Tribhuvandas Kishibhai Patel | CoopPeople | CoopWiki

Association and Role within Society or Entity: Founder and long-term Chairman of the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union Limited (famously known as Amul); and co-founder of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).
Contributions to the Cooperative Sector: Guided directly by freedom fighter Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Tribhuvandas mobilized marginalized dairy farmers in Anand, Gujarat, to form a cooperative union that dismantled the highly exploitative, state-backed colonial monopoly of private dairies (such as Polson). He laid the foundational brick of the "Anand Pattern" of dairy cooperatives—a brilliant, replicable three-tier structure that links village-level Primary Dairy Cooperative Societies directly to district-level unions and state-level marketing federations.
He hired Dr. Verghese Kurien to manage the technical operations, bridging the gap between social organization and modern food technology. He later helped scale this model nationwide under Operation Flood, a massive initiative that transformed India into the world's largest milk producer and permanently shifted economic power into the hands of rural smallholders.
Awards and Recognitions: Conferred the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1963 and honored with the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 1964 for his revolutionary impact on rural development.