MINISTRY OF COOPERATION

• Before the reshuffling of the Cabinet Ministers in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the creation of a new Ministry of Cooperation.
• Amit Shah to handle the portfolio of the newly-set up Ministry of Cooperation along with his current Home Affairs portfolio.
• The new ministry is created to realize the vision of 'Shakar Se Samriddhi' (Prosperity through cooperatives). In Hindi, the Ministry of Cooperation is known as 'Sahakarita Mantralaya'.
• A Co-operative based economic development model in our country is very important, where each member works with a spirit of responsibility.
• The Central Government with the creation of the Ministry of cooperation has signalled its deep commitment to community based developmental partnership.

3. What will be the new Ministry’s objectives? 

• The Ministry of Cooperation will provide a separate administrative legal and policy framework for strengthening the cooperative movement in the country.
• It will help deepen Cooperatives as a true people based movement reaching upto the grassroots. In our country, a Co-operative based economic development model is very relevant where each member works with a spirit of responsibility.
• The Ministry will work to streamline processes for ‘Ease of doing business’ for co-operatives and enable development of Multi-State Co-operatives.

4. What is Cooperative Movement?

• Cooperatives are organisations formed at the grassroots level by people to harness the power of collective bargaining towards a common goal.
• In agriculture, cooperative dairies, sugar mills, spinning mills etc are formed with the pooled resources of farmers who wish to process their produce.
• The country has 1,94,195 cooperative dairy societies and 330 cooperative sugar mill operations.
• In 2019-20, dairy cooperatives had procured 4.80 crore litres of milk from 1.7 crore
  members and had sold 3.7 crore litres of liquid milk per day.
• Cooperative sugar mills account for 35% of the sugar produced in the country.
• In banking and finance, cooperative institutions are spread across rural and urban areas.
• Village-level primary agricultural credit societies (PACSs) formed by farmer associations are the best example of grassroots-level credit flow.
• These societies anticipate the credit demand of a village and make the demand to the district central cooperative banks (DCCBs).
• State cooperative banks sit at the apex of the rural cooperative lending structure. Given that PACSs are a collective of farmers, they have much more bargaining powers than an individual farmer pleading his case at a commercial bank.
• There are also cooperative marketing societies in rural areas and cooperative housing societies in urban areas.

5. What Laws Govern Cooperatives In India?

• Agriculture and cooperation are in the state list, which means state governments can govern them.
• A majority of the cooperative societies are governed by laws in their respective states, with a Cooperation Commissioner and the Registrar of Societies as their governing office.
• In 2002, the Centre passed a MultiState Cooperative Societies Act that allowed for registration of societies with operations in more than one state.
• These are mostly banks, dairies and sugar mills whose area of operation spreads across states. The Central Registrar of Societies is their controlling authority, but on the ground the State Registrar takes actions on his behalf.

6. Significance of Cooperatives