By Amit Shah
(Union Home & Cooperation Minister)
“Cooperation’ embodies two important principles of human civilisation – “‘Sah’ and Karya’ which means accomplishment of outcome-oriented activities following an all-inclusive approach. Cooperatives have immense potential to deliver required goods and services at the grass-roots and to ensure a sustainable and quality growth. Seven decades of attaining independence have witnessed a skewed distribution of cooperatives across States, indicating immense scope for expansion of cooperative movement.
The contribution of cooperatives will have a multiplicative effect on our Prime Minister’s vision of a five trillion-dollar Indian economy. The time has come to transform cooperatives into multi-purpose and multidimensional community business units to cater to the demands of agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors at the community level. All-inclusive socio-economic progress of India requires quick, time-bound and a comprehensive and consultative action plan on cooperative development. The task seems difficult but attainable. The cumulative efforts of Union and State Governments, cooperative leaders and the federal heads would, undoubtedly, bring all of us closer to achieving the goal of “Sahkar Se Samridhi
Cooperation has remained the philosophy of our nation for centuries. India strives for a cooperative-led all- encompassing socioeconomic progress. The cooperative sector has always played a significant role in the overall economic development of the country with its member driven and all-inclusive approach.
Cooperation has the required capability to ensure equitable and concerted efforts towards enhancing the flow of timely, adequate and door-step commodity and service supports to various critical infrastructure such as agriculture and industrial input services, irrigation, marketing, processing and community storages, etc., and also for other activities such as poultry, fisheries, horticulture, dairy, textiles, consumer, housing, health – to name a few.
India is now celebrating its past glorious achievements and exploring pathways to make a deprivation-free and socio-economically prosperous environment.
At the time when we rejoice the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav and India@75, we must get ourselves ready to become one of the world economic leaders through the mechanism of cooperation. Cooperatives are universally accepted as an essential instrument of social and economic policy and have inherent advantages in strengthening the efforts leading to overall economic prosperity with enhanced livelihood security and employment.
These have immense potential to deliver required goods and services at the grass-roots and to ensure a sustainable and quality growth environment.
We should appreciate and recognise the strength of our cooperatives. These are people-centred rather than capital-centred organisations and through collective efforts they bring in cohesiveness, community business sense and enhance social bonding. These are governed by seven golden principles.
Courtesy: Rural Development Monthly- Kurushetra