Guwahati, Oct 9: Union Minister for Home and Cooperation, Amit Shah, on October 7, 2022, presented National Cooperative Dairy Federation of India Ltd (NCDFI) award to Assam’s largest dairy cooperative – Purabi Dairy, as second best performing dairy cooperative in institutional sales at the Eastern and North-Eastern Cooperative Dairy Conclave 2022 in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim.
The ‘Eastern and North-Eastern Cooperative Dairy Conclave 2022’ held at Gangtok on October 7 was inaugurated by Union Minister Amit Shah. The conclave was organized by NCDFI in association with Sikkim Cooperative Milk Producers Union Ltd and support of the Sikkim government.
NCDFI Chairman Mangal Jit Rai, in his welcome address, highlighted the intervention of Govt of Sikkim to support the cooperative dairy, specially for introduction of special milk incentive to the milk producers of Sikkim, which has helped Sikkim get into high growth trajectory and NCDFI is looking forward to a brighter cooperative dairy movement across East and North East of India.
The Sikkim Milk Union won the first position, Purabi Dairy (West Assam Milk Producers’ Co-operative Union Ltd.) won the second position while Mother Dairy Kolkata won the third position. Sudha (Bihar), Medha (Jharkhand), Omfed (Odisha), Bhagiradhi (West Bengal) and Dimul (Nagaland) were given active participation awards on the occasion.
The award for WAMUL (Purabi Dairy) was received from Shah and Chairman of WAMUL, Meenesh Shah, and Managing Director of WAMUL, SB Bose.
Addressing the conclave, the Union Home and Cooperation Minister said that milk production is the only way for inclusive development, women empowerment, poverty alleviation and doubling of farmer’s income. He pointed out that the market for milk and milk products is huge and therefore dairying has an enormous potential for economic development. He also emphasized that the Cooperative Dairying especially has a major role to play as it is in this model that more than 70% of consumer rupee gets transferred to the producers.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah also inaugurated phase I & kick-started phase II of Manure Management Project jointly funded by NDDB & Sustain Plus Energy Foundation, implemented by Sikkim Milk Union.
Chairman of NDDB, Meenesh Shah, mentioned that dairy cooperatives will bring prosperity in the East & North Eastern region which is blessed with resources required for dairying. This model has been successfully demonstrated by NDDB in Assam and Jharkhand. The Chairman also explained about the manure management interventions being promoted by NDDB, which is akin to a new revolution providing multiple benefits to rural households – cooking fuel, organic manure and income from surplus slurry and also promotion of green energy.
