India · Anand, Gujarat / Founded 1946 · Operation Flood from 1970
Amul and the milk cooperative
Milk organised by its producers
A photograph of the Amul plant at Anand. A building cannot document the cooperative’s internal democracy or the lives of its milk producers.
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Amul began as a dairy cooperative in Anand in 1946. Its members were milk producers, often smallholders, who pooled milk and owned the processing organisation. Operation Flood, launched in 1970, turned the model into a national programme and helped make India one of the world’s largest milk producers. The cooperative is not a socialist state: it operates in markets and has its own inequalities. Its interest for this gallery is the attempt to put the means of processing and marketing under producer control—and the question of who actually participates in those decisions.
- Date
- Founded 1946 · Operation Flood from 1970
- Maker / designer
- Anand Milk Union Limited and producer members
- Material
- Milk, cooperative membership, processing plant
- Context
- A producer cooperative, not a state enterprise; its scale and market position are part of the story.
Evidence: Date established · Place established
Historical record
- Anand Milk Union Limited (Amul) was founded in 1946.
- Operation Flood was launched in 1970.
- The cooperative is owned by producer members; it is not a state enterprise.
