The Approach paper of the twelfth five year plan is ready. Strangely enough it does not even once mention the word cooperative. It talks of rural development, rural infrastructure, MNREGA, Indira Awas Yojna but even in the international cooperative year 2012 (as declared by UNO) the plan paper remains silent on the most important means of rural transformation which is cooperative.
To get at the bottom of the massive governmental apathy Indiancooperative.com met leaders and persons associated with the cooperative movement.
Dr U S Awasthi, Managing Director of Cooperative giant IFFCO said that we have to make our voice heard as a lobby group to be recoganized in democracy.
Dr Awasthi emphasized the role of National Cooperative Union (NCUI). According to him, NCUI is not a political entity but a professional body that has to represent the industrial-commercial interests of the cooperative sector as FICCI or CII does for industries. It would have to give up its old ways and act as an agent of changes through intense lobbying.
We would become irrelevant if we did not recognize the changing times. We need a systematic overhaul, with Chairman rotating every two years. The Managing Directors and Chairmen of important cooperatives should be consulted, Dr Awasthi added.
NCUI is our face and symbol and what emanates from it goes down to the bottom. The State cooperative federations are to be involved in the policy making process so that the concept of cooperative becomes influential and effective in the country’s affairs, Managing Director of the largest fertilizer cooperative of the world emphasized.
Recalling the original concept of cooperative he said that it used to be a family agricultural cooperative society where all the input as well as output needs of small units used to be met cooperatively. Later vested interests not even remotely associated with cooperatives began to pull it down, leading to general malaise plaguing cooperatives till date. Those who do well are often found being denigrated, he regretted.
As per a recent amendment in the multi state cooperative act , forming a cooperative has been raised to the status of a fundamental right and this is a big step forward I have no doubt if followed in letter and spirit cooperatives are a successful model of economic delivery and accountability. The future of cooperative is bright and the future of nation is contingent on it, he asserted.