BH Krishna Reddy, President of the Karnataka State Souharda Federal Cooperative has advocated presence of at least two women members in every board.
Reddy says there are 8.5 lakh co-operatives in the country, the co-operative sector comprises 31.5 crore members, women constitute 49.55 per cent of the global population.
Women make up 48% of the country’s total population, there are 17,000 women’s cooperatives in the country and there are 5918 women’s cooperatives in Karnataka, Reddy, reeled out the impressive figures, Reddy underlined.
Reddy felt for empowering women there should be two female representatives in the governing body of all the Karnataka Cooperative societies. He said Chief Minister has announced that the Prime Minister will allocate Rs.37.18 crore for various projects to facilitate the empowerment of women in budget proposals.
Giving details of the Souharda Fed, Reddy said “In Souharda sector there are 210 Women Cooperatives doing well. There are several presidents and vice presidents who are women. Plus, there are thousands of women staff. Thus, empowerment of women through this sector is effective. He said that necessary guidance will be given to every woman eager to start women’s cooperative societies.
It bears recall that Karnataka State Souharda Federal Cooperative Ltd is the first apex body of, what it claims –New generation cooperatives in India. Souharda Federal Cooperative is a democratically elected self-regulatory organization of the cooperatives registered under Karnataka Souharda Sahakari Act, 1997.
All the cooperatives registered under the Act are the members of the Federal cooperative. Membership in the Federal cooperative is mandatory.
Souharda is indeed a unique experiment in the cooperative movement where a law within a law has been created to facilitate the growth of the co-operative movement. The success of Souharda could be understood from the fact that co-op officers vie to join the Federation once they retire from their jobs in the govt.