The Hindu : `Cooperatives must face challenges of globalisation'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 03, 2004

National

National

`Cooperatives must face challenges of globalisation'

By Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI, FEB. 2. The Seventh Ministerial Conference of the Asia-Pacific Cooperative Ministers opened here today with a call to member-driven cooperative societies to brace themselves for meeting the challenges of globalisation. Upgradation of technology and human resource development were identified as the solution to meet the challenges.

Inaugurating the three-day conference, the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, said the biggest challenge before cooperative institutions all over the world was to "both survive and thrive" in an era of economic reforms.

"Markets are opening up. New investment opportunities are getting created. Old business models are under pressure. Increasingly, the goods and services produced by cooperatives have to compete with those coming from other sectors — both from domestic and foreign markets. No single country has the answer. We have to learn from one another," he told the Cooperative Ministers and distinguished representatives from 24 countries at the Vigyan Bhavan here. The conference, organised by the International Cooperative Alliance and the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperation, will deliberate on `Cooperative Legislation and Policy.'

Mr. Advani said liberalisation and globalisation had created a new situation before all kinds of economic structures — public sector enterprises, private sector businesses, micro-enterprises in the informal sector, as well as cooperative organisations. It was a situation that presented both challenges and opportunities.

He pointed out that in view of the increasing competition, cooperatives must combine practical grassroots intelligence with professional training for achieving efficiency, quality and customer satisfaction.

"Inputs of science and technology, especially information technology, have to be used to the fullest to boost productivity in the cooperative sector," he said.

Mr. Advani said that by their very nature, cooperatives are institutions of grassroots democracy. Gandhiji actively promoted the concept of cooperation in every sphere of national life. India had diverse cooperatives in the farm sector, milk production, sugar mills, poultry, housing, and even water consumption. The National Dairy Development Board was responsible for the `milk revolution' in the country while IFFCO was the largest cooperative producer of fertilizer, he said. India has more than half a million cooperatives with 230 million members.

The Union Agriculture Minister, Rajnath Singh, said even though the Centre had come up with a Cooperatives Policy and enacted a Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act, 2002, to provide full functional autonomy and democratic management to societies, States were yet to adopt the Act and the Policy.

This was highlighted in the address of the ICA president, Ivano Barberini, who stressed that "State control must be respectful of the independence and autonomy of cooperatives."

The president of the National Cooperatives Union of India, S.S. Sisodia, said it was essential that cooperatives took steps to promote efficiency and human resource development along with upgradation of technology and assimilation of essential elements of information technology.

The three-day conference will come out with a joint declaration on sustainable cooperative development, based on the draft recommended by the official-level meeting in Kuwait last December.

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