Some of the top-notch cooperators assembled at the office of Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Parshottam Rupala in Delhi on Wednesday. A review of the activities of national level cooperative federations where the govt has appointed its nominees was on the agenda of the meeting.
The govt nominees who made it to the meeting included Satish Marathe who is on the board of NCDC, Jyotindra Mehta who is in the governing Council of NCUI, Ashok Thakur, the govt nominee at NAFED, among others.
Others present in the meeting included Ramesh Mantri of NAFCUB, NCCF’s Pramod Garg, NLCF’s Ramesh Kumar Shukla, NCHF’s Balveer Singh and Dhananjay Kumar Singh.
The meeting which took place in the Ministerial office of Parshottam Rupala, lasted for one hour.
The nominees were asked to share their experiences while working with cooperative bodies and offer their points of view on what the govt should do to strengthen the cooperative movement. They were also reminded of their role of watch-dogging the cooperative federations.
Talking to Indian Cooperative soon after the meeting Marathe who is with NCDC said discussions revolved around how to make NCDC useful for small players. “Union minister Radha Mohan Singh has in the past expressed his desire to make NCDC serviceable even for small cooperatives and I put forth my views on this”, he added.
There were 7-8 nominees owing allegiance to the BJP were present in the Wednesday meeting. A govt nominee is usually a representative of the govt on the board of such cooperative organizations in which the govt has a dominant share-holding.
It was also decided that the nominees would meet the minister once every month to discuss issues plaguing the cooperatives. Their presence is aimed at fulfilling the twin goals safeguarding the govt money and strengthening the cooperative movement, said a participant.
A close monitoring becomes all the more important in the situation where the govt is trying to resuscitate a dead organization like Nafed. A huge package for reviving NAFED is on the way and the Modi govt would ensure it does not meet the same fate as it did in the past.
Talking to Indian Cooperative NAFED nominee Ashok Thakur said the meeting related to implementation of govt schemes through cooperatives in order to improve the lives of farmers.
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