against Glaxo for baby food. Later research by Dr. G. H. Wilster led to cheese production from buffalo milk at Amul. To cut costs, Kurien procured a captive packaging-tin unit attached to the dairy facility. Amul organised dairy farmers in the villages and linked them directly to consumers in the market by eliminating middlemen, ensuring a steady and a regular income for them even during the lean season, and better quality products at a competitive price to consumers in the large market of the reachable Bombay city, over well-paved village "milk roads" and "cold-chains". Political and social conditions Kurien and his mentor Patel were backed by some political leaders and bureaucrats who saw merit in their pioneering cooperative model: farmers willing to associate together for produce and willing to be led by professionals while being owners of the cooperative. India had just gained political freedom from a colonial power whom the leaders had seen extorting land tax unjustly from farmers suffering from crop failure. There had been many famines over the duration of that regime, so leaders were concerned over food security of the population. As a newly independent nation, there was a desire to gain self-sufficiency in its consumed produce and a thrust towards domestic production to substitute for imports. Moreover, these nationalist leaders were influenced by socialist ideals of formation of social capital more than the formation of capital assets, and the Gandhian philosophy of production by the masses triumphed mass-production in a resource-constrained nation. At the same time, the new government's policies were open to the skills and learnings of modern experts, research, technological prowess, and aid from the rest of the world. The first farmers in the cooperative all belonged to Patel's predominant caste-grouping, which helped to bring all of them together quickly before farmers from other castes became interested and participated. Rather than focusing directly on removing caste and class conflicts which get entrenched as vested interests, Patel worked singularly on the belief that economic self-interest of all sections of the village-society would make them align together to grow their cooperative. Consolidation Amul's cooperative dairying venture became popular. Dignitaries, researchers, trainees, and common folk would visit Anand to learn more about it. Earlier, former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had visited Anand to inaugurate Amul's plant, the largest in Asia, and praised Kurien for his groundbreaking work. In 1956, Kurien visited Nestle in Switzerland at the