Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah today said the cooperative sector has a potential to turn India into a USD 5 trillion economy and will also prove crucial in making the agriculture sector self-reliant.
He also stressed the need to implement the cooperative model, which is behind the success of milk giant Amul, to uplift agriculture and its allied sectors.
"As we can see today, Lal Bahadur Shastri's dream of white revolution is getting realised. But time has come to see beyond this (milk processing). We need to implement this cooperative model to uplift sectors like agriculture and animal husbandry," Mr Shah said.
"The cooperative model will prove crucial in making agriculture 'atmanirbhar' (self-reliant)," he said.
Mr Shah was speaking at an event here organised to mark the completion of 75 years of Amul, which was started in 1946 as a cooperative movement in Anand with the guidance of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and cooperative leader Tribhuvandas Patel, the founder of Kheda District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union, popularly knowns as Amul Dairy.