The union cooperation ministry which came into being recently is busy drafting a new national cooperative policy and in this connection Union Minister Amit Shah has called the meeting of stakeholders from across states in Delhi.
The two-day National Conference will be kicked off today by the Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah. The Minister of State for Cooperation B. L. Verma will also be present on the occasion. Officials of Central, States, and Union Territories’ Governments along with heads of around 40 Cooperative and other major National Institutions will participate in this conference.
The Union Ministry of Cooperation said, six important themes covering policy framework, reforms for strengthening governance, making cooperatives vibrant economic entities, promoting social cooperatives, and the role of cooperatives in social security will be discussed during the conference.
A meeting of similar nature and scope will be organized soon after with representatives of co-operative federations from various states. “The ministry intends to come up with a policy which is all-inclusive”, said a top ministry source on condition of anonymity.
The new ministry’s mandate is already made-out; the ministry has no interest in dabbling with the politics of co-ops but only wishes to channel the positive forces into creating a world-class co-op movement in the country, said the official.
It bears recall that earlier, the Secretary of the Ministry D K Singh held a virtual meeting with the principal Secretaries and RCSs of the state. The DRDO Bhavan meeting is aimed at building on the gains of that meeting, he underlined.
Giving a hint of the working style of Amit Shah, who himself has been a practicing co-operator at the grassroots level, the official said that each and every letter- be it a suggestion or a complaint, is placed before the Minister, who takes a quick call in all matters.
It is no secret that there is a conflict of interest in two aspects of the co-op sector—promotion and regulation. Many a time, the promotional aspect is hindered due to the regulatory aspect, said the official citing the case of RBI’s regulatory regime coming in the way of the expansion of co-op banks’ branches.
A veteran co-operator himself, Shah keenly studies such situations and tries to navigate a way out. “Thanks to his formidable profile, his observations are taken seriously across ministries”, said the official extolling the virtues of his boss.
Measurable progress has been made in several new initiatives Shah undertook soon after joining the Ministry. Some of them are the computerization of PACS, a database of co-ops, amendment in the multi-state co-op societies act, work on doubling the number of PACS across states, and most importantly, formulating a new national co-operative policy.