Gujarat’s co-op dairy model has made women entrepreneurs: Amit Shah

Gandhinagar: Union home and cooperation minister Amit Shah on Sunday said that Gujarat’s dairy sector which is based on the cooperative model, has empowered women who are now entrepreneurs.

“The dairy sector has changed the lives of women in the state. They have become empowered and are working as entrepreneurs. Today, 36 lakh women in Gujarat are instrumental in providing 3 crore litres of cattle milk. A sum of Rs 200 is getting deposited into their bank accounts on a daily basis,” Shah said.

He was speaking at the inauguration of the state-of-the-art, fully automatic milk processing and packaging plant of Madhur Dairy located in Gandhinagar’s Dashela village. Madhur Dairy is affiliated to the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd under the Amul brand.

“From a humble beginning of just four cooperative societies and 6,000 litres of milk, generating a turnover of merely Rs 7,000, we have today achieved a staggering turnover of Rs 7 lakh crore. This remarkable progress stands as the greatest success of our cooperative system,” Shah noted.

He added that under ‘White Revolution 2.0, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has formulated a strategic plan to triple the country’s milk production in the next ten years. “I would assert that Amul, along with Gujarat’s entire dairy industry, has played a pivotal role in boosting the profits of our livestock farmers by successfully integrating global technologies into India, and has established a strong mechanism to ensure that these profits are directly credited to the bank accounts of the women,” he said.

Shah said that PM Modi inaugurated Amul’s AI-powered digital assistant during the recent AI Summit. In the days to come, Amul’s AI platform is poised to play a transformative role within the agricultural sector. This flagship digital assistant has been named ‘Sarlaben’ to ensure that the women involved in the sector can utilize it with ease and simplicity.

Built at an approximate cost of Rs 128 crore, the fully automatic Madhur Dairy plant has an initial milk processing capacity of 2.5 lakh litres per day, which can be expanded up to 5 lakh litres per day as required, said officials.