In his first interaction with officials associated with co-operatives, not only at the Centre but also in the states, Union Minister Amit Shah exhorted them to listen to the smallest cooperative society in their respective areas and help formulate a new Co-op Policy capable of catapulting India to a 5 trillion-dollar economy.
More than two dozen Central Ministries represented by Secretaries and Joint Secretaries, representatives from 36 states, representatives from Union Territories, Additional Chief Secretaries, Principal Secretaries and Registrars Cooperatives, and heads of around 40 Cooperative and other major National Institutions participated in this conference, held at the DRDO headquarters in Delhi. There was a last-minute shift in the venue from Vigyan Bhawan to DRDO.
“I believe that the cooperative sector can make a huge contribution towards realizing the goal of a 5 trillion economy and doubling of farmers’ income by formulating a perfect and timely cooperative policy,” said Shah.
But this can happen only if you take it down to the village. The goals of the new cooperative policy should be free registration, transparency, Coordination in cooperatives, attempts to bring equality through dialogue between the laws of the states, exploring new dimensions, Access to every village, doubling farmers’ income, and making all cooperative institutions financially strong, Shah underlined.
In various five-year plans of the country also, many suggestions have been made to strike a balance between cooperatives, the public sector, and the private sector, but unfortunately, no one considered these suggestions. We are working diligently in this direction under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, stated the Minister.
On the new cooperative policy, we are inviting suggestions from people associated with cooperatives in all local languages from across the country. I urge all of you to take this initiative to all the cooperative societies below in your respective states so that the person running the small village society can also give his suggestion, he said.
The new cooperative policy of the government will create such an environment, which will expand the
cooperative, add new dimensions to it and this can happen only in the spirit of TEAM. Explaining, Shah said TEAM stands for T-Transparency, E-Empowerment (Empowerment of village and farmer), A- self-sufficient, and M-Modernization.
Shah said “Today in the country there are 3 types of states from the point of view of cooperatives – developed, developing, and underdeveloped states. To take the cooperative sector to new heights, we have to take the developed states towards perfection, a strategy has to be made to make the developing states developed and the underdeveloped state directly developed.”
We have to prepare the cooperative movement for the challenges of the present and future and make the cooperative sector transparent. We have to accept democratic values in elections, only then will possibilities get the right platform and unless possibilities do not get the platform, no region can progress, Shah stressed.
Minister said an equitable distribution of profits to shareholders and minimum expenditure on management can happen only through cooperatives. And cooperative is the only model that can make crores of poor of the country financially prosperous.
“On this strong base of cooperative, we have to build an edifice and the obstacles in it have to be overcome by reconciliation and new provisions. This can happen only when a new cooperative policy is formulated to meet all the needs of today in a holistic manner”, concluded Shah.
