In the hindsight, the story of Dr. Kurien and Dr. Yunus offers interesting insights into the minds of two great visionaries and leaves you with some clues to their own ways of "Instituion building", which were so aptly sucessful for their respective models. Ironically , both of them fell to those very strengths , which they so assidioulsy nurtured all through their lives as building blocks for their dreams
Since begining , both of them seems to have realised that co-option of governments is the best way to sustain and scale up their respective endeavours to reach a critical size . While, Dr. Kurien did not hesitate to take government help in the form of grants and access to technical knowhow , he ensured that the Amul Movement also grows as a very strong people based organisation and never gave space to governments to interfere wid Amul. Rather, he went one step ahead and helped Government to replicate AMUL models in various parts of country through creating another exemplary instituition like NDDB. That indeed was a master stroke- Governments also got their own AMULS models across India n Kurien's AMUL thrived under the leadership of Dr. Kurien.Simirarly, Dr. Yunus too pursuaded the Bangladesh Government to specifically draft a central law ( We In India only have State Bank of India, which runs under a similar kind of central legislation) to convert Grameen as Bank with some truly phenomenal privelages , off course he paid through his nose by allowing Government to have a stake in the Grameen Bank. The strong member based patronage coupled with professional management at the helms catapulted AMUL to World's largest producer of milk , while the Government's strong support in terms of funding n legal statute made Grameen World's largest Microfinance provider with varied range of product offering. Dr. Yunus and Grameen Bank got Noble Prize for peace. Quite a story- leveraging people's movement and government's support to build people based organisation in the two most backward third world countries with different approaches to doing balancing act between People's ownership n Government's co-option.
Unfortunately as unexpected turn of events , the representatives of same people basesd societies said "No" to the leadership of Kurien and Government could anything but intervene with a refrain that it was an internal matter of a Member based Organisation. On the other hand, Dr. Yunus ended up giving Government too much of discretionary power that people's confidence to let him lead Grameen Bank was made totally redundant by the same Government. And , he got a notice from the Government to leave the office for most lame reasons....On the second guess, one could also speculate did they outlived their utility for their "folks" who were ready to step into their shoes.
In retrospect, we could argue that both of them could have done things a little differently but wasn't that the the best chances both of them had taken, when they did not have anythiing except their grit to realise those "disturbing" dreams ..
