Union code 0001: How a village seeded India’s White Revolution

Subject: History

Section: Post Independence India

Context:

Amul, the renowned dairy cooperative, recently celebrated its golden jubilee, marking fifty years of transformative impact in India’s dairy industry.

More on news:

On October 31, 1964, the birthday of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri inaugurated a 50-tonne-per-day cattle feed plant of the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union, better known as Amul.
It laid the basis for the Operation Flood programme that helped turn India into the world’s largest milk producer by 1998.
Feed factory was opened in Kanjari,about 8 km from the cooperative’s dairy in Anand.
Amul’s top five DCSs ranked by average milk procurement in 2022-23 were Badharpura (18,609 LPD), Undel (17,429 LPD), Bedva (12,173 LPD), Motipura (10,430 LPD) and Borsad (9,769 LPD). They are all much bigger than Ajarpura.

The start of a revolution:

The National Dairy Development Board was established in September 1965, with Shastri appointing Kurien as the chairman of this organization having the mandate to replicate the “Anand Pattern”.
It laid the basis for the Operation Flood programme that helped turn India into the world’s largest milk producer by 1998.
Ajarpura not only seeded the White Revolution, it was the first Amul dairy cooperative society (DCS) to be registered on August 7, 1947, with a union code of “0001”.

About White Revolution:

In 1970, India set in motion the ‘White Revolution’, the world’s biggest dairy development program, led by Dr. Verghese Kurien. ‘Operation Flood’.
White Revolution or Operation Flood, launched on 13 January 1970, was the world’s largest dairy development program and a landmark project of India’s National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).
It transformed India from a milk-deficient nation into the world’s largest milk producer, surpassing the United States in 1998 with about 22.29 percent of global output in 2018.
Within 30 years, it doubled the milk available per person in India and made dairy farming India’s largest self-sustainable rural employment generator.