A wide spectrum of the national movement’s leaders including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Socialists and Communists were agreed that cooperativization would lead to major improvement in Indian agriculture and would particularly benefit the poor. Examine how cooperatives was implemented post – independence and how successful it was in helping agriculture and poor people. (200 Words)
Given the fact that majority of the farmers in India are small and marginal farmers, the leaders thought that cooperativization (a group of people pooling their efforts for the same cause) of agriculture would help in increasing agricultural yield and reducing poverty. Cooperatvisim was introduced in the following ways:
- Cooperative Farming: Despite the idea of cooperative farming holding immense potential for increasing productivity and yields, the attempts at cooperative farming have been less than successful. This was because of the diverse nature of Indian agriculture, different landholdings size, lack of trust to pool in agricultural lands etc.
- Cooperative Credit Sector: Cooperative banks, primary agricultural credit societies, SHGs, etc. have played an important role in providing sustainable agricultural credit to the rural poor. It has helped the rural folks to be more entrepreneurial in farming. The cooperative structure of rural credit has also made schedule commercial banks more open to providing credit to the rural poor. Thus, cooperativization has been a considerable success in India agriculture. And making ‘freedom to form cooperative societies’ a fundamental right, the country has taken the right step to ensure a vibrant cooperative sector builds upon the past successes.
- The biggest success of Cooperatives in India is Milk production. Dr. Verghese Kurein who founded AMUL which is today one of the largest milk brand in the world. Initially it was concentrated in Gujrat but later it became wide spread and today India is the largest Milk producer in the world. LIZZAT Papad is also one of the successful landmarks. There are many other sectors where it became success as bidi making industry, cotton industry.
So in the light of above discussion we can say that India has not fully exploited the potential of Cooperatives which can become crucial to eradicate poverty and for economic development. Israel’s success story for their KIBUTZ is world famous.
Realizing its importance Cooperative society which is added in the article 243 of Indian constitution which will strengthen this. And, making ‘freedom to form cooperative societies’ a fundamental right, the country has taken the right step to ensure the a vibrant cooperative sector builds upon the past successes.