New Delhi, Dec. 20 -- Verghese Kurien could have been a top-notch corporate honcho or even a successful business tycoon. He had both the education qualifications and the business chops to achieve either of those.

Instead, he went one better, triggering a movement that saw a country once deficient in milk turn into the world's biggest producer of this most essential food product.

Born in 1921 into an affluent Syrian Christian family in Kerala, Kurien did not aim to transform Indian agriculture. He trained as a physicist and mechanical engineer, and only entered dairy engineering after a government scholarship sent him to Michigan State University.

On his return to India in 1949, he was posted to Anand, in Gujarat, a hub for dairy cooper...