Nabard organized a two day National Conference on Best Practices in Rural Cooperative Banks at the Bankers Institute of Rural Development (BIRD), Lucknow. The event kicked off on Monday and was inaugurated by the Nabard Chairman Shaji K V in the presence of UP Principal Secretary (Cooperation) B.L. Meena and others.
Sadly, the apex body of State Cooperative Banks and DCCBs- Nafscob, which has a mandate of addressing the issues of short term credit structures, was not invited by the Nabard.
When the Indian Cooperative correspondent called its MD Bhima Subrahmanyam, he said, “Our Chairman who is also Governing Council Member of BIRD is also not aware of this. Nabard may like to get the views of Rural cooperative Banks directly from them without NAFSCOB. We wish them all the best”.
Coming to the event, several senior officials from NABARD, State Governments, State Cooperative Banks, District Central Cooperative Banks and Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) from across the country are participating in the conference, which will be concluded today i.e. on 17th October 2023.
Presentations and panel discussions by industry experts and veteran rural cooperative bankers from across India on the five themes of Governance, Technology adoption, HR management, Business Diversification, and Successful Business Models in PACS are being organized over the 2 days to promote the replication of the best practices and convergence of various schemes for promoting rural credit cooperatives in the country.
On this occasion, a book was also released on the ‘Best Practices in Rural Cooperative Banks”.
It’s s very good initiative. A few points…
1. Rural Banking needs altogether a different model of Financial Inclusion. ( savings, credit, remittances, insurance)
2. Financial Literacy can be imparted to them in a far far better way to the rural communities than to the so called ‘urban educateds’!
3. Rural credit is more an art than science.
4. “Co-operative” model with a ‘corporate’ outlook makes it more remunerative to the farmers and it makes the Agriculture a true professional activity.
5. A farmer feels proud of his profession, when he is allowed to design his business, market his product. ( in the present scenario there is hardly any difference between ‘Food’ and ‘Fodder’!)