The time has come for cooperative leaders to stop all hanky-panky as the reach of Indian cooperative.com and Bhartiya Sahakarita.com is going to extend soon to the remote villages of the country. Now the works of cooperative leaders would be scrutinized even by the ordinary member of cooperative society.
Department of Telecom (DoT) has plans and fund to cover remotest village of the country through internet. Under the ‘Rural Wireline Broadband’ scheme of DoT, a total of 2,61,413 broadband connections and 2,506 kiosks have been provided till January 31, 2011 in the rural and remote areas of the country against a target of 8,88,832 connections and 28,762 kiosks by 2014.
Cooperative movement, though has noble aim but has fallen prey, in majority of cases to vested interest. There are many multi state cooperative societies which run on the basis of fake societies and its Directors on board sometimes represents defunct cooperative societies.
Indian cooperative.com has been trying to expose such fake societies but in the past felt handicapped due to lack of access to villages. Very soon this scenario would change and with the active input from those whom high profile cooperative leaders represent, it can expose the functioning of many multi state societies. Its Hindi edition Bhartiya Sahkarita.com would come very handy for this purpose as villagers are more comfortable in Hindi than in English.
In the Budget for 2011-12, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee finalised a plan to provide Rural Broadband Connectivity to all 2,50,000 Panchayats in the country in three years.
USO Funds meant to give rural internet to farmers and villagers was set-up in 2002 in order to provide mobile services and broadband connectivity in rural and remote areas of the country. As on December 31, 2010, the fund has a total of Rs 13,789.28 crore.
As per the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), rural broadband connectivity will cost around Rs 18,000 crore.
