Now that the Amit Shah led Ministry of Cooperation has taken up an ambitious target of setting up two lakh cooperative societies, it is important to ensure that even as the milestones are achieved in quantitative terms, the focus on marginal and small farmers is not to be diluted – for they constitute the vast majority of the 145 million farmers in the country. In fact it would not be wrong to say that they are the actual bulwark for the food security in the country. However, even though their access to institutional support has improved over the last decade, there is much more that can still be done.
Therefore, one important intervention could be to link the existing 1.08 lakh housing societies and the proposed 92 lakh cooperatives with two important District level institutions – the Krishi Vigyan Kendras and the District Industries Centres. For far too long the two have existed in silos – one under the Agriculture Department, and the other under Industry. It is high time that KVKs and Agriculture Department recognise that farmers are also small scale entrepreneurs – who take decisions about what to grow and, then, raise capital from family, friends and institutional sources, and depend on markets, both for price discovery as well as for the actual transaction. Likewise, the Industries Department must take a proactive role in helping farmers establish value chains, and setting up micro and small scale processing and packaging units to improve their incomes. The support should also extend to helping them register their unique GI characteristics and leverage existing initiatives like One District One/ Two Products – depending on the existing resources and potential.
However, even as the Union and state governments, along with cooperative development funding agencies like NABARD, NDDB and NCDC extend their policy and financial support, they should not tamper with the democratic functioning of the cooperatives. In several states, including Uttarakhand, elections to cooperative societies have been kept in abeyance for political reasons, or held only after court intervention.
The point being made by this paper is that when PACS, FPOs, and other grassroots cooperatives are democratically governed, transparent, and professionally managed, they can significantly reduce poverty and improve livelihoods. A vibrant democracy is not just about holding elections to the State Assemblies and the Lok Sabha. If regular elections are held for these two lakh grassroots institutions, would it not unleash a new spirit of empowerment among the primary producers?
