Govt unveils cooperative policy to boost sector with 500 mn members

Business Standard

3 days ago

The Centre today unveiled a new National Cooperative Policy, the first since 2002, that calls for creating a task force to include 500 million people within the ambit of cooperatives, up from the current 300 million, and ensuring autonomous functioning and democratic member control of cooperatives.
The policy, which seeks to enhance the sector's contribution to the Indian economy by three times in the next 10 years, also calls for raising the number of cooperative societies by 30 per cent from the current 830,000.
Releasing the policy, Union Minister for Cooperatives Amit Shah said that one major objective of the policy is to ensure that every village should have at least one functional cooperative, while each tehsil in the country should have at least five model cooperative villages.
The policy has also called for ensuring free and fair elections for the Board of Directors and office bearers of cooperatives.
Though there is no direct statistic on the share of cooperatives in India's total GDP, sector-wise data shows that cooperatives account for around 14 per cent of total agricultural credit, 25 per cent of fertiliser production, and 31 per cent of sugar production as of 2016-17. They also hold an 85 per cent share in liquid milk distribution and around 15 per cent of total storage available.
The implementation of the policy, which was framed by a panel of experts chaired by former Union Minister Suresh Prabhu, will be monitored at the national level by a two-tier mechanism chaired by Cooperative Minister Amit Shah.
Among other recommendations, the National Policy seeks to encourage branding of all organic, agricultural, and dairy products under the aegis of the 'Bharat' Brand as an umbrella brand, while also leveraging the established brands of the states.
It also calls for setting up a 'Cooperative Stack' for data-driven decision-making and enhanced service delivery.
The policy urges Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS) to work as 'Bank Mitra' of District Cooperative Banks to provide banking products and services to members at their doorsteps.
Revamping cooperative credit system
A) Form a task force to holistically examine the challenges faced by cooperative credit institutions and suggest measures to address them.
B) Infuse democratic, transparent, and data-driven decision-making in cooperatives.
C) Promote the production of pulses, oilseeds, and maize through farmer members of primary cooperatives.
D) Promote exports of cooperative sector products to international markets.