By K.N.Kumar
The cooperative sector, having always been an appendage to the Ministry of Agriculture remained peripheral to the national priorities. Barring a few exceptional states like Maharashtra and Gujarat, the sector mostly remained listless throughout the country, more so in the north-eastern region. This realization may have pushed the Government of India (GoI) to announce a new Ministry of Cooperation at the national level in July 2021. In slicing the sector off the Department of Agriculture and placing it under the charge of a high-profile Minister, one hopes that the GoI gives the sector its much-needed fillip. The vision of the Ministry – ‘Sahkar se samriddhi ‘– means ‘prosperity through cooperation.’ And in keeping with the promise, an amount of Rs 900 crore has been allocated to the Ministry of Cooperation in the most recent budget. So far, so good.
Undeniably, cooperatives play a key role in the development of any economy, more so in a developing country like ours. Globally, Brazil ranks as the ‘most cooperative-centric nation.’ One of the finest health cooperatives of the world, Unimed, is Brazilian. In a list of three hundred cooperatives of the world, the French cooperative ‘Groupe Credit Ecole’ is at the top with 1.39 lakh employees and a turnover of $ 96.25 billion (Rs.7.14 lakh crores. Cooperative sugar mills account for 35% of the sugar produced in our country. We have about two lakh cooperative dairy societies and 330 cooperative sugar mills. A third of the market share in fertilizers is commanded by IFFCO (Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited). The state cooperative banks hold deposits of Rs 1.35 lakh crore, while they disburse Rs 1.48 lakh crore annually, as loans. Cooperatives have delved into complex operations like running IT parks and medical colleges in Kerala. The impact of the sector appears formidable at the global and national level, but where are we, as a state? Nowhere. Meghalaya is not even a tiny dot in this massive cooperative landscape. Dairy, Piggery, Handlooms, Handicrafts, Sericulture, Housing, Fisheries, and Tourism are the potential sectors where cooperatives can make a sizable impact in our state. But they have not. Why so?
Of the more than 2200 registered Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) of Meghalaya, 1740 are said to be functional. That is about 80%. Prima facie it seems like a respectable number. But note that being functional is not the same thing as being profitable. Most PACS are graded ‘C’ while the ‘B’ grade PACS are fewer, and the ‘A’ grade co-operatives are just about fifty. ‘A’ graded PACS are the ones who make some cash surpluses, and the rest are all dependent upon the government doles. Rhetorically, let me say that the ‘C’ graders are on the death bed, the ‘B’ graders are the ones slipping into coma – the government’s managerial subsidies keep oxygenating them. Why is this situation so bad in our state?
I can list a few reasons:
(1) To my mind, the primary concern of the sector is the poor human capacity. The co-operators cannot professionally manage their own society’s affairs. There is no worthwhile system of continual learning and capacity building of the co-operators. The institution meant to build the capacities of the co-operators i.e.., the Meghalaya Cooperative Training Institute (MCTI) is severely handicapped in terms of availability and capacity of the faculty, poor physical infrastructure, and even the energy to be effective. The MCTI itself is on Ventilator.
(2) Secondly, the functioning of the State Level Cooperative Federations across the various sectors is disappointing. Their members hardly meet, and when they do, hardly do anything worthwhile. Most Federations are near defunct and cannot offer any direction or leadership to the affiliated Primary Societies. They have not grown organically, often parachuted into a domain over which they have little understanding. They desperately crave for government support.
(3) The institution of the Registrar has over the years evolved into a policing set-up more than a developmental one. The nomenclature itself is faulty. Why should the head of a developmental directorate be notified as the Registrar? True to the nomenclature the Registrar assumes the role of a police officer and and attends to the regulatory aspect of the sector more than the developmental aspect. The subordinate officers at the sub-districts are still called the Inspectors. And we thought the Inspector Raj is long gone in our country. To me, the whole structuring of the department and the legal framework on which it rests, appears very archaic and detrimental to the growth of the cooperative sector not just in our state but in the whole country.
(4) The performance or the lack of it, of the Meghalaya State Cooperative Union Ltd. and the MECOFED is a matter that requires close attention of the state policy makers. The institutional back-up being provided if any, by these institutions to the development of the sector needs to be investigated closely. Given its performance over the last several years I wonder what rationale the MSCU has, to continue to exist. Why shouldn’t it be, or why has it not been dissolved yet?
But not all is bad. A small silver-lining is a recent entrant into the cooperative space, viz., the Integrated Villages Cooperative Societies (IVCS) incubated by the MBDA ecosystem are a notch better than the formal cooperatives. The institutional cohesion of the IVCS appears to be better partly because of the better investment of time and resources in building them from scratch. Recently when I met the farmers of the North Garo Hills district, I noticed that they formed three IVCS to aggregate and trade in banana. They appeared sufficiently motivated. Also, the State Level Federation of the Meghalaya Village Development & Promotion Tourism Cooperative Societies seems to be making sincere efforts. Last heard, this Federation has affiliated 26 Village Level Rural Tourism Cooperative Societies (VLRTCs) and the performance of the VLRTCs appears to be good. They may have been affected adversely because of the pandemic-induced travel restrictions but I am confident they will bounce back soon.
So, what ought to be the way forward? The status of the newly formed cooperative societies in conjunction with the various Missions of the state government would be of great import. The Jackfruit Mission, Lakadong Mission, Milk Mission, Piggery Mission Aroma Mission, etc. are the potential paths to deepen the cooperative movement in the state. So, the Department of Cooperation should work in close coordination with the above mission authorities. Focus on forming food processing cooperatives, to mop up surplus production of various commodities can help the farmers. The Directorate of Food Processing should support the cooperation department to take the matter forward.
The new Ministry lays down broadly four strands for intervention: (1) Streamlining the processes for ease of doing business for co-operatives, (2) Enabling the development of Multi-State Co-operatives (MSCS), (3) Providing a separate administrative, legal and policy framework for strengthening the cooperative movement in the country and (4) Catalysing a people-based cooperative movement to reach the grassroot level.
The cooperative sector is all about human resource development and therefore, significant, continuous, and dedicated investments will need to be made to build human capacities of the co-operators. Over the next decade let us focus on rigorous training, advocacy, and extension work. We can show the way to the whole North-eastern Region. The aim should be to upgrade the current MCTI to that of a North-East Regional Cooperative Training Institute. It is heartening to note that the Government of Meghalaya has already sent a concept note to the Ministry of Cooperation to establish a North-East Regional Multi-State Academy for Cooperative Training (NERMACT), envisaged to be both an academic body that offers diploma programmes to the young students and a training organization, to empower the co-operators and officers. The state government offered land and staff and asked the Government of India to fund the infrastructure creation. One hopes that it will be pursued seriously because it cannot be business-as-usual approach any longer.
(The writer is Chairman, Meghalaya Farmers’ (Empowerment) Commission)