Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah will lay the foundation stone of India’s first national-level cooperative university, Tribhuvan Sahkari University, in Anand, Gujarat, on 5 July 2025. The landmark event will be attended by Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendrabhai Patel, Assembly Speaker Shankar Chaudhary, Union Ministers of State for Cooperation Krishan Pal Gurjar and Muralidhar Mohol, Gujarat Education Minister Rishikesh Patel, Cooperation Minister Jagdish Vishwakarma, Secretary of the Ministry of Cooperation Ashish Kumar Bhutani, Vice Chancellor J.M. Vyas, and several other senior officials and dignitaries.
Initiated under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the guidance of Amit Shah, the establishment of Tribhuvan Sahkari University is a historic move to build national capacity in the cooperative sector and realise the vision of ‘Sahkar se Samriddhi’. The university is designed to foster the ‘Triveni’ of cooperation, innovation, and employment.
Amit Shah will also participate in the “Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam” tree plantation campaign, a mass movement launched by the Prime Minister to encourage environmental consciousness and cultural responsibility. In addition, he will unveil an NCERT-developed educational module designed to introduce school students to the principles of cooperation and the contributions of India’s cooperative movement.
Tribhuvan Sahkari University aims to become India’s premier institution dedicated to cooperative education, offering specialised training, academic programmes, and research in cooperative management, finance, law, and rural development. Its academic structure—aligned with the National Education Policy 2020—will include PhD programmes, management-level degrees, supervisory diplomas, and operational certificates. It will establish subject-specific schools across its Gujarat campus and in other states while working to standardise the quality of cooperative education nationwide.
To create a cohesive national network, the university plans to connect with over 200 existing cooperative institutions within the next four years. Its five-year training target is 2 million personnel serving the country’s 4 million cooperative workers and 8 million board members. The university will equip members of Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS), dairy, fisheries, and similar cooperatives with the skills needed to boost operational effectiveness and inclusive development.
To address the scarcity of qualified faculty in the cooperative domain, Tribhuvan Sahkari University will build a national talent base through research-based doctoral programmes. At present, cooperative education in India is limited to a few states and dispersed among various institutions—insufficient for the growing demand in this rapidly evolving sector.
Recognising the absence of a dedicated institutional mechanism for research and technological innovation in cooperatives—especially in rural settings—the university will establish a Research and Development Council. This council will undertake sector-specific research, foster innovation, and promote affordable technologies for grassroots implementation. It will also partner with leading national and international institutions to integrate the world’s best practices into India’s cooperative ecosystem.
The launch of Tribhuvan Sahkari University signals a new era of professionalisation and strategic reform for India’s cooperative sector, empowering grassroots organisations, strengthening governance, and catalysing rural economic transformation through education, innovation, and leadership training.
