Anand: Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah today performed the ‘Bhoomi Pujan’ and laid the foundation stone for the country’s first national-level cooperative university, Tribhuvan Sahkari University (TSU), in Anand. Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendrabhai Patel and Assembly Speaker Shankar Chaudhary were also present on the occasion.

The decision to establish Tribhuvan Cooperative University is significant for capacity building in the cooperative sector and aligns with the vision of ‘Sahkar se Samriddhi’. The university aims to be a key initiative for fostering cooperation, innovation, and employment.

The objective behind setting up TSU is to prepare professionally trained manpower to meet the evolving needs of the cooperative sector. It will offer specialised education, training, and research in areas such as cooperative management, finance, law, and rural development. The university is expected to empower grassroots-level cooperative institutions by promoting innovation, capacity building, best practices, good governance, and inclusive, sustainable rural economic development.

Aligned with the National Education Policy 2020, TSU will provide flexible, multidisciplinary academic programmes including PhD degrees, postgraduate and undergraduate degrees for managerial roles, diplomas for supervisory levels, and certificates for operational levels. It will establish subject-specific schools on campus and in other states, while building a national network to standardise the quality of cooperative education and training. The university aims to connect with more than 200 existing cooperative institutions across India over the next four years.

To meet the skill development and capacity building needs of India’s estimated 40 lakh cooperative personnel and 80 lakh board members, the university plans to train around 20 lakh individuals from societies such as Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS), dairy cooperatives, fisheries, and others over the next five years.

To address the shortage of qualified faculty, TSU will also focus on developing a strong pool of cooperative educators through PhD programmes in cooperative studies. Currently, cooperative education in India is scattered across a few states and lacks a unified institutional mechanism to meet rising sectoral demand.

Recognising the absence of a national-level research ecosystem for cooperative-specific innovations and affordable technologies—particularly in rural areas—the university will establish a dedicated Research and Development Council. This council will conduct and promote cooperative sector R&D and collaborate with reputed national and international institutions to bring global best practices to India. DeshGujarat