International Day of Cooperatives: July 04
Dr. Parveen Kumar*
Before proceeding further let me clear what I suppose to convey though the title of this article. Every year first Saturday of July is celebrated as ‘International Day of Cooperatives’. This year the first Saturday falls on July 04 and is the 104th International Day of Cooperatives. Saturday is thus ‘The Saturday of Cooperatives’. On this global day, I begin by paying tributes few pioneers of cooperative movement in the country. Sir Frederick Nicholson is universally regarded as the Father of the Cooperative Movement in India. Sir Nicholsan, a British civil servant submitted a landmark report in 1895 recommending the German credit union model, which directly led to the enactment of the Cooperative Credit Societies Act of 1904. Thereafter several other visionary figures became pioneers of the cooperative movement in India in different sectors. In Dairy sector Tribhuvandas Kishibhai Patel is recognized as the father of the cooperative movement having founded the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union (now famously known as Amul) in Anand, Gujarat. At the regional level, Sh. Siddanagouda Sanna Ramanagouda Patil is celebrated as the Father of the Cooperative Movement in Karnataka, having helped establish India’s first Agricultural Credit Cooperative Society in Kanaginahal in 1905.
Now, let us understand what a cooperative is. Cooperatives are the natural vehicles of collaborative partnership and prosperity for all; contributing to economic, social and environmental sustainability across regions and economic sectors, the worth of cooperative. The Cooperatives can be defined as, ‘an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically controlled enterprise’. Co-operatives’ open membership model affords access to wealth creation and poverty elimination. This result from the co-operative principle of members’ economic participation: ‘Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative.’ Because co-operatives are people centered not capital centered, they do not perpetuate, nor accelerate capital concentration and they distribute wealth in a more fair way.
Since their inception, these voluntary and democratic institutions of masses have to their credit many important success stories. These institutions have given the much desired push to the economic growth of the economy and resulted in inclusive development of the excluded one. The success of the white revolution in the country has been due to these cooperatives. The white revolution made the country the world’s largest producer of milk and milk products. Everyone today is familiar with The Anand Milk Union Limited (AMUL); a huge organization of milk producing cooperatives.
The earliest record of a co-operative comes from Scotland in March 14, 1761. In 1844 a group of 28 artisans working in the cotton mills in north of England established the first modern co-operative business. International Co-operative Day is an annual celebration of the co-operative movement observed on the first Saturday in July since 1923 by the International Co-operative Alliance. On 16 December 1992, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution 47/90, proclaiming the first Saturday of July 1995 to be the International Day of Cooperatives, marking the centenary of the establishment of the International Co-operative Alliance. Since then, the International Day of Cooperatives is celebrated every year. The date of the celebration of the International Day was chosen to coincide with the already existing International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) International Cooperative Day with has been celebrated since 1923. In 1994, the United Nations General Assembly adopted another resolution 49/151 of 23 December 1994 on cooperatives, which not only called on governments and international agencies to, ‘consider fully the potential of cooperatives for contributing to the solution of economic, social and environmental problems in formulating national development strategies; and consider reviewing legal and administrative constraints on the activities of cooperatives with a view to eliminating those constraints that are not applied to other businesses and enterprises’.
Co-operatives around the world celebrate the International Day of Cooperatives in various fashions and each year the organizing institutions agree on a specific theme for the celebrations. This year the theme for the International Cooperatives Day is ‘Cooperatives for a peaceful world’. The gist of the theme best aligns with the speech of first Primeminister of India Late Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru. In his speech in international seminar on cooperative leadership in South-East Asia he had said ‘But my outlook at present is not the outlook of spreading the cooperative movement gradually, progressively, as it has done. My outlook is to convulse India with the Cooperative Movement or rather with cooperation to make it, broadly speaking, the basic activity of India, in every village as well as elsewhere; and finally, indeed, to make the cooperative approach the common thinking of India. Therefore, the whole future of India really depends on the success of this approach of ours to these vast numbers, hundreds of millions of people’
India being an agricultural country set the example through the world’s biggest cooperative movement in the world. Initially the cooperative movement in the country was as a result of the exploitation of the weaker and the downtrodden from the clutches of profit hungry businessmen. In India, it can be studied into two phases viz. co-operative Movement in pre-Independence era and co-operative movement in post-Independence era. In fact, the term cooperative societies owe its existence to the farmers of Poona and Ahmednagar who spearheaded an agitation against the money lenders who were charging exorbitant rates of interest. The then British government came forward and passed three acts known as the Deccan Agriculture Relief Act (1879), the Land Improvement Loan Act (1883) and the Agriculturists Loan Act (1884). But a structuralized cooperative move came with enactment of the Cooperative Credit Societies Act, 1904. In 1919, cooperation became a provincial subject and the provinces were authorized to make their own cooperative laws under the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms. This categorization carried on to Government of India Act, 1935. In 1942, Government of British India enacted the Multi-Unit Cooperative Societies Act to cover Cooperative Societies with membership from more than one province. Hence, we can say that the Cooperatives Movement was awakening movement for peasants and farmers as well as agriculture and its allied activities. The post independence era in the country also saw the cooperatives becoming an integral part of Five-Year Plans. In 1958, the National Development Council (NDC) had recommended a national policy on cooperatives and also for training of personnel’s and setting up of Co-operative Marketing Societies. In 1984, Parliament of India enacted the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act to remove the plethora of different laws governing the same types of societies. The Government of India had also announced a National Policy on Co- operatives in 2002. The ultimate objective of the National Policy on Cooperatives is to provide support for promotion and development of cooperatives, reduction of regional imbalances, strengthening of cooperative education, training and human resource development. The most important of the credit societies are the rural credit cooperatives comprising Primary Agricultural Credit Society (PACS), District Cooperative Central Banks (DCCB) and State Cooperative Banks in the short and medium term credit structure. The Primary Cooperative Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (PCARDB) and State Co-operative Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (SCARDB) are an important source for long-term credit structure. These play a key role in not only purveying credit but also in mopping up local savings. In fact, the spatial spread of the credit cooperatives have contributed in their own way in moving towards financial inclusion.
Now with a separate Cooperation Ministry and Home minister of the country leading the new ministry, India’s cooperative sector has expanded over the past three years into one of the largest organized economic networks globally. The number of registered cooperatives now stands at about 8.5 lakh, with membership close to 32 crore, according to official and sectoral data. The sector is broadly divided into credit cooperatives (approx. 2 lakh) and non-credit cooperatives spanning housing, dairy, fisheries, and agro-processing. Maharashtra leads with over 2.21 lakh cooperatives and nearly 5.8 crore members. Karnataka and Kerala report very high membership relative to the number of registered societies, while Gujarat, Telangana, UP, Bihar, and West Bengal together account for several crore members. Cooperatives often link households across multiple activities, such as farming, savings, production, and consumption, which explains their wide social reach despite a limited number of societies compared with private firms. India accounts for about 27% of cooperatives worldwide. An international study reveals that cooperatives support about 10% of global employment, with around 15 Indian entities featuring in the Global Top 300 rankings.
(The author writes on agriculture and social issues; can be reached at [email protected])
