B.Ramachandran Nair
National Cooperative Development Corporation has been improving its performance year after year. It is customary to review its improving performance by the high powered 51 member General Council on a half yearly basis.
It is high time, its sustained support from 1962 onwards to the nation’s cooperative structure is evaluated. It has made marvelous contributions in evolving, strengthening and consolidating the agri marketing, processing and storage segments, pre-harvest input sector, weaker section’s programmes, human resources programme etc.
Government of India support for schemes were significant up to say,1980, but thereafter routing of plan funds through NCDC has been negligible. Similarly, the last scheme in which budgetary support to NCDC was given was the Grant- in -Aid for the purpose of the NCDC Act, and this dried up long back, may be before 1980. It means that the NCDC had to fend for itself for last 30 years.
NCDC has two streams of resources, the NCDC’ corpus of funds and the skilled, innovative and dedicated human resource it has built up over the years. This is important to note, as NCDC’s twin organization, The Central Warehousing Corporation, is equipped with/owns huge warehousing infrastructure spread over the country. NCDC runs its activity as a human resource based organization to a considerable degree. NCDC is a sure candidate to get International recognition like Magsaysay Award etc, provided one can move its case through proper codification and documentation of its achievements over a period of half a century.
NCDC is a unique and is a value-based organization. This aspect is not adequately perceived by stake holders. NCDC needs to make recruitments on war footing to avoid sudden vacuum of man power.