Igniting co-op movement in Uttrakhand

The cooperative movement of Uttrakhand is pretty strong and the credit for the same largely goes to Pramod Kumar Singh. The latter has single-handed nurtured the movement after the state was carved out from Uttar Pradesh. But he also had many partners in this arduous journey.

His interest had been to have a piece of land for building a proper secretariat for the cooperative movement of the state. He is on the verge of achieving it through his perseverance.

”We got the land from ND Tiwary in 2006 when he was the CM. He gave us the land for free but what we did was to pay for it at the circle rate and get it registered in the name of UCF. This way we kind of insured it against any future problems from another govt,” said Singh to Indian Cooperative.

”But then came the BJP govt for a short-while and the matter could not go further. It was in 2012 during Vijay Bahuguna’s rule that the first thing we did after coming back into the saddle was to change its land-use. This paved the way for the construction of the magnificent building which you see now,” he said pointing at the huge expanse of the structure.

“I may live or may not but this building would work as an asset for the cooperative movement of the state and should there be any crisis facing it it would act as a bulwark against it”, Singh said. An organization or a movement is not built unless there is one fellow who has steely determination to achieve this, comments a scholar.

But he singles out Dr U S Awasthi, IFFCO MD as a major source of inspiration behind his style of functioning. Asset-building, futuristic planning and an eye on making money for the cooperative are things I learnt from him, Pramod says.

You have either a cooperator or a manager but the synthesis of the two could be seen only in Dr Awasthi; UCF today stands tall and proud as it has continuously been supported by IFFCO not only in terms of financial support but also in terms of generating ideas and style of functioning, he noted.

The transparency visible in the functioning of IFFCO provides a bench-mark for us cooperators. The agenda arrives about 15-20 days in advance and one can find out every detail of the proposed idea/project in the age of Google before the Board meeting. All queries and doubts are comprehensively addressed, Pramod added.

Pramod is Chief of UCF which is acronym for Uttrakhand Cooperative Federation. He is three in one- head of the marketing cooperative federation (on the lines of Markfed in Punjab), chief of the state cooperative union and head of the consumer cooperative movement.

But Singh divides his time and energy in a manner that all his units (except perhaps the consumer federation) gets enough of his time and attention. UCF has an impressive annual turnover of Rs 111 crore and a profit ranging from Rs 9 to 10 crore.