Do cooperative business strategy provide any hope for restructuring society? What kind of restructuring is visible? Is it the case that social structures are so strong that if cooperation is to happen, it has to happen only through social structures?
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Obviously the cooperative business strategy is a good tool for restructuring the society.Taking the example of Japanese system of "Kieretsu", which has led to immense cross membership across various organizations would lead to an efficient network leading to a stage of restructuring. Co-operation in a society requires the society to come upfront so to bring in all members at one level, the existing boundaries within the society needs to be wiped off.
People come together to work for the collective action , distribution of power and resources happens. When I look at the villages in Gujarat we do the power of cooperatives in transforming the economic status and effectively the social standing as well. However mostly it’s the already influential members who take the lead to organise and thereafter the social structure gets reinforced through the new structures as well. The members may be relatively better off but the social equations don’t change unless conscious efforts are made.
While the Kheda milk co-operative promoted common queues for farmers of all castes, a majority of its board of directors are Patidars consistently over the years. Thus, at the ground level, occurrence of social restructuring though questionable, an attempt in this direction is visible at the least. However, the power at the top, as seen in the composition of its board over the years, is but a reflection of the traditional social structures. So, where do we look to make inferences? Traditional leadership is a shortcut to co-operation. Achieving co-operation through restructuring may be envisaged only through thick pessimistic lenses.
While the cooperative strategy does have potential for restructuring society, the examples that have come up in Gujarat are disheartening. In my induction fieldwork, I saw this first hand, where the wealthier Patels controlled the functioning of the co-operative. This has unfortunately been seen across various co-operatives in the country, for instance the wealthy Maratha caste control sugar co-operatives and political power in Maharashtra. However, one can still hope for social restructuring through improvement in economic status of the lower castes and downtrodden, as money power is known to be a great leveller
Restructuring society is not the sole means to achieve cooperation. I don’t challenge its strength as change is happening all around us at an increasing pace. We could see that cooperatives with business strategy too have not been able to restructure society although it gave way for cooperation. This is evident from Surat cooperative case with a visible economic restructuring rather than being able to bring social restructuring. An efficient networking across social groups though difficult to achieve will lead to a long lasting cooperation among the members.
Cooperative strategy is the best way of restructuring the society.The Surat and kheda cooperative help the people to come together and go for collective action. This take all the class and caste of people together for better of all. The movie 'Manthan' describe how the lower caste people become the part of that collective action. These collective action work against the traditional leaders also.Though most of the cooperation happen trough social structure but the cooperation among workers working at same level need not be through social restructure.
In general, the societal structure is very much influenced by class and caste differentiation. Incase of milk cooperatives in villages, even people from lower and unprivileged class participate and contribute substantially in decision making which results into improved socio-economic status and distribution of power is quite obvious. Thus, social structure is changing in present scenario. Though the process of change is slow but it is significant.
A cooperative business strategy may help in restructuring of the society.For instance, in my induction fieldwork, we observed that both the communities participated in the functioning of the cooperative.Interactions between the two communities had increased.The social structures are very strong in the present indian society, so without including social structures cooperation iis not possible.
cooperative bussiness strategy provide a silver lining in restructuring the society. Socety needs to go through a modification giving a power to the needy section of the society. The cooperative can act as "weapon of the weak" where the poor mobilize to attan a voice against the opperessors i.e the elite class of the society.
Cooperative Institution brings a bond between its members which goes beyond limitations brought about by social structures, at least during its formative phase.Collective efforts demands people to rise above their personal bias, and in so doing,helps bring about an equality in the society, till the reach of the cooperative..Also,cooperative actions can be brought about in hostile social structure. We can take example of FES: it has made possible for different caste to sit together and come to a common understanding about commons.
Co-operatives play an important role in restructuring society, this we saw in our field work. Our village was witnessing lot of caste conflicts, but once a Krishi vikash samiti was formed and after some persuasion people of all castes came together. More than the feeling of working with co-operation what brought them together was the common belief and hope that the Samiti is going to solve their problems. Even though the villagers are working together in harmony the caste issue keeps popping every now and then. But the fact that caste fanaticism has decreased gives the hope.
cooperation definitely has a role is changing the life of people. This is evident from an example from the fieldwork. In the village especially belonging to marginalized group were dependent on informal source of loan which further indebted them due to high interest rate demanded by the moneylenders.Five years back they to the formed APNA COOPERATIVE which caters to the financial requirement of the members.even the interest from the common fund of the cooperative is distributed to the members in festive season , thus making marginalized farmers are freed from clutches of moneylenders.
Cooperatives in various parts of India have adapted to different forms of socio economic structures and also based on the local culture of the region. The Surat cooperatives are an example of the same. Although the cooperative business strategies provide an effective tool to restructure the society yet they have not been able to do so in many cases. Social bonding is a strong force in driving any collective action but not the only sole criterion. The society as a whole need to come together and this can result in restructuring of the society.
Cooperative has change the social strucure in some ways. For eg. during my 14 days stay in a Gujarat village I saw people belonging to different caste interacting with each other and even lower caste secretary dictating terms in a Patel majority village. In my opinion this would not have been possible without cooperative. But I must be agree that majority of the cooperation continues to be domnated by social structure.
The cooperative business strategy is a good tool for restructuring the society. As can be seen in the case of Japanese system of “Kieretsu” various organizations come together to help-out each other in times of crisis, leading to social restructuring. For social restructuring upliftment of the weaker sections is necessary.
Social structure are characterized by stratification across class, caste and power of affluent, which is a major hinderance in the success of cooperation.Thus with restructuring of these differences or providing some incentives which allows the stratified sections to temporarily forget their differences and come together to cooperate will help
Co-operative Business Strategy will not restructure society but yes, it will reduce the amount of social differences between the groups. Initially, in the case of Kheda Milk co-operative, there were many social restrictions imposed on people by their class regarding milk transactions. The caste difference reduced over the period of time and each individual felt the other individual was equally important for the functioning of the co-operative. However, the social differences in other fields continued and may be there even today.
The co-operative Kieretsu of Surat has the potential to restructure the society. This business strategy of Surat helped to built many interlocking and mutually supportive co-operative institutional structure. This kieretsu includes sugar, dairy, cotton co-operatives. Most of the farmers of Surat comes under this. Every co-operative is interconnected so they help each other. In this sense we can say that the restructuring is visible.
Yes, cooperative business strategy could help in restructuring society. To make visibility more pronounced we need to decrease the income differences in the society. It is not mandatory that it would happen only through social structure.
Yes, nowadays there is very bleak demarcation between different classes of people because now people are occupied in any of activities which provide them livelihood sources. And cooperative business is a way out of minimizing the risk and increasing the bargaining power with the clients.
We cannot talk of restructuring society unless its member are economically empowered. For aattaining cooperation firstly we need to identify common interests and mobilize them. It's said poverty breeds strife..how can we expect peaceful and prosperous society if members dont have access to basicities. I see no harm if cooperative business strategy is implemented. It matters not that all memebers have same affluence, but it will be a win-win situation and in long run of time and space people will be betteroff than elsewhere.
Cooperative business strategy, in the very first place, will bridge many gaps existing in the society, be it social or financial. The monopolization of profits will come to an end. The profits will be shared and each participating member will have say in the cooperative, which means power will also be decentralized.
It is not necessary that cooperatives will form only through social structures. A cooperative is supposed to bring together people from many arena together to pursue a common goal, which will be beneficial for all members.
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