Cooperative model best suited for development of India

• Union Home and Cooperation Minister described the cooperative model as the best suited model to achieve an all-encompassing and inclusive development in a huge country like India with a population of 130 crore.
• The cooperative model had the capacity to bring prosperity for all and there was a need to increase the number of successful cooperative models like the Amul dairy cooperatives and bring them under one umbrella.

Cooperative Sector:

• Co-operative sector industries are operated and owned and by the suppliers or producers of raw materials, workers or both.
• Cooperative movement in India gained a lot of impetus after Independence. Cooperative movement was encouraged in every village of India.

Importance of Cooperative sector for India:

• The Cooperatives play very important role in India because it is an organization for the poor, illiterate and unskilled people. The importance of Cooperative sector for India is given below:

1. It provides agricultural credits and funds where state and private sectors have not been able to do very much.
2. It provides strategic inputs for the agricultural-sector; consumer societies meet their consumption requirements at concessional rates.
3. It helps to overcome the constraints of agricultural development.

Provisions of Indian Constitution:

• 1. Directive Principles of State Policy enshrines under article 43 that- Living wage, etc., for workers. The State shall endeavour to secure, by suitable legislation or economic organisation or in any other way, to all workers, agricultural, industrial or otherwise, work, a living wage, conditions of work ensuring a decent standard of life and full enjoyment of leisure and social and cultural opportunities and, in particular, the State shall endeavour to promote cottage industries on an individual or co-operative basis in rural areas.
• 2. Right to form cooperatives can also be construed as a Fundamental Right, Article 14 – (Right to Equality) and Article 19(1)(c) as ‘Right to form Associations or Unions.

Committee related to the Cooperative Movements in India:

1. All-India Rural Credit Survey Committee Report (1954)
2. Chaudhary Brahm Prakash Committee (which proposed a model law) (1990)
3. Mirdha Committee (1996)
4. Jagdish Kapoor Committee (2000)
5. Vikhe Patil Committee (2001)
6. V. S. Vyas Committee (2001 and 2004)

• Hence, we can say that the Cooperatives Movement was awakening movement for peasants and farmers as well as agriculture and its allied activities. It has immense potential to deliver goods and services in areas where the government and private sector failed to reach.