The pre-evening of the grand event of Bihar’s Cooperative Conference at Maurya Hotel in Patna turned colourful with cultural activities and cooperative ambitions mingling with each other.
A large number of Bihar’s Cabinet Ministers had come to participate and welcome the guests (co-operators coming from across the country) and these included Mangal Pandey, Krishnanand Verma, Jay Kumar, Prem Kumar and Rana Randhir Singh, among others. The latter two were also present in many of the board meetings held earlier in Hotel Maurya.
Laloo Yadav’s son and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav also made an entry later, leading to a mad rush among the co-operators to get selfies with him. Young and smart-looking Tejashwi obliged each of them patiently.
NCUI President Dr Chandra Pal Singh said the presence of large number of ministers encourages us co-operators and augurs well for the cooperative movement. He said that co-operative and cooperative alone can help achieve the PM’s vision of doubling farmers’ income.
Dr Sunil Singh, the hero of the show once again enthralled the audience with his rustic wit and no-holds barred anchoring. Ensuring that each of the co-operators are felicitated, Sunil also did not miss to felicitate Sahakar Bharati leader Jyotindra Mehta whose flight came late.
While the Bhojpuri singer Ajit Anand cast a magical spell by his performance, guests began to have their dinner with the song and dance in the background.
Earlier it looked the number of guests exceeded the number of available food-plates but soon the situation normalized as the dinner started with Hotel staff of Maurya catering to guests’ requirements with promptness and alacrity.
Litti-Chokha and Bihar mutton stalls were the special attraction of the evening. Outstation guests lined up to
savour Bihari cuisine. Mangal Pandey, Bihar Health Minister said farmers of Bihar would benefit if Bihari dishes acquire popularity among guests.
This was also an occasion when Indian Cooperative was felicitated for unifying the cooperative sectors on one platform as one of the participants quipped “cooperatives are there for more than 100 years but they operated separately and never came together on one platform.”
“But for the last ten years when Indian Cooperative came into being co-operators of different sectors began to know each other and began to unite on one platform leading to building of a robust co-op movement in the country”, he underlined.
But there are some leaders such as IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi and Biscomaun Chairman Dr Sunil Singh who are furthering the movement by organizing a united platform in which all the sectors of co-operatives come on one platform. Bihar co-op conference and IFFCO’s golden jubilee celebrations are the recent examples where co-operators cutting across sectors and political parties came on one platform boosting the co-op movement of the country.
