Friday, December 18, 2009

Co-operative Society- Is co-operation missing??

Co-operative societies functions on two basic principles- Self Reliance and Member-Participation. However, Self-Reliance has been eroded by increasing government intervention! Their plans to merge all co-operative societies to taluka level co-operative society will further reduce the claim making power of the farmer. Supervising authorities point to the fact that control is required to prevent misuse of funds by a minority. However, this argument cannot be completely subdued. Coming to Member Participation, how many farmers are aware of the functioning of the co-operative society? Do they know their rights and are they able to do any internal control? Also, non-active members weaken the movement further, who are sometimes paid for sitting in board sessions in the form of ‘sitting allowances’. Also, there is no guarantee that the leader from the farmer community will not misuse power! No movement can attain speed unless it involves everyone in it! Like the word financial inclusion, I would like to coin a new term ‘Co-operative Inclusion’ where you include everyone in the co-operative movement!

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