If you have Jolly and Molly as husband and wife, the quiz is what is the daughter’s name?”
The answer will be revealed at the end of this blog entry!
Dr. M. V. Kurien was known as Jollychayan to us. His wife was called by us as Mollykochamma.
The old Syrian Christian marriage rules stated that you should not marry anyone who was closer than your ninth cousin. When my mother’s brother, Mr. K. M. Philip (Peelukuttychayan and also known as Pappa) wanted to marry his fourth cousin in the 1930s, special dispensation was required from the head of our church. His wife Chinnammakochamma, was the elder sister of Mollykochamma.
Jollychayan with his wife’s brother-in-law Pappa at the wedding of my niece.
They had one more sister, Thangammakochamma, who married my father’s younger brother, John Matthan (Johnnyappapen), an engineer who worked as General Manager in Indian Railways and later was CEO of BHEL in Ramachandrapuram in Hyderabad and retired as the CEO of the Integral coach Factory at Perambur, Madras..
All this still maintained the fourth cousin rule as no one was related to anyone who was closer than the church dictum.
When my sister married Babu, the rule still held as although Babu was the cousin of Jollychayan, and there was close interaction between the families, the church dictum still held.
Complicated way of saying that Dr. M. V. Kurien was close to us and one of our extended family!
Dr. Kurien was the person who, with a Gujarat politician, Tribhuvandas Patel and engineer Harichand Dalaya changed the face of milk production and distribution, first in Gujarat snd then around India with the Whose Revolution, also known as Operation Flood.
The way he did this is by reaching the farmers in Gujarat by testing the milk they brought to Anand and paying them in cash based on the quality of the milk. This put hard cash in the hands of the farmers. He then made sure the farmers got the best feed for their cattle ensuring the quality of the milk increased. He then took steps to raise the quality of the herd.
This led to the Gujarat Milk Cooperative becoming the best run in the country with the farmers getting their benefits directly with no middlemen.
His next stop was Bombay where we still got milk delivered at the doorstep. He set up the same model in an effort to move the cattle out of the city area and ensure the quality of the milk increased by setting up the diary in Worli.
Those who were getting good quality milk and milk products from the Parsi Dairy situated in Marine Lines in Bombay, suddenly found milk booths at every other corner in Bombay where the sealed blue aluminium top striped bottles was available twice a day at a reasonable price with no adulteration.
I returned to India in September 1969 from my studies in England. My cousin’s wedding was in progress and as Mollykochamma was the aunt of my cousin getting married,
I got to interact with Jollychayan almost immediately after landing in Bombay.
I was fresh from seeing the milk distribution in Finlsnd using plastic bags. Bring a plastics technologist full of myself, I told Jollychayan of my experience and how it would be economically viable to distribute milk in these plastics satchels. He was at about the very start of his Operstion Flood program which started in 1970.
He was enthralled with the idea and asked me to give him a report on this as he was discussing alternate means of distributing milk as the recycling of glass bottles was very costjy and energy intensive.
Finland, however, discarded the plastics bags and moved to coated paper cartons which suited their paper industry base even though they were paying a royalty to an American company on every single carton produced. The Swedish company Tetrapak was also growing in this field.
Jollychayan was being bombarded with offers to set up these paper carton lines.
He however had other alternatives up his sleeve. He first choice went to setting up booths with refrigeration facilities manned by disabled veterans to dispense the milk.
There were several problems as irregular electricity supply. Breakdown of refrigeration machines and insufficient qualified technicians to look after these units were other headaches to be considered.
By that time I had prepared my paper on Co-extruded plastics satchels for milk. As soon as that was ready he moved quickly to implement this in a couple of dairies including the Bangalore Dairy.
It was an enormous success and this became the approved means of milk distribution all overt urban India.
Jollychayan thanked me for this innovation. Although I may been the catalyst, it was the immense respect everyone in India held for Jollychayan that made this a success.
This biography by Dr. M. V. Kurien does not tell all this backstory as I had already left for Finland.
At the wedding if my sister’s daughter in Chennai in 2999, he drew me aside and talked at length to me about milk distribution and how he had had to face much opposition to implement the pladtics satchets as the lobby of paper cartons was very strong. He had held on for as long as possible but finally permitted that distribution mode to enter into India but only as a parallel to the plastics satchets.
Even in Finland, when I talked to the major milk distributor, Valio, they held Dr. Kurien (Jollychayan) in great awe.
I was fortunate to be there at the crucial time of the launch of Operation Flood.
No, you were all wrong. Jolly and Molly’s daughter was not named Dolly, but the beautiful name of Nirmala! :-)
