In recent times, the cooperative sector has witnessed its newsworthiness surge underlining the fact that the sector is growing in strength and significance. Last week, the apex co-op body NCUI and the world’s largest fertilizer co-op, IFFCO launched their own publications, speeding the flow of news in the sector.
Always held as too unimportant a sector to deserve media attention, initially even this portal, Indian Cooperative faced a lot of trouble in gathering news from cooperatives and the people associated with them. The Indian Cooperative was launched in 2010 and by this time it is completing its 13th year, the things have remarkably changed. There is an abundance of news items in circulation about cooperatives not only on social media but also on their websites.
IFFCO has launched “Sahakar Uday”, which will be available in English, Hindi, and 10 other Regional Languages. It will be circulated across all PACS, Primary Societies, Federations, Ministries, and other Cooperative Institutes. So encouraged was the Cooperation Ministry with this IFFCO’s publication that it took no time in tweeting about it.
Tweeting about this publication, the IFFCO wrote “With Sahkar Uday, IFFCO takes Hon’ble PM Sh. @narendramodi ji’s vision of #SahkarSeSamriddhi to new heights. It will keep farmers informed about various IFFCO & government initiatives for cooperatives.”
The apex co-op body NCUI, headed by Dileep Sanghani is also coming up with a cooperative magazine titled Sahakar Jagran in English & regional languages. It already has a monthly publication, The Cooperator, in English.
Sahakar Bharati has been publishing a magazine titled Sahakar Sugandh edited by Bhalchandra Kulkarni dealing with cooperative affairs. It has been mostly catering to the huge network of Sahakar Bharati officials who are spread across hundreds of districts in the country, claimed one of its officials.
The co-op news boom, if we can say so, started with our news portal (www.indiancooperative.com) which exclusively caters to the cooperative sector, a concept which was unheard of. Later on, some forward looking co-operators such as Dr U S Awasthi, IFFCO MD and a few more, began to disseminate news about co-op developments through social media. Now almost all top co-operators have taken to social media, with the new ministry headed by Amit Shah exhorting them to do so.
Our Principal Correspondent Rohit Gupta says there are still some islands from where it is difficult to get news. Indeed, we cannot forget the struggle we had in gathering news from the sector in the beginning. And today, we are short of space in accommodating news items as they pour in torrents into our desk.
This transformation is indicative of the changing times–a time for the better!