Indian delegation led by Mr Harish Rawat, Minister of States (agriculture) along with the President of National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI) Dr Chandra Pal Singh Yadav,NAFED Chairman Bijender Singh and others have gone to participate in the 9th Asia-Pacific Cooperative Ministers’ Conference in Bangkok on 27th February.
The Cooperative ministers of the Asia-Pacific countries, government officials, leaders of cooperative movement in the region along with top ICA officials including Dame Paulin Green and Charles Gold are also present.
However, the Union Minister of India Sharad Pawar is conspicuous by his absence leading to other absentees such as delegates from the largest fertilizer cooperative IFFCO.
The Conference would deliberate for three days on the way to productive collaboration between governments and cooperatives. Interestingly, with the initiative of ICA, uniform cooperative laws are in vogue in the regions of Africa,Latin America and Europe.
Could something of that nature be possible in Asia-Pacific countries-is the focus of the Ministers’ Conference. This is a daunting task given the diversity of the region.
Even after 100 years of cooperative movement cooperatives in Asia continue to be offsprings of the respective governments. Many of them have become high maintenance non-performing assets, says the Conference Concept paper candidly.
The Concept paper further says that cooperative leadership has enjoyed unbridled powers without accountability and maintain the status-quo serves their interest best. In some cases where the cooperative law provides autonomy, the cooperatives have ended up becoming the fiefdom of a few.
In the name of pseudo-democracy, the elections are managed and same faces taking up leadership in rotation, and continue enjoying the benefits for years.
The vicious circle of “cooperative by the government for the unaccountable leadership of indifferent members” has left the real component-the member-far behind with no sense of belonging to the cooperative, Concept Paper adds.
Aware of such limitations Ministers’ Conference aims at goading governments to come up with enabling law and policy for operations and appropriate judicial safeguards for the cooperatives.