The Hindu Business Line : Kurien raps Milma for joining hands with NDDB

IT has only been a few days since Prof Rosen Goldberg, who teaches international business management at the Harvard Business School, invited Dr Verghese Kurien, Chairman, Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (Amul), to spend a few days at the B-School so that his students could interact with a character from the course material.

Prof Goldberg, has been highlighting for some time the Amul model of co-operative management as a successful global model, was firmly told by Dr Kurien not to expect him.

It was not that Dr Kurien was too old to travel or was disinterested in interacting with Harvard students. Of late, he has been busy travelling to various parts of the country as part of his crusade against what he feels to be a clear case of anti-farmer initiative. This effort brought him to his home State this weekend where he derided the Kerala Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (Milma) for handing over a 51 per cent stake in the joint venture it has forged with Mother Dairy Foods Ltd (MDFL).

The seminar on `Co-operative dairy development' soon became a platform for launching a blitz against the State federation's "unseemly" hurry to enter the marketing arrangement with the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) subsidiary as Kerala is currently going through one of its worst phases of milk production. With the daily production touching an all-time low of 5,10,000 litres, which was almost a three lakh litre fall from its average produce of seven lakh litres a day, questions are now being raised as to what the newly set JV - Milma Foods Ltd - would market as it was for bringing in marketing expertise that the partnership was originally envisaged.

``I personally consider Kerala's decision to enter the JV with Mother Dairy a big mistake. Once KCMMF pushes ahead with the arrangement, it would be difficult to make an exit at a later date as it would find its painstakingly built retail network to have been usurped by the NDDB's own brands and once that is achieved it would be Mother Dairy that would be seeking to exit the JV,'' Dr Kurien said.

Coming under Dr Kurien's fire was Mr P.T. Gopala Kurup, Chairman, Milma, who put up a brave face, quoting Ms K.R. Gowri, Agriculture and Dairy Development Minister, that if the JV went awry, there was nothing that stopped the State federation from moving out of the business arrangement. The NDDB shield was required to ensure that the two border States of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka with daily production of 21 lakh and 18 lakh litres of milk did not dump milk in Kerala.

A point of view that was not shared by most other stalwarts from the dairy sector, as was borne by one speaker after the other. Mr Prayar Gopalakrishnan, former Milma Chairman, said that it was the Kerala farmers who should retain control over their produce and if some 42 private brands could not destroy Milma in the State, it needed to have no fear of milk from other States destroying its equity.

Meanwhile, Mr C.K.P. Padmanabhan, General Secretary, Karshaka Sangham, raised the issue of global quality benchmarking (Codex standards) by Mother Dairy that could find milk from local farmers to be sub-standard, thus opening the floodgates for importing of milk into the State. Kerala was in no position to seek marketing expertise before settling down on the production front, he added.

Earlier, Mr V.S. Achuthanandan, the Kerala Opposition leader, warned that all outstanding issues on the JV needed to be resolved before proceeding with it.

Clearly, this was not the kind of homecoming that Dr Kurien would have dreamt of as he is now forced to bite the bullet on Kerala becoming the first State dairy body to surrender its brand to NDDB, against which the father of white revolution seems to be engaged in a holy war. But Dr Kurien feels it would make more impact if a divorce were to take place than to pre-empt a marriage of convenience from taking place.

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