Union home and cooperation minister Amit Shah on Saturday laid the foundation stone of Tribhuvan, India’s first national university for cooperatives, in Gujarat’s Anand district.

Gujarat chief minister Bhupendrabhai Patel, Union ministers of state for cooperation Krishan Pal Gurjar and Muralidhar Mohol attended the event held on the campus of the Water and Land Management Institute (WALMI).

Shah performed a ritualistic pooja and unveiled a plaque.

The university has been named after Tribhuvandas Kishibhai Patel, a pioneer of the cooperative movement in India and a key figure behind the foundation of Amul.

Patel died on June 3, 1994. He was born on October 22, 1903 in Kheda, Anand.

The Tribhuvan Sahkari University (TSU) aims to prepare professional and trained manpower to meet the growing needs of the cooperative sector, a government statement said.

It will train around 20 lakh personnel of cooperative societies like Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS), Dairy, Fisheries, etc, in the next five years, it said.

The varsity will provide specialised education, training and research opportunities in areas such as cooperative management, finance, law and rural development, it said.

It is tasked with empowering cooperative institutions at the grassroots level by promoting innovation, capacity building, improving governance, and accelerating inclusive and sustainable rural economic development, the statement read.

The varsity will also offer a range of flexible and multi-disciplinary programmes, including PhD, managerial degrees, diplomas at the supervisory level, and certificates at the operational level, it said.

Subject-specific schools have been designed to be set up on the varsity campus and in other states, and there is a plan to create a national network to “standardise” the quality of cooperative education and training.

The statement said that to create a national network, the TSU will try to connect more than 200 existing cooperative institutions in the next four years.

“There is currently no institutional mechanism in India to support research and development focused on innovation and affordable technologies in cooperatives, especially for rural areas.

“Keeping this in mind, a dedicated research and development council will be set up in the university which will undertake research and development in the cooperative sector and also promote it in affiliated institutions,” it said.

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