Joseph Purathurkittan was his name and Dr Verghese Kurien was his God. P A Joseph, 59, former executive assistant to Kurien, passed away following a cardiac arrest in Mehsana on Monday.
Joseph collapsed when he entered the building of Mehsana District Co-operative Milk Producers Union Limited popularly known as Dudhsagar Dairy. He was shifted at Lions hospital where he was later declared dead, reported Times of India.
Indian Cooperative has done a piece on him titled “Living with the dream of Kurien!” at a time when he was posted at Manesar office of Dudhsagar. Later he turned out to be a great defender of the beleaguered Vipul Chaudhry.
Joseph lived with the dream of finishing the unfinished agenda of Vergese Kurien. He was kicked, fired and ousted from the cooperative fraternity. But he refused to let go of his dream. Joseph was a rattle-box once the subject Kurien cropped up in discussions.
Joseph joined Kurien as his Private Assistant in 1991 and stayed with him when everyone left him. During the Kurien-Amrita spat even Kurien’s daughter was opposed to Joseph. She felt Kurien is losing all the hard-earned reputation due to Joseph.” But Kurien never lost faith in me”, he had told Indian Cooperative.
Joseph has been equally opposed to the NDDB agenda in which the latter is focusing more on commercialization than on development of cooperatives as originally envisioned by the statutory formulation.