Like his leader Yogi Adityanath, cooperative minister of Uttar Pradesh Mukut Bihari Verma means business and is ready to honour his words first spoken to Indian Cooperative soon after assuming office.
In a media interaction in Bareilly he was seen bubbling with new ideas related to cooperative. Verma wants cooperatives to set up business marts in villages and said the govt is ready with both cash and technology to help co-ops achieve this. Marginal vegetable growers would be benefitted by this, Verma underlined.
His other idea is to develop cooperatives of Uttar Pradesh on the lines of Gujarat and Maharashtra-two states where the cooperative movement is pretty strong. It has suffered hugely in the SP dispensation and there is an urgent need to pull it out of a muddy morass, Verma was emphatic.
Co-operatives have not to restrict themselves only to grain, seed and compost business, he said. If it has to grow it needs to undertake various kinds of business activities, he added.
This time wheat purchasing centres were ready on March 31 to take farmers’ produce. They were equipped with weighing machines and other necessary facilities, said the Minister.
Verma wants to bring vegetable business and other cottage industry products under the umbrella of cooperative. It will drive away the middlemen, he summed up.
The new minister of cooperation said ”over the course of at least last few years, the cooperative sector in the state had degenerated into a personal fiefdom of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s family members”.
“I have resolved to set the sector free from their control. Doing that would amount to rendering a great service to the cooperative movement of the state and also carrying out one of my main responsibilities”, said the minister’ underlining his priority.
”I tell you, freed from political interference, the cooperative sector will flourish into a mass movement capable of bringing about huge improvements in the life of the ordinary people of Uttar Pradesh,” Mr. Verma re-echoed his boss Yogi who is desperately trying to cut UP off from its past moorings.