The meeting of cooperators led by NCUI President with the Vice-Chairman of Niti Aayog Rajiv Kumar turned out to be a brain-storming session both in form and spirit as the latter wanted to know why despite its multiple contributions, the co-op sector has not been able to exert any influence on the policy makers.
Giving details of the meeting NCUI President Chandra Pal Singh said Kumar wanted a high-level consultants’ committee to be constituted by the apex body NCUI to find out why the sector has failed to generate the impact it should have, given its ubiquitous presence in all walks of life.
The Consultants’ committee should have one or two professors from IIMs, suggested Niti Aayog VC who has taken over in place of Arvind Panagariya. “We liked the idea and we intend to constitute such a committee sooner than later”, added Chandra Pal.
The Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman also suggested a fresh bid to restore the co-op in the govt scheme of things should be made after the findings of the Consultant Committee are available. The cooperators lauded the positive attitude displayed by the Mr Kumar and agreed to almost all the points made by him.
Besides NCUI President, the delegation of cooperators included Chief Executive N Satyanarayan, K Sivadasan Nair, GH Amin and a representative of ICA A-P Mrs Savitri Singh.
NCUI also gave a brief description of the activities undertaken by the sector before the Vice-Chairman. “We made a presentation before the Aayog which was prepared on the basis of inputs given by various arms of co-operative”, underlined NCUI President.
Despite its contributions, the co-operative sector has been sliding in the government discourse-be it budget making or any other platforms. The meeting with the Vice-Chairman was aimed at correcting the perception, Yadav stated.
There were discussions about both the long term vision of NCUI and how the sector could be capable of taking the govt schemes to the remotest parts of the country using its massive network. During the meeting, it was also impressed on the Vice-Chairman that NCUI as the apex body of the cooperative movement is capable of taking care of the training needs of cooperators in the country.
The issue of COBI was also raised. “There are co-op banks at the state level but there is none at the national level; given the vast network of co-ops in the country it is only natural that a bank like COBI should take roots”, was what we told the Aayog officials, said Chandra Pal to Indian Cooperative.
The meeting lasted for more than one and a half hours.