. This so incensed the Glaxo boss that he is said to have declared: 'Amul will never be able to sell its brand of baby food and when their tins begin rotting on the shelves, I will have them collected and thrown into the Arabian Sea!' Such was the arrogance of multinationals. — Verghese Kurien

Any sensible government must learn to unleash the energy of its people and get them to perform instead of trying to get a bureaucracy to perform. — Verghese Kurien