Despite NCUI’s herculean efforts to collect data on cooperatives, the Indian office of International Labour Organisation (ILO) remains unimpressed and says India doesn’t have proper data on co-operatives operational in the country and their financial details.
ILO official Simel Esim, the unit head of co-operatives enterprises department of ILO said so while participating in a function of SEWA in Ahmedabad recently, reports Indian Express.
SEWA had organized a workshop on strengthening women’s co-operatives. Queries from Indian Cooperative made to Mirai Chatterji, Chairperson of SEWA went unanswered. Namay Mahajan, who was the MD of SEWA till recently was gracious enough to respond at least. He wrote “ I’ve actually stepped down from my role and am going to graduate school. Would request you to email SEWA, they will be able to send the details.”
Coming to ILO’s observation, its official Simel Esim said there is a lack of statistical data in the country. There are different agencies like the registrar office and the National Cooperative Development Corporation, but there is information neither on the finances nor the number of co-operatives active. We need to have some standards and guidelines,” she said, quotes The Indian Express.
Readers would recall that a couple of years ago the apex national body NCUI undertook a job of preparing a profile of cooperatives which revealed a massive surge in the number of cooperatives in the country-from 6.10 lakh to 7.35 lakh. The book titled “Indian Cooperative Movement- A Statistical Profile” was released during the Regional Assembly of ICA Asia and Pacific in the presence of two Union ministers.
This is the number of active co-ops not defunct ones, clarified N Satyanarayan who had entrusted Badrul Hasan, the former Executive Director of NCDC and an IITian for the job. The study also found that there are about 50 thousand co-operatives which are there on paper but are actually defunct.
The profiling also revealed that Maharashtra tops the list when it comes to the maths of viable co-operatives. It has the highest number touching a figure of 2.46 lakhs – way ahead of others.
Gujarat which is often held as a state studded with coops has mere 62 thousand; it is behind Telangana which has 65 thousand viable cooperatives. Bihar is ahead in terms of the number of cooperatives of both Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. While Bihar has 39 thousand, UP and MP have 34 and 38 thousand respectively.
Jharkhand a BJP ruled state stands at the bottom with just 17 thousand co-ops. There is also no state cooperative union in the state.