It’s probably the wrong year of my life to be admitting this, but I’m a firm believer in the notion that butter makes just about all things just a little bit better.
Think of it.
Toast would stay unforgivably dry. Pastry crusts just wouldn’t get as flaky. Cakes couldn’t live up to expectations. There would be no such thing as an Irish lace cookie. Butter chicken just wouldn’t be. Neither would beurre noisette. Steamed asparagus would pine for its partner. We’d not able to clarify anything. And that would be a tragedy.
Turns out, it’s not just food that gets better with butter. History does, too. What the hey, you ask? So I’ll explain.
2012: Amul’s India advertised with characteristic punny panache
[Bhook laggi hai? Feeling Hungry? becomes Book laggi hai?].
Sometime in the 60s, when India was newly independent and trying to figure out its socialist self, milk production was at a low, so the government introduced Operation Flood—a scheme implemented between 1971 and 1996 to (one presumes) flood the country with dairy products by organizing rural farmers’ cooperatives and connecting them to urban consumers in a sort-of massive milky grid. It was the beginning of the White Revolution, owing to the color of the substance with which we were all to be flooded.
All humor aside, this was one of the world’s largest and most respected dairy development schemes to be undertaken—with funding from the World Food Program (WEP) and later assistance from the European Economic Community (EEC) and the World Bank. It was unique in that the funds invested were not handed out as freebies, but invested in milk manufacturing, which was being organized via grassroots efforts, into a series of village-district-state co-ops. Its success was in its results: milk production rose dramatically, and India quickly became the world’s largest milk producer, and many of us take the availability of dairy products entirely for granted thanks to this ground-breaking work. (Although, as usual, per capita availability is another story entirely). The architect and father of this unthinkably massive scheme was one Dr Verghese Kurien, who founded a Co-Op in Gujarat–and who, by coincidence passed away this week, at 91.
Operation Flood was modeled on the experience of successful co-ops in Gujarat, one of which was the Anand Milk Union Limited—or AMUL.
Amul is no longer an acronym in common Indian parlance, but one of the country’s most successful, visible, and beloved brands. It rode the wave of early waves of milk marketing, having been the mother of all the Mother Dairies being established under Operation Flood. And it owed much of its visibility and success to just one of its products: butter.
Butter and Amul have become synonymous thanks to the Amul moppet: a smart, chubby little thing with blue-tinged hair cut in a fringe (not bangs, thank you very much), always in a red-on-white polka dot dress with a comically high pony-tail seized also with a polka-dot bow, whom all—and I do mean all—Indians will know, recognize, and have laughed with, and loved at some point in their lives.
A new commemorative compilation of Amul’s hoardings placed at 90 locations across the country, in 22 newspapers, and of course on Facebook, tells us that Amul’s moppet was slow to find her voice, but when she did, she held her pitch and took over, in her characteristically charming and disarming way, as narrator of the present.
Our real Miss India is nearly 50, but hasn’t aged a day since her birth in the late 60s. And she’s been with us through it all, gently following our moods and nudging them–er, co-opting them, even–into a resolutely butter-makes-it-better sort-of lifelong commitment to witty puns, good humor, and a light ethics of universal appeal.
Much like Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline, she smiles at the good, she frowns at the bad, and sometimes she is very sad. What she narrates, in 4000 hoardings produced over 40+ years, is the feel-good story we like to tell about ourselves. She doesn’t appear in each, but it’s her voice we hear in all.
Here’s an overview, inspired by Amul’s India:
She works with the stuff of popular culture, at once the actor and the fan.
2006: Celebrating consumerist youth nationalism with the hit film Rang de Basanti
Veteran Tamil actor Rajinikanth, widely credited with having
greater-than-human abilities. What kant he do?
2012: The Dark Knight Rises
She pokes gentle fun at everything, and turns most hard positions to butter (Politicians make such easy targets).
1977: The Emergency’s compulsory sterilization programs to bring
India’s population under control
2012: Karnataka Chief Ministers caught watching porn on cell phones in
the State assembly!
2012: Author Salman Rushdie’s appearances at the Jaipur Literary
Festival cancelled after protests and threats of violence from Islamic groups
She is a very punny girl, who re-works every acronym to her advantage.
