Why we need a National Cooperative Database

Introduction & Background

The Ministry of Cooperation was created on 6^th July, 2021 with a mandate to ensure sahkar se samridhi (Prosperity through Cooperation) by consolidating India’s social and economic capital for community’s progress through self-help and cooperation.  India’s cooperative system consists of credit and non-credit cooperative institutions.  There are 8.5 lakh cooperative units (NCUI, 2018) operating in India as of March 2018.  Out of the total cooperative units in the country 20% (1.77 lakh units) are credit cooperatives. The remaining 80% (6.73 lakh) are non-credit cooperatives involved in various diverse business activities viz. producer, processing, consumer, industrial, marketing, tourism, hospital, housing, transport, labour, farming, service, livestock, dairy, fishery and multi-purpose cooperatives etc.  In the three tier cooperative credit sector in the country, There are about 98,000 primary agricultural credit cooperatives.  In addition to this, there are several other primary level cooperatives engaged in various diversified non-credit cooperative sectors.  Several Departments/Ministries in Government of India (more than 50) are directly or indirectly involved in activities performed by sectoral cooperatives.  Since cooperation is a State subject, the State Governments through their State-specific cooperative act promote and regulate cooperative movement in their respective States.

2. Cooperatives ensure a high level of social capital with trust, network/connectivity with a common economic social goal.  Being collectives at the grass-root level, cooperatives exert tremendous empowering influence on the community. These units need to be oriented/strengthened on various parameters – governance, business operations, organisational skills, work allocation, payment/transaction, market systems, supply chain etc.  There is an urgent need to have an effective coordination of all cooperative development efforts of the union and State Governments to ensure a smooth cooperative movement in the country.

3. In order to deepen the cooperative movement in the country and to have a feasible futuristic plan for cooperative development, the country needs to develop a mechanism to capture information on various important parameters on cooperative movement which could be analyzed for resolution of issues and timely development action. The need of the hour is to prepare, maintain and strengthen a nationwide database on cooperative development. We also need to ensure adoption of the latest and appropriate technology and Management Information System (MIS) in cooperatives.  The MIS should provide us with sufficient information for data analytics so that timely and effective decisions could be taken in future for smooth growth of the sector.

Need of a National Database

4. Statistics on cooperatives are essential to quantify the contribution of the cooperatives in the progress of the economy. Currently reliable and comparable statistics on cooperatives are missing as there is no uniform database which can capture data on various growth parameters of diverse sectoral cooperatives. The organizations are collecting sector-specific data and are submitting to NCUI for necessary compilation. There is a need for compiling the data on cooperatives so that the application of the data can help in designing better managerial and policy decisions for cooperative development. 

Expectations from the proposed database

5. Data on credit Society, Primary Service Credit Banks, Fishery Cooperatives,  Handloom Cooperatives, Consumer Cooperatives, Health Cooperatives, SC/ST Cooperatives, Coir Cooperative Society, Cooperative Federations, Dairy, Sugar cooperative, labour cooperatives etc. will help in determining root causes of failures, issues and defects in near-real time. Thus, the creation of a cooperative database will:

• avoid data redundancy and ensure better data visualisation of various sectoral cooperatives.
• play a crucial role in efficiently executing queries and ensuring information consistency.
• include bulk information deposited in a framework, making it easier to locate and explore relevant information.
• improve data sharing across the sectors, ensure effective data integration through constant flow of data in to the system
• assess, identify and alert issues and problems of cooperatives
• help in managing information on sector-specific cooperatives to make it more accessible, updated and integrated.
• allow and empower taking timely decision for addressing issues and problems of each and every cooperatives with precision.
• help us know the contribution of the cooperatives in the generation of employment, income and wealth in the economy

Challenges before us

• Which parameters/indicators would be captured?
• Will there be different modules/templates for data capturing looking at the diversity in the sector?
• Which dataset template should be common for all sectoral cooperatives?
• Where the data should be sourced from? How?
• How to ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness of information?
• How would the data validity and reliability be ensured?
• Will the State machinery be involved in data verification?

 -Ministry Sources