XLRI Jamshedpur hosted the 13th Dr. Verghese Kurien Memorial Sustainable Development Oration on October 12, 2024. NABARD Chairman K.V. Shaji delivered the address, framing rural producers — farmers, fisherfolk, and artisans — as active nation-builders rather than passive beneficiaries of welfare schemes. The event honours Verghese Kurien, architect of India's White Revolution and founder of Amul, connecting his cooperative legacy to contemporary rural development and NABARD's institutional mandate.

Dr. Verghese Kurien (1921–2012) is one of the most exam-relevant figures in India's agricultural and rural development history. Known as the 'Milkman of India,' he engineered Operation Flood (1970–1996) — the world's largest dairy development programme — under the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), which he chaired. His model institutionalised the cooperative structure: milk is collected from village-level cooperative societies, processed at union-level dairies, and marketed through state federations. This three-tier structure became the blueprint for the Amul brand and inspired subsequent cooperative frameworks.

For NABARD aspirants, the connection is direct. NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) was established in 1982 under the NABARD Act to provide refinance, development support, and supervisory oversight to cooperative banks, RRBs, and rural financial institutions — the same institutional layer that Kurien's cooperatives depended upon for credit. NABARD's Chairman speaking at a Kurien memorial oration signals the living continuity between cooperative finance and rural development policy.

The theme — producers as nation-builders — also connects to current policy emphasis on Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), which the government has been scaling up through the Formation and Promotion of 10,000 FPOs scheme (launched 2020, to be implemented by 2027-28). FPOs are essentially the Kurien cooperative model applied to crops beyond dairy, with NABARD as one of the key implementing agencies.