1987: Amul’s solution to Sri Lankan conflicts: Butter Diplomacy (pun of
course intended). LTTE stands for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
and IPKF is the Indian Peace Keeping Force sent to Sri Lanka at the time.
Late ’90s: The Rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
2006: Coming to Naramada? Continuing controversy on the Sardar
Sarovar dam(n)ing of the Narmada River
Celebrating cricketer Sachin Tendulkar’s lifelong love of bread with butter
She celebrates the milestones of scientific and technological achievement:
1986: India’s first Test Tube Baby
2010: Engineering & jam-relieving marvel that is the Bandra-Worli
Sealink (bridge) in Mumbai
But with an assured sense of the even bigger picture:
2012: Higgs Boson “God particle” discovery
She's a sportsman at heart, at once player and fan:
1989: Celebrating Argentine football player Maradona:
Be a Man [marad] like Maradona! [& butter is like Amul]
2012: Congratulating Nadal on his 7th grand slam tennis title
[The pun is with dal makhni, or dal with butter, which Nadal
didn’t become by losing to Djokovic at the French Open]
She's a nationalist in international relations:
1998: India’s second nuclear tests at Pokhran, at the risk of
international sanctions
1998: Pakistan’s retaliatory nuclear tests
Her feminism and her politics have progressed with the times, but have remained ever playful (perhaps just a tad naughty):
1992: On the rail coach reserved for ladies only
2005: Women banned in Mumbai from dancing in bars
“Band baaja barat” is the celebratory accompaniment to wedding
processions; the pun here is with Band/banned and barat/ bar raat
or night clubs
2009: Joining the Pink Chaddi (Underwear) Campaign launched by the
Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women in response to
Sri Ram Sena leader Muthalik’s opposition to couples dating or celebrating
Valentine’s Day. Some 500 pink “love chaddis” were couriered to
Muthalik’s office on Valentine’s Day.
2009: Delhi High Court decriminalizes homosexuality
She understands the perils of liberalization, though she rides its wave, too. She is a swadeshi (self-made, self-reliant) at heart.
Early 1990s: Then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh’s liberalization
of the Indian economy paves the way for Coca Cola to re-enter the
Indian market after its 1977 exit. It was the end of a “Be Indian
Buy Indian” era.
Swa-deshi becomes Amul’s Swad (or tasty) dish
She comments as a child on local politics (you just can't take offense):
1989: The rise of the Shiv Sena in Mumbai
And cusorily on state-reorganizations:
2000: On Uttar Pradesh (UP) reorganization
2011: On the demand that the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh
(which includes Hyderabad) be granted statehood
[Aadha means half, twist on “Andhra”]
It's hard to say what she thinks of reservations, or affirmative action quotas. She's takes a clearly "No reservations" stance. But she reminds us consistently of what is always reserved (for bread), where there can never be reservations (on butter), and where ultimate merit lies (in butter). Her's is a quintessentially apolitical politics:
1990: In the wake of the Government acceptance of the Mandal Commission
Report recommending higher reservation quotas for OBCs [Other Backward
Castes]
2006: Revisiting the merit debate on quota allocations for institutions
of higher education
Though reservations do make her think of childhood games like musical chairs. Given how men rule with women as proxies, would it really make a difference to have more women in office?
1999: Poking fun at the Bill demanding reservations for women
in political offices.
She plays the perfect hostess when she must:
2011: Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s 2011 visit to Delhi
And picknics alone when she must, to butter what has anyway been turned to toast:
2011: Bin Laden no more
She marks political milestones with due respect:
2008: First African-Americal President in the White House
2007: Bomb butter! Historic US-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement
marks India’s entry into an elite group of nuclear-capable countries
after decades as nuclear pariah
And mocks political muddling with due giggles or scoldings:
2001: Pakistan President Musharraf caught between Bush and Bin Laden
2010: No Maafi [mercy] for [Libyan dictator] Gadaffi!
She's generally quite sure that she's the brightest thing around, a fuel to rival fuel. She definitely has gold on her side:
1979: Cut for power, power cut!
2008: Fuel price hikes!
2012: Homage to Neil Armstrong
Though there are times when she is scared, sad, or just plain mad:
End the Bandhs, or political protests [which bring violence and shut cities
down when they happen–hence the name “bandh” or to shut down, and
the pun: shut down the shut downs].
