This 21st VaikunthBhai Mehta Memorial Lecture this year is being delivered by Shri Govinda Rajulu Chintala, the newly appointed Chairman of Nabard today through a virtual platform. Though some of the leaders including NCUI President Chandra Pal Singh are expected to attend the seminar from its headquarters in Delhi, majority participants would participate through Zoom, confirmed a senior official of NCUI.
The theme of this year’s lecture is “Revival of Cooperative Structure with Technology and New Business Plan”. Given this theme, the choice of keynote speaker is significant in the sense that Nabard is at the vanguard of disbursing Agri Infra Fund aimed at redefining the agriculture and cooperative that we have known so far.
An invite sent by NCUI asks participants to follow the protocol for this lecture by entering the Zoom session using one’s full name. One has to join the lecture by 11 am and has to keep his audio on mute.
It bears recall that Shri Amitabh Kant, Chief Executive Officer, NITI Aayog had delivered the 20th VaikunthBhai Mehta Memorial Lecture at the NCUI Auditorium last year.
Every year NCUI organizes the memorial lecture in the memory of Vaikunth Bhai Mehta known as one of the pioneers of the Indian Cooperative Movement. Shri Mehta all his life strongly advocated the cooperative ideology based on a conviction that cooperatives are the best civil society organisations to take care of socio-cultural and economic needs of the people.
NCUI has so far organised memorial lectures in the memory of eminent personalities like Dr. V. Kurien, Former Chairman, National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), Shri Mohan Dharia, Ex-Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, and others.
The release also says that the function will be attended by Chairman and MDs of national level cooperative federations, state cooperative organizations, international organizations, and other representatives of reputed organizations.
It bears recall that the Indian cooperative movement is the largest movement of the world representing 247.97 million members with more than 8.00 lakh cooperative functioning from village to national level through important sectors like credit & banking, fertilizer, sugar, dairy, marketing, consumer, handloom, handicraft, fisheries, tribal, labour and housing etc.