ULCCS’s Kishore talks of smart co-ops; Jayen on empowering women

Cooperative Congress organized several educational sessions in which many new ideas came to the fore. If ULCCS’s Kishore explained how to develop a smart co-op society based on latest knowledge, Amul’s MD Jayen Mehta stressed that gender inequality could be addressed through co-operatives.

Addressing the session on ‘’Innovation & Technology for Cooperative Governance’’ organized during the 17th Indian Cooperative Congress, Kerala based ULCCS Chief Project Coordinator Kishor TK emphasized on the importance of developing transparency, responsibility, accountability and creativity in the cooperative sector.

“The present scenario shows that the cooperative sector is not able to absorb the latest techniques being developed. They still like to follow conventional methods. So, the growth rate and contributions of the cooperative to the nation’s GDP are very less”, he added.

Kishor, who is also on the board of National Labour Cooperative Federation of India, further said, “The cooperative movement should transform itself organisationally and culturally to stay relevant in the changing world. Smart organisations will be integrated, focus on real time business visibility, take decisions on data and adhere to the Enterprise Architecture”.

He further said, the Cooperative movement should have better governance. This should be focused on formulating a strategy for managing time, innovation, visibility, and production. engagement and accuracy. And we should also check how smart we are and ready for doing business and meeting opportunities, challenges and completions”.

“Adoption of new technologies is not an easy task. We have to use the right technology or innovation in suitable areas of our organisation. The emerging methods like the “Smart Industry readiness index” introduced by Mr Raimond Klein, CEO of International Centre for Industrial Transformation, Singapore is also a good tool to check the readiness of our system. We also should start preparing to accept the next industrial revolution- Industry 5.0 which envisages a super smart Society”, Kishor underlined.

In his speech, he also mentioned the success of the primary cooperative consortium for infrastructure projects developed by ULCCS Ltd. The session was chaired by Nabard Chairman Shaji KV and R S Patel, Managing Director, AMR Dairy was the keynote speaker. The other speaker was Vishwas Urban Cooperative Bank CEO Prasad Patil.

Addressing a session on “Promoting Gender Equality and Social Inclusion through Cooperative” as one of the speakers during the 17th Indian Cooperative Congress, Amul Managing Director Jayen Mehta said that the gender inequality can be eradicated through cooperative.

“Cooperative has a power to eradicate Gender Inequality and in this context Amul is doing a commendable job by empowering women of society. Amul pays Rs 20,000 crore to women for milk price every year directly into their bank account”, said Mehta.

The session was chaired by Ranjeet Kumar (Principal Scientist) ICA-NAARM, Hyderabad. Niti Aayog, Senior Advisor Dr Neelam Patel was the Keynote speaker. The other speakers were Mirai Chatterjee, Chairperson, Sewa Gujarat, Shubhra Devi, Founder, Meira Foods, Manipur and Ms. Priti Patel, Vice Chairperson, ICA-AP women committee.

Mirai Chatterjee demanded ‘Women’s Cooperative Enterprise Development Fund’ and linking women cooperatives proactively with all new initiatives like the cooperative university and export cooperatives.

In his Keynote address, Dr Neelam Patel emphasized on strengthening programs like the Model Cooperative Village that adopts a household-oriented approach to ensure provision of livelihood opportunities to each household and strengthening capacity of SHG (81 lakh).

The session was organized on the 2nd day of 17th Indian Cooperative Congress at Pragati Maidan on Sunday, in which NCUI President Dileepbhai Sanghani, officials from the Ministry of Cooperation and others were present.

Seven Sessions were organized on different topics during the two-day congress. Vijay Kumar, Central Registrar of Cooperative Societies, chaired a session on ‘Importance of Cooperative Credit System in Indian Economy’.