On the terrorist threat in Assam’s tea plantations
2001: Gujarat Earthquake
2011: Mumbai terrorist bomb blasts [Do something, Mumbaikars!]
You always know where her loyalties lie.
2010: India adopts a symbol for its Rupee currency, replacing the English “Rs.”
2011: Taste of India, Taste of Democracy, Butter of the Masses,
I ♥ Amul, with Gandhi topi [cap] loyalty on top
Amul’s India doesn’t collect all the images above, though it does (ahem) sandwich many other favorites and representative hoardings of the past 40 years. The accompanying narrative tracks the growth of the moppet and her emerging voice, paying homage to the architects of the dairy development program and the ad-execs (the daCunhas) who turned butter into an eminently digestible socio-political running commentary. Most of all, the book is as loving a tribute to the Amul girl as she has paid so many others over the years.
For those light history buffs out there: Santosh Desai’s title chapter, “Amul’s India,” was quite useful in tracing how the moppet’s voice changed and became more engaged, more self-assured over the decades. Renowned film maker Shyam Benegal’s commentary on the dairy movement in Gujarat, about which he made several short documentaries and one feature film (Manthan/ The Churning) was also invaluable–particularly since the 1976 film was funded by co-op members themselves, and was then used to persuade milk farmers to create further co-ops all over the country.
There’s something truly inspiring about that aspect of the narrative, which the constant adulation of the daCunhas and their “advertising genius” rather eclipses. The Amul brand just took over the grassroots brick-by-painful-brick building that was also going on–and though we love our iconic moppet dearly, it’s good to remember the people who started the work for which she could then become ageless ambassador extraordinare.
Profits from the Rs 250 cost of each book go to qualifying 10th and 12th students in Amul’s educational schemes, so there’s a characteristic Amul feel-good element to top(i) off this re-experiencing of five decades of Amul hoardings.
Makes you believe that you can have your bread and butter it, too. Golden, Guilt-free, and utterly butterly Good.
Note: updated for accuracy here and there, thanks to some comments from Aalok!
This is probably my favorite article that you have written. Really cool especially because I am particularly interested in advertising. Especially interesting to me was the Salman Rushdie advertisement because it makes me wonder what the majority of Indians opinion of him.
Please keep the posts coming. What great, insightful and often times mouthwatering writing!
And, I forgot to say that I completely agree with your assertion that butter most certainly makes food better! Ok, I am very hungry now. Gotta go find something buttered and delicious.
Robert, you mean utterly butterly delicious, right? In the spirit of Amul and all — I hope you found it! As for what Indians think of Rushdie, it’s a whole conversation unto itself. Suffice it for now to say (somewhat unhelpfully, I admit) that public opinion’s mixed. On the one hand is his right to write (heh heh) which shouldn’t be steamrolled by religious groups all the more given that what he’s normally in the business of describing is not offensive to anyone at all. (But the critics will not be buttered, and will exercise their democratic right to cause all the jams. Ha ha ha.) On the other is his readability–one has to be ready for that sort of ride, but that’s very possibly an individual matter of taste. Most often the second point takes, well, second place. In a context in which there’s a good deal of critique of the literati, authors end up an elite-but-embattled lot. Presumed offensive far more than they probably are, and that has an impact I would think on the creative process … as I say, a whole other conversation unto itself. Notice how that Amul banner refuses a position on the issue? That itself is telling, no?
Its very amusing to see how advertisement can be the voice of reasoning to a country. In America our commercials all have a hidden agenda more or less one that is sexual due to sex sells in America, but to see how a character can survive throughout the years steady bringing attention to issues that are close to home is great. I really enjoyed this article, and see how funny history can turn out to be.
This was amusing! I miss those Indian advts. Only Miss India seems to have kept this attitude!
This is super awesome… 🙂 thanks a ton!
This is a super late response, but thank you!
[…] You’d look around and find real flour (and much else gluten-free besides), real chocolate (tellingly, imported and expensive), real sugar (even muscovado), real cream (even if it did turn to butter on the slightest whisk and always needed just the right thinning), real butter (Amul, of course). […]