Every cloud has a silver lining, goes a dictum. Cooperative sector, which is usually seen as a laggard when it comes to adopting high-tech felt pushed into jumping on the technology bandwagon of using Zoom and Video- conferencing in the wake of corona scare.
Explaining it by example, NCUI President who doubles as the Chairman of Kribhco Chandra Pal Singh Yadav said “We had to hold a board meeting before 31st March as several of our contracts were coming to an end; we had no option but to deliberate the issues through video conferencing”.
Chandra Pal who is in lockdown like the rest of India with his family in Jhansi is finding the modern tech quite practical, says necessity is the mother of invention. Often surrounded by visitors and used to the hurly-burly of life, Chandra Pal finds video conferencing a great help.
“You would not believe I am in touch with the whole of India through the technology as he listed the names of all 
“People in Jhansi do come to meet me but only when there is an emergency and even they maintain social distancing”, said Yadav underlining the importance of contactless interaction to beat the CoronaVirus.
The story is no different for other co-op bodies. At IFFCO, its MD Dr U S Awasthi is up and ready by 9 am at his home coordinating the affairs of the co-op titan. “It is not a holiday rather work for home for all of us as our MD, a tireless task master is ready before all of us”, said an official to Indian Cooperative.
It is in the lockdown period only that IFFCO was greeted with news of producing the highest ever fertilizers beating all previous records. Most of all, the MD these days is busy monitoring IFFCO activities in fields where hundreds of its team are busy distributing masks, sanitizers, and items needed to fight off the Corona.
Bucking them, cheering them and tweeting about them has been a regular job of IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi. But that does not stop him from monitoring activities in IFFCO’s fertilizer units. “All our units are operational and production of fertilizer is going on to support the farm activities in the country”, said the MD to this correspondent.
NAFCUB President Jyotindra Mehta, who is also in lockdown in Rajkot is no less active with the job of motivating
Mehta is in regular touch with senior co-operator H K Patil and other board members of his team. “Along with the lockdown came several challenges before UCB sector and there was an urgent need for consultation; ZOOM is proving very handy”, he said to Indian Cooperative.
NAFCUB has written several letters and lobbied hard with the govt for seeking sops for urban cooperative banking sector, revealed D Krishna a former CE of the apex body of UCBs, who sadly got locked in Bangalore rather than in Delhi where his family stays.
Lauding the technology of Zoom, Krishna says almost all the important ideas of approaching the RBI and Finance Ministry and the subsequent letters which were drafted happened in the period of lockdown, thanks to Zoom, stated Krishna.
