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Agriculture Minister Shri Sharad Pawar today asked State Cooperative Ministers and Secretaries to earnestly work to free cooperatives from excess bureaucratic control and negative politics.
Addressing the State Cooperative Ministers’ Conference Shri Pawar said that to strengthen the cooperatives the Centre would soon bring a constitutional amendment on the pattern of the 73rd Amendment. He sought States’ views on the proposed amendment. The amendment, the Minister explained, would give the cooperatives the rights to election, autonomous management and independent professional audit. It would provide protection to cooperatives and insulate them from unnecessary political and bureaucratic interference.
Expressing his Ministry’s concern at the bad shape of credit cooperatives, the Minister called for firm steps ‘rather than taking populist measures.’ Steps would need to be taken to enable all cooperative credit institutions to get re-finance from NABARD, to reduce cost of funds, to expand cooperative credit net and to bring defaulters back into the credit fold. Only then would it be possible to achieve the target of doubling agricultural credit in the next three years, said the Minister.
Minister of State for Agriculture, Shri Kanti Lal Bhuria and Agriculture Secretary, Smt. Radha Singh stressed on speedy reforms in the cooperative sector by concerted efforts by the Centre and the States.
Shri Bhuria called for making a plan of action and implementing it for addressing the problems arising out of globalisation of the economy and competition from corporate sector and multinationals.
The Secretary said that the relevance of cooperatives has only increased in the new economic scenario, as they are the best suited institutions to reach goods and services to the common man. She informed that even in the developed European Union nations, cooperatives were making significant contribution to the economy.
Besides State representatives, Chairmen of National Cooperative Federations and eminent cooperators are participating in the Conference. Besides the proposed amendment to the Constitution the Conference is discussing the working of the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act and institutional arrangements for sustained growth of the cooperative sector.
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