Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Vijay Rupani at Amul’s chocolate plant in Anand on Sunday. (Photo: PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Vijay Rupani at Amul’s chocolate plant in Anand on Sunday. (Photo: PTI)

Claiming that he was ridiculed for calling camel’s milk nutritious several years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that now camel’s milk was not only being used in making chocolates but was also fetching double the price for farmers when compared to cow’s milk.

During his daylong visit to Gujarat, Modi ‘e-inaugurated’ projects worth Rs 1,100 crore.

Addressing a gathering of farmers at Mogar in Anand district, the Prime Minister said, “I clearly remember, after the earthquake in Kutch, I had spoken about the nutritional value of camel’s milk. As if Gujarat’s chief minister Narendra Modi had committed some sin, wherever I went people used to make fun of me, cartoons were drawn and I was scoffed at. Today, I am happy, that the chocolate made of camel’s milk has a huge demand. And just now Ramsinhbhai Parmar (the chairman of Amul Dairy) was telling me that today camel’s milk fetches double the money compared to cow-milk.”

In Gujarat, cow milk fetches Rs 38 to Rs 30 a litre. Compared to this, camel’s milk sells at Rs 55 per litre.

Lauding the success of Amul Dairy, in becoming an iconic brand in over 40 countries, he said, “I am happy that after so many years, Amul has fulfilled my dream.”

Speaking to The Indian Express, a senior official of the Amul Dairy said that camel’s milk is now being used in all the 700 tonnes of chocolate currently produced at the plant every month. “In milk chocolates, the milk component is 24 per cent and we use camel’s milk for it’s different textures and taste. Currently, the diary cooperatives in Gujarat collect 10,000 litres of camel milk per week from the maldharis in Kutch district,” the official said.

PM Modi also visited Amul’s chocolate factory in Anand and e-inaugurated a 1000 tonne per month chocolate plant, a take-home-ration plant of 600 tonne per day capacity and a ready-to-use therapeutic food plant with a capacity of 600 metric tonne per month. He also inaugurated Amul’s expansion projects related to liquid milk processing and butter manufacturing.

Amul’s doubling cheese manufacturing capacity at Khatraj, Mehmdabad, was also inaugurated along with an ice-cream plant of Vidya Dairy.

At the event, Modi also reminded the gathering that Amul Dairy will complete 75 years of its existence in two-years time.

Among other projects unveiled by the PM include an incubation centre-cum-centre of excellence of Anand Agriculture University (AAU) and a solar cooperative at Mujkuva village.

However, the ‘e-foundation stone’ laying of Amul Dairy’s first plant in Kolkata, West Bengal, which was scheduled for Sunday, was dropped from the event. An official of Amul Dairy said, “They dropped it at the last moment. Perhaps, they have kept it for some other day and it suits us.”

PM Modi also took the opportunity to credit Sardar Vallabbhai Patel for the cooperative movement in the state and said, “It has become a model for other states”.

Calling the cooperative movement a stable third alternative to socialism and capitalism, Modi said, that Amul’s success was a big achievement. “It is not just a milk processing unit. It is an alternate economic model.”

“Sardar Patel had sown the seeds of this third alternative, where farmers through cooperation will exert control, not government or businessmen,” he said.

He traced the beginning of the cooperative movement to when Sardar Patel was elected chairman of Ahmedabad Municipality. “He introduced the concept of urban planning when he was heading the Ahmedabad Municipality. The first experiment that he did was of cooperative housing societies, where houses were built through cooperative movement,” he said.

He said that a housing society called Pritam Nagar in Ahmedabad now stands as a successful example of this experiment which Patel had inaugurated on January 28, 1927. Without naming any party, he claimed that past governments had brought in rules that created hurdles in the growth of the cooperative movement, especially in Saurashtra and Kutch. “When we got a chance to serve, we changed these rules,” he said.

He appreciated the efforts of farmers in creating a solar cooperative at Mujkuva village of Anand district, where farmers are using grid-connected solar pumps for irrigation and are selling the excess power.

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