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Dr. Amrita
Patel: Chairman, National Dairy
Development Board
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Dr. Amrita Patel is
the Chairman of the National Dairy
Development Board (NDDB) and Founder and
Chairman of the Foundation for Ecological
Security (FES). She serves on the boards of
several organizations in the fields of
nature conservation, poverty alleviation,
improvement of living conditions and shaping
of autonomous peoples’ institutions.
As the Managing Director and later as
Chairman of National Dairy Development
Board, Dr. Patel was responsible for the
implementation of Operation Flood, a
national dairy development program of an
unparalleled scale. The program has helped
to promote, finance and deliver a variety of
supporting services to a national
cooperative dairy structure that presently
includes more than 13 million members,
mostly small farmers, from nearly 100,000
village dairy cooperative societies,
contributing to an increase in per capita
availability of milk in India from some 106
grams per day in 1967 to more than 258 grams
per day in 2009.
It was Dr. Patel’s vision that led to the
setting up of the Foundation for Ecological
Security - an organisation that would
reinforce the critical task of restoration
of ecological processes that improve and
sustain the biological productivity of land
and help ameliorate the living conditions of
the poor. Under her Chairmanship, the
Foundation for Ecological Security has in
the past few years grown to secure the
cooperation of 1830 villages across six
states of India, reaching out to about a
million people and bringing about 107,000
hectares of ‘public lands’ and forestlands
under community governance.
Besides her presence on the Boards and
Committees of several national and
international bodies, Dr. Patel works
closely with both policy makers and civil
society organizations on issues relating to
conservation of forests, strengthening
community institutions, improving rural
livelihoods and accessing property rights to
community land, to improve the living
conditions of the rural poor.
Dr Amrita Patel was born on November 13,
1943 at Vidyanagar village in Kheda district
of south Gujarat. She completed her
secondary school from Convent of Jesus and
Mary, New Delhi in 1958. She did her
bachelor’s in veterinary science and honours
in agriculture from the Bombay Veterinary
College in 1965.
Dr Patel has also successfully completed
advanced training in animal nutrition at the
Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, the UK
under an FAO Fellowship from October 1966 to
March 1968. After completing advanced
training in animal nutrition, Dr Patel
joined Kheda District Cooperative Milk
Producers' Union Limited in their cattle
feed factory at Kanjari as animal nutrition
officer in November 1965.
She joined the National Dairy Development
Board as project executive in 1971. During
the same period she was given a special
assignment to assist the Achievement Audit
Committee for the National Dairy Research
Institute, Karnal. In 1983, Dr Patel was
appointed additional secretary, NDDB and
regional head of Indian Dairy Corporation in
Delhi. In 1986, she was appointed as chief
executive of NDDB. In 1988, she was
appointed as managing director (operations).
She also worked as additional secretary in
the ministry of agriculture from June 19,
1989. In September 1990, she took over as
managing director of NDDB.
Dr Patel also held the post of chairperson
of nine major institutions in the fields of
dairying, animal disease and prevention,
animal nutrition, financial institutions and
human health. She has been on the managing
committees of 15 other institutions and
organizations.
She was the managing director of NDDB for
about ten years. She had also held several
high-profile posts in different categories
in the NDDB and at the secretary level in
the government offices.
Dr. Patel received several awards at
national and international levels. In 2001,
Dr Patel was conferred “Padmabhushan”
by the Government of India for her
contribution to animal husbandry. In 2008,
Dr. Amrita Patel was awarded the
Indira Gandhi
Paryavaran Puraskar, the prestigious
award instituted by the Government of India
in the name of the former Prime Minister,
which recognizes the contribution of the
recipient towards creating greater awareness
among the people of the country on the need
to preserve their natural environment. She
received the ‘Dr. Norman Borlaug Award’ for
contributions in the field of dairy
development and animal husbandry and for the
leadership and dynamism shown in creating
sustainable peoples’ institutions to meet
their needs for fuel and fodder. She was
awarded the ‘International Person of the
Year’ for the year 1997 by the World Dairy
Expo, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, USA for
commitment to improve India's rural health
and environment and for efforts to foster
better animal husbandry and increase
producer productivity and incomes.
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