India's President has called on the country's states to update co-operative legislation for a sector that has ensured economic "growth".
Pranab Mukherjee praised the "effective" co-operative business model at the National Co-operative Development Corporation's (NCDC) Co-operative Excellence awards ceremony in New Delhi. He said: “With a network of six lakh [600,000] co-operatives and a membership base of 24 crore [240 million], the Indian Co-operative Movement has proved to be an effective economic instrument for ensuring growth with equity and inclusiveness.
"The co-operatives in our country face many challenges and problems. Their performance across sector, activities and regions is variable. They need to re-orient by improving their efficiency and have to develop themselves professionally to meet requirement of their core clientele."
During the ceremony, in which the President presented awards to 27 co-operatives, he said he hoped the awards would inspire other co-ops to perform better and said that co-ops are pivotal institutions for bringing socio-economic development for inclusive growth in rural areas.
“Co-operatives in India have made a visible and significant contribution to the overall economic growth of our economy. This is especially so in the sectors of agricultural credit, sugar, dairy, textiles, fisheries, distribution of fertilizers and agricultural inputs, storage and marketing," said the President.
He added that state laws need to be amended in line with central legislation to ensure the country's 600,000 co-operatives work as autonomous, self-reliant and democratic bodies.
Among the attendees at the awards ceremony were Union Agriculture and Food Processing Minister Sharad Pawar, Minister of State Charan Das Mahant, and Managing Director of National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) C.B. Paliwal.
The President also noted the creation of AMUL; a dairy co-operative with over three million members, in 1946 was one of the most important moments in India’s co-operative history.
He said: “The Co-op Movement helped our founding fathers who gave it a pride place in the process of economic development on our country... The whole future of India depends on the success of this approach of ours.”
The awards ceremony has been held every two years since 2002. The NCDC was set up under an act of Parliament in 1963 to help co-ops, it celebrated its golden jubilee in 2012.
