The Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union Ltd.

was registered on December 1, 1946 as a response to the exploitation of marginal milk producers by traders or agents of the only existing dairy, the Polson (brand) dairy, in the small town of Anand (in Kaira District of Gujarat).[7] Milk Producers had to travel long distances to deliver milk, which often went sour in summer, to Polson. The prices of buffalo and cow milk were arbitrarily determined. Moreover, the government at that time had given monopoly rights to Polson to collect milk from Anand and supply it to Bombay city.[8][9] Angered by the unfair and manipulative trade practices, the farmers of Kaira approached Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel under the leadership of local farmer leader Tribhuvandas K. Patel. He advised them to form a cooperative and supply milk directly to the Bombay Milk Scheme instead of Polson (who did the same but gave them low prices).[10] He sent Morarji Desai to organise the farmers. In 1946, the milk farmers of the area went on a strike which led to the setting up of the cooperative to collect and process milk.[9] Milk collection was also decentralized, as most producers were marginal farmers who could deliver atmost 12 litres of milk per day. Cooperatives were formed for each village too.[11] The Cooperative was further developed and managed by Dr.Verghese Kurien along with H.M. Dalaya. Dalaya's innovation of making skim milk powder from buffalo milk for the first time anywhere in the world and a little later, along with Kurien's help, making it on a commercial scale,[12] led to the first modern dairy of the cooperative at Anand, which would successfully compete against established players in the market. The trio's (T. K. Patel, Kurien and Dalaya's) success at the cooperative's dairy soon spread to Anand's neighbourhood in Gujarat, and within a short span, five unions in other districts Mehsana, Banaskantha, Baroda, Sabarkantha and Surat were set up.[9] In order to combine forces and expand the market while saving on advertising and avoid competing against each other, the GCMMF, an apex marketing body of these district cooperatives was set up in 1973. The Kaira Union which had the brand name of Amul with it since 1955, transferred it to GCMMF.[13] n 1966, Amul hired Sylvester daCunha, then managing director of the advertising agency AS to design a new ad campaign for Amul Butter. daCunha designed an ad campaign as series of hoardings with topical ads, relating to day-to-day issues.[22] The campaign was widely popular and earned a Guinness world record for the longest running ad campaign in the world. In the 1980s, cartoon artist Kumar Morey and script writer Bharat Dabholkar had been involved with sketching the Amul ads; the latter rejected the trend of using celebrities in advertisement campaigns. Dabholkar credited chairman Varghese Kurien with creating a free atmosphere that fostered the development of the ads.[23] Despite encountering political pressure on several occasions, daCunha's agency has made it a policy of not backing down. Some of the more controversial Amul ads include one commenting on Naxalite uprising in West Bengal, on the Indian Airlines employees strike, and the one depicting the Amul butter girl wearing a Gandhi cap[22]