Woman participation in co-ops vital: Awasthi

Keeping his promise of encouraging woman participation in cooperative IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi has been taking extra efforts to meet them in his Farmers’ Connect campaign. The encouragement of women involvement in the functioning of cooperatives would figure high on his priorities, MD had said in a press call at Kalol.

After a high energy evening of the Golden Jubilee celebrations IFFCO MD was fresh and ready next morning to undertake, what many call, Herculean task to meet lakhs of farmers throughout the country.

While Directors and top IFFCO officials left for their homes MD with his select team left for his onward journey that covered Mehsana, Vaodora and Surat. ”Our Directors would join us as and when it is feasible for them”, he informed media-persons elaborating on his yearlong programme.

Dr. Awasthi has mostly been talking about three things in the context of his campaign. These are – the slogan “meeti ki jan kisan ki shaan”, one stop shop in remote areas and thirdly upholding cooperative principles in which you earn profit according to your need not according to your greed as practiced by corporates.

Explaining the concept of Iffco Bazar or agri stores he said it would have everything –fertilizer, seed, machinery plus a basic medical facility. “In villages people do not realize they have high BP or Sugar; we would not only help them with basic medical checkup but also help them connect to doctors through phone”, he said pointing out the slow disappearance of medical facilities in rural areas in recent times.

”I am happy that more than 56 such centers are operational as CEO Manish Gupta informs me; we plan to have 400 of them by March 2017 and the figure would touch a thousand by the next year”, Awasthi stated.

In Mehsana IFFCO MD and his team were greeted by a gathering of farmers counting more than a thousand.” I am happy to meet them one to one,” remarked Awasthi. IFFCO Vice Chairman accompanied him and Jethabhai Patel, Chairman of GCMMF was also present on the occasion. MD presented him a memoir of IFFCO.

Several cooperators including vice-chairman of NCUI G H Amin and Chairman of Amul milk union Ramsinh Parmar participated in the meeting at Vadodara. There were more than 800 cooperators. The team also visited an exhibition of IFFCO Kisan Bazar. There was also a show of famed tribal Panchmahal dances on the occasion.

In Surat on Sunday the experience of the team was no different as more than 800 cooperators gathered for the meeting. MD would walk down and meet each of them before making a formal speech.

The campaign is slated to continue year long and one can get the latest updates from Dr Awasthi’s tweets active every now and then on the issue.