National Cooperative Union of India organized a National Workshop on “Media – Cooperative Synergy for the International Year of Cooperative (IYC) Celebration” to make media aware of cooperative activities and involve them more with the movement.
United Nations has declared 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives and NCUI wants to make best use of this opportunity, said President NCUI, Chandra Pal Singh Yadav on this occasion.
Cooperative sector was represented by many important leaders led by Chandra Pal Singh Yadav while media was represented by Nai Duniya editor Shri Alok Mehta. Other media persons included our editor ( Indiancooperative.com), Shri Ajay Jha, Harvir Singh of Dainik Bhaskar, Shishir Sinha from CNBC Awaj and Sanjiv Mukerjee from Business World.
In a charged discussion on the role of media in cooperative news , Mohan Mishra charged the media of being obsessed with TRP and circulation.
Reacting sharply to this media men said that it is not so rather cooperatives do not provide us with news. Shishir Sinha wanted cooperatives not to engage in publicity alone while Sanjiv asked them to give lead to stories.
Indiancooperative editor, Ajay Jha said that cooperatives should open up and allow itself to be scrutinized by media. Fighting against RTI would not help if we intend to take this movement to greater heights, he added.
Senior journalist Harvir Singh said that cooperatives enjoy credibility in the rural India and is more relevant today for the people with small means in the era of globalization and privatization. He lamented upon the fact that government is not paying enough attention on it.
The veteran journalist Alok Mehta said that Indian cooperative movement is quite respectable and we are not as TRP driven as it appears. He wanted cooperatives to take vernacular press as vehicle of communication too.
Why only during IYC, we should propagate the concept of the movement all through, said Mr Mehta.
The apex cooperatives should strengthen the information networking from their state-level federations and provide it and also success stories on a regular basis to journalists. The responsibility of the cooperative organization is to create a public awareness program in collaboration with mass media to have visibility felt at the nook and corner of the country.
Some of the important suggestions which emerged from the workshop include — taking the help of vernacular media to popularize the activities and events, strengthening of cooperative network, media field visit, bringing out special films and documentaries, advertisement in media.