Thread by @thekaipullai

The year is 1948. India is newly independent. You are from an elite family, who was just graduated from the Michigan state University, on Govt Scholarship and have come back to India.

You would think you life is all set and you are going to live happily ever after.

Then the Govt sends you to a rundown village in Gujarat, that nobody has heard of. Then they put you up in a grimy, sweltering car garage.

And then ask you, an English Speaking gentleman, to work with farmers, who can speak only Gujarati, a language you have no clue about.

And they ask you do it at a salary that is 20% of what you will get in the outside world.

You have three options. Either you run away. YOu suck it up for sometime and then run away. Or You start a revolution.

If your name is Dr Verghese Kurien, you choose option 3.

Operation Flood is the single biggest revolution in the history of Modern India. It was a program that transformed India, from a country that relied on the largesse of the western world for milk, to the world's largest milk producer. It has lifted 50 mil Indians out of poverty

And most importantly, it is a gift that still keeps giving. It has made India a global player, at least in the dairy sector, where we can compete with global giants on an even keel.

Not only was Dr Kurien a great social reformer, but he was also an amazing innovator.

Under his leadership, India was the first country to extract milk powder from Buffalo milk. He was the first guy to sell edible oil in Tetra pack, something that even the Swedish engineers said it was not possible. He disrupted the domestic edible oil industry so thoroughly,

That for a brief period of time, we did not have to import stuff from South East Asia.

In the cyber world, the words like disruption, transformation, change are thrown around loosely. Disruption is not the development of an app or an additional line of code you write.

Disruption is where you create something that changes the lives of people forever. Disruption happens when what you create, rewards people for Generations. Disruption is where you help poor farmers break the vicious circle of poverty and throw them 20 steps up the economic ladder

Disruption is not how you change how people do certain things, Disruption is when you change the people themselves.

Dr Kurien was India's first and the greatest disruptor.

Happy Birthday Dr Kurien. India is grateful that we had you walking on our soil. Thank you!!

P:S : Not giving Dr Kurien the Bharat Ratna, is an unpardonable crime. Hope some Govt sets the record straight.

P:P:S: There was a tweet, which showed the photos of 5 garages, and the companies that started from them are worth a trillion dollars or something.

This was the Garage, which uplifted 50 million people out of poverty. However you cut it, this one trumps everything else.