Despite catering to the needs of nearly one billion people worldwide, cooperatives have failed to elicit matching response from the governments, said Dr Dinesh, Chief Executive of National Cooperative Union of India.
Dr Dinesh was, however, unsatisfied with the over-all performance of the cooperatives in India. Our International year of Cooperative pledge reads;“Cooperative enterprises build better world”. But how could we keep this pledge without professionalizing the cooperative team?
The relation of cooperative members to the cooperatives operating in Indian villages is restricted to getting a sack or two of fertilizers, seeds or other such requirements. He is not involved in its operations. There is no professional way of doing business, he lamented.
Unless the PACS become a whole game that survive on their own and conduct business through professional expertise, the slogan “cooperative builds better world” would sound hollow, he said in a frank chat with Indian Cooperative.
Mentioning America as an example, Dr Dinesh said 97 percent of the US’s energy needs are met through cooperatives. In Singapore majority of fair price shops are run through cooperatives, he added.
He felt that the government of India is ignoring the role of cooperatives for economic growth of the country. The absence of word “cooperative” in the five year plans for two consecutive terms comes as a shock to him.
If nuclear power could be generated by government and salt by TATAs why not allow cooperatives in the agricultural field where it is already doing 50 percent of the business, Dr Dinesh asked.