Co-operatives

Subject – Polity

Context – Cooperative Society Act will be amended soon, says Amit Shah

Concept –

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a cooperative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise.
The United Nations General Assembly had declared the year 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives.
India is an agricultural country and laid the foundation of World’s biggest cooperative movement in the world.

Constitutional Provisions Related to Cooperatives:

The Constitution (97th Amendment) Act, 2011 added a new Part IXB right after Part IXA (Municipals) regarding the cooperatives working in India.
The word “cooperatives” was added after “unions and associations” in Article 19(1)(c) under Part III of the Constitution. This enables all the citizens to form cooperatives by giving it the status of fundamental right of citizens.
A new Article 43B was added in the Directive Principles of State Policy (Part IV) regarding the “promotion of cooperative societies”.
Cooperatives are a State subject

To know about Cooperative banks, please click here.

To know about Ministry of Cooperation, please click here.

To know about Urban Co-operative Banks (UCBs), please click here.

Multi State Cooperative Societies Act, 2002

An Act to consolidate and amend the law relating to co-operative societies, with objects not confined to one State and serving the interests of members in more than one State
Facilitate the voluntary formation and democratic functioning of co-operatives as people’s institutions based on self-help and mutual aid and to enable them to promote their economic and social betterment and to provide functional autonomy.
Urban and multi-state co-operative come under the direct supervision of RBI.

Primary agriculture cooperative societies

PACS are the ground-level cooperative credit institutions that provide short-term, and medium-term agricultural loans to the farmers for the various agricultural and farming activities.
It works at the grassroots gram Panchayat and village level.
Primary Agricultural Credit Societies confers equal rights to all its members without considering their holding of share and their social standing.
PACS are generally providing the following facilities to the members:
- Input facilities in form of cash or kind component to members
- Agriculture implements on hiring basis
- Storage facility
Organisational Structure –

Union home minister Amit Shah, who also holds the cooperation portfolio, said that the Centre will soon unveil a new cooperative policy that will entrust the primary agriculture cooperative societies (PACS) with the task of implementing various government schemes in the farm sector.
The government is also planning to facilitate the creation of more PACS so that one such entity is present in every two villages.
There is a role for PACSs in running many farm-related schemes like electronic national agriculture market (e-NAM) and soil health card scheme. Benefits of all these schemes will reach the ground level when PACS is made implementing agencies at village levels.

National Policy for Cooperatives, 2002

It was formulated to provide support for promotion and development of cooperatives as autonomous, independent and democratic organizations so that they can play their due role in the socio-economic development of the country.

Objectives –