Amit Shah performs the Bhoomi Poojan of Tribhuvan Sahkari University

Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Shri Amit Shah today performed the Bhoomi Poojan of the country’s first cooperative university, ‘Tribhuvan” Sahkari University, in Anand, Gujarat. Many dignitaries including Gujarat Chief Minister Shri Bhupendrabhai Patel and Secretary, Ministry of Cooperation, Dr Ashish Kumar Bhutani were present on the occasion.

In his address, Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Shri Amit Shah said that today is a very important day for the cooperative sector when Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has paid tribute to Tribhuvan Das Patel Ji in a true sense. He said four years ago, Prime Minister Modi established the Ministry of Cooperation to instill hope in the lives of crores of poor and villagers of the country and to make them economically prosperous. 

He said that since the establishment of the Ministry of Cooperation, in the last four years, the Ministry of Cooperation has taken 60 new initiatives for the development, promotion and equitable growth of the cooperative sector in India. Shah said that all these initiatives were taken to make the cooperative movement immortal, transparent, democratic, to develop it, to increase the income of farmers through cooperation and to increase the participation of women power and youth in the cooperative movement.

Tribhuvan Sahkari University campus spans over 125 acres and will be built at a cost of Rs 500 crore. Shah said that the foundation stone of this university is a revolutionary step under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi. Today, 40 lakh workers are associated with the cooperative movement across the country, 80 lakh are members of boards and 30 crore people, that is, every fourth person in the country, is associated with the cooperative movement.

Union Minister of Cooperation said that earlier there was no proper system to train employees and members of cooperative societies for the development of cooperative sector. Employees were given training after recruitment in cooperative, but after the formation of this university, only those who have undergone training will get jobs. Shri Shah said that due to this, nepotism in cooperatives will end. 

He said that in this university, the youth will not only learn technical expertise, accounting, scientific approach and all the qualities of marketing, but they will also learn the values ​​of cooperation that the cooperative movement is for the Dalits, tribals and women of the country. Shah said that many problems of the cooperative sector will be solved by this university.

Shah said that Prime Minister Modi has decided to form 2 lakh new Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) in the country, out of which 60 thousand new PACS will be formed by the end of this year. He said that 2 lakh PACS alone will have 17 lakh employees. Similarly, many district dairies are being established and the need for trained manpower for all these will also be fulfilled by “Tribhuvan” Sahkari University. Shah said that this university will work on policy making in cooperatives, data analysis and devising 5 years, 10 years and 25 years strategies for the development of cooperatives in the country.

He said that research has also been linked with this university. This university will not only prepare cooperative employees but will also produce dedicated cooperative leaders, like Tribhuvan Das Ji, who will lead the cooperative sector in future. Shah said that CBSE has added cooperative as a subject in the curriculum of classes 9 to 12. The Gujarat government should also add cooperative subject in its curriculum so that common people can know about cooperatives.

Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation said that there could be no more fitting name for the university than that of Tribhuvan Das Patel. He said that Tribhuvan Das Ji had sown the seed of a new idea on this land under the guidance of Sardar Patel. Tribhuvan Das Ji formed a small group of milk collectors and through it, he ran a huge campaign to empower the farmers. In 1946, Kheda District Cooperative Milk Producers Union was established and today the seed sown by Tribhuvan Das has become a huge banyan tree in which 36 lakh sisters do a business of Rs 80 thousand crores and none of them has invested more than Rs 100. 

Shah said that this university will fill the mega vacuum that was responsible for shrinking our cooperative movement. With the University coming into existence the cooperative movement will flourish, grow and India will become a stronghold of cooperatives in the whole world. The policies and courses made in “Tribhuvan” Sahkari University will work to transform the economic model of cooperatives into a mass movement.