the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) to groom managers for the cooperatives. Intervention in other marks and international aid Kurien was inspired by prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi's methods on setting up cooperatives and plants, Indira's intervention in fruits and vegetables, and Rajiv's intervention in oilseeds and edible oil markets. Brands resulting from these – Dhara (Operation Golden Flow for cooking oils), Mother Dairy (Operation Flood) and Safal (for vegetables) have become common household names. Kurien was crucial in setting up similar cooperatives across India and beyond. In 1979, Premier Alexei Kosygin invited Kurien to the Soviet Union for advice on its cooperatives. In 1982, Pakistan invited him to set up dairy cooperatives, where he led a World Bank mission. Around 1989, China implemented its own Operation Flood-like programme with the help of Kurien and the World Food Programme. Former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao sought his help to set up a dairy cooperative in neighbouring Sri Lanka which was done as a collaboration with NDDB later in 1997. Market domination and aftermath In the 1990s he lobbied and fought hard to keep multinational companies from entering the dairy business even as the country opened up all its other markets to them after decades of protection. India became the world's largest milk producer by 1998, surpassing the United States of America, with about 17 percent of global output in 2010–2011. In 1998, he persuaded former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to appoint Dr. Amrita Patel as his successor at NDDB, whom he had groomed under him to keep government bureaucrats away from the post and protect NDDB's independence from the government. Later, he had differences with her on the direction she was taking cooperative dairying—by solely focusing on production and yield targets through corporatisation and competition at the expense of weakening the cooperative institutions of the country. For instance, marketing no longer remaining with the farmers' cooperatives and being handed over to private or corporate interests, as that would mean foregoing the ability to determine the price to be paid by consumers, the quality of the produce to be offered to them, and losing the "lion's share" of the money paid by the consumer to these corporates. He resigned from the position of GCMMF Chairman in 2006 after dwindling support from new members on the governing board and mounting dissent from his protegés (some referring to his work