The Hindu : Promote cooperative movement: Sonia

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 26, 2003

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Promote cooperative movement: Sonia

By Our Staff Correspondent

Photo: A.M. Faruqui

The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, greets the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, during the State-level cooperative convention of the party at the Lal Parade Ground in Bhopal on Friday. The senior Congress leader, Arjun Singh, looks on.

BHOPAL APRIL 25. The Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, today emphasised that the cooperative movement can bring about justice and restore people's faith and confidence at a time when different sections of society were "getting neglected" due to the "faulty economic policies" of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Ms. Gandhi made the assertion at a mammoth State-level convention of the cooperative movement organised at the imposing Lal Parade Ground here today. The Madhya Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister, Subhash Yadav, was the steering force behind the convention.

Ms. Gandhi, who took off from the Bhopal airport by helicopter and landed at the convention venue in the heart of the State capital, said that the cooperative movement symbolised India's unity in diversity. Since Independence, the Congress had followed the policy of promoting the cooperative movement. It became even more relevant today when some reactionary forces were trying to disrupt the unity of the country, she said and added that cooperative movement was the other side of the same coin, which represented the concept of village governments.

While pointing out that there were many hurdles in the path of the movement, Ms. Gandhi said she had asked the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, to frame adequate laws to protect the rights of members of the cooperative societies. It was due to the steps taken in that direction that people had the freedom to carry forward and strengthen the movement in the State, she said and added that she had even asked the Chief Ministers of other Congress-ruled States to emulate the example of Madhya Pradesh.

Expressing concern over the kind of politics one was now witnessing in the country, Ms. Gandhi said that the "fault does not lie with politics but with the BJP, which only views politics as a means for clinging to power''.

Ms. Gandhi said the people would continue to suffer as long as the BJP remained in power at the Centre and she stressed the need for building a spirit of commitment and faith in society by promoting the cooperative movement.

The trend for today's convention was set earlier by the senior Congress leader, Arjun Singh, who said it was only due to the "colleagues'' closely associated with the cooperative movement, who had waged a battle against the BJP following the Congress' defeat in the 1977 election, that the party had come back to power in 1980. Significantly, Mr. Singh was the architect of the policy for cooperatisation of tendu leaf trade introduced in Madhya Pradesh when he was the Chief Minister between 1980 and 1985.

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