Cooperative Movement In India

Government Interference:

The cooperative movement in India was initiated in 1904 under the auspices of British government. Right from the beginning the govt has adopted an attitude of patronizing the movement. Cooperative institutions were treated as if these were part and parcel of the administrative set up of the government. The govt interference thus became an essential elements in the working of these institutions. As a result people’s enthusiasm for the movement did not grow. The movement’s independence and self-reliance existed only on paper and files. After attainment of independence in particular after beginning of the planning, some healthy changes in the attitude of the govt did take place. It was not given proper importance that

Under the Maharashtra State Cooperatives Act, a minimum of 11 farmers is required to form a cooperative. Today the shareholder membership averages between 15,000 and 25,000 farmers. The relationship between the shareholder farmer and the cooperative is simple - the farmer is committed to contributing a certain amount of cane per season and the mill is bound to take this cane. The strength of the movement was the involvement of the farmers who were shareholders in the sugar mill regardless of the size of their holdings. Over the years, this truly democratic idea got corrupted and farmers with larger holdings grew more powerful. In practice, this altered the power structure of the cooperatives. In the elections to the governing bodies of the sugar factories, money became such a powerful tool that the top posts of chairman and vice-chairman usually went to the richest farmers even though the majority of members were farmers with small- or medium-sized

Functional Weakness: The cooperative movement has suffered from inadequacy of trained personnel right from its inception. Lack of trained personnel has been caused by two major factors. In the first place, there has been a lack of institutions for this purpose of training personnel. Secondly because of it unsatisfactory working of cooperative institutions, efficient personnel did not feel attracted or motivated towards them. The functioning of the cooperative societies ,too suffer from several weakness. Thus there are several pitfalls. Poor infrastructure, lack of quality management, over-dependence on government, dormant membership, non-conduct of elections, lack of strong human resources policy, neglect of professionalism, etc. are the limiting factors. Indian cooperatives are also unable to evolve strong communication and public relations strategies which can promote the concept of cooperation among the