RBI director Satish Marathe has described India’s cooperative movement as the largest in the world saying it covers 95 percent of India’s rural population. However, he stressed the need for a wide network of PACS and Primary Milk Cooperatives across the length and breadth of the country to transform the countryside.
Praising the good works done by PACS, Marathe urged them to embrace the idea of business diversification. Marathe was delivering the 2nd Sopan Step Development Lecture on “Reforms in cooperatives, imperative to spread rural prosperity.
The event had other high-profile speakers including IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi and NCDC Joint MD Mr DN Thakur. Held in an auditorium at the heart of the town in Delhi, the event was impressive in terms of quality of audience. Even Jyotindra Mehta, Sahakar Bharati President later joined the seminar.
Sahakar Bharati Patron further said, “The co-op lender National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) has sanctioned the loan to one lakh cooperatives of about one lakh crore in the past few years. I am feeling proud to tell you that the NPA of NCDC is less than 2 percent which means cooperatives that took loans from NCDC are also paying back”.
He added that there is an urgent need to amend the state cooperative acts and Sahakar Bharati is working on the subject. It is a pity that not much is known about the contributions the cooperative sector makes to the country’s GDP.
Recalling the history of the cooperative movement, Marathe said till 1967 cooperatives had a vast importance in the
“Cooperative should be viewed as the economic entities and not as business enterprises because cooperative institutions are not profit making bodies. It is true that cooperatives make profits but they distribute these profits among their members in the form of dividend”, he said.
”In India we only process 20 percent of the farm produce where as in developed countries around 80 percent of the agriculture produces are processed. I think , giving MSP to farmers alone will not get them stable income. “In this direction, there is a need to establish agro processing units at village level. NCDC has also come forward to give finance for establishing agro processing units”, he said.
Speaking on the occasion, IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi informed the gathering about his visit to about 125 destinations covered during the Golden Jubilee.
“From the very beginning, the policy makers have held back recognizing the value of cooperatives. There is a need to highlight the success stories of this sector”, he said.
Awasthi also touched on the Nano Fertilizer and said, “With an aim to reduce the use of chemical in farming and double the income of farmers by increasing production and reducing expenditure, the fertilizer cooperative giant IFFCO inaugurated ‘IFFCO Tarafdar Nano Lab’ at Kalol plant in Gujarat
“2 gram of Nano fertilizer will replace one tonne fertilizer”, he said to the surprise of the audience. Despite being the leading manufacturer of chemical fertilizer in the country IFFCO’s emphasis on bio-fertilizer was appreciated by the audience.
K A Badarinath, a well know face in Delhi’s journalistic circuit was the prime mover of the show.