Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

Topic: New Cooperation Ministry

Why in News?

• The government has announced the formation of a separate Union Ministry of Cooperation, a subject that till date was looked after by the Ministry of Agriculture.
• Ministry of Cooperation will be headed by current Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

Objectives of Ministry

• The Ministry of Cooperation will provide a separate administrative legal and policy framework for strengthening the cooperative movement in the country.
• It will help deepen Co-operatives as a true people based movement reaching upto the grassroots.
• In our country, a Co-operative based economic development model is very relevant where each member works with a spirit of responsibility.
• The Ministry will work to streamline processes for ‘Ease of doing business’ for cooperatives and enable development of Multi-State Co-operatives (MSCS).

About Cooperative Movement

• By definition, cooperatives are organisations formed at the grassroots level by people to harness the power of collective bargaining towards a common goal.
• Cooperative Movement in Agriculture

• ˆCooperative dairies, sugar mills, spinning mills etc. are formed with the pooled resources of farmers who wish to process their produce.
• The country has 1,94,195 cooperative dairy societies and 330 cooperative sugar mill operations.
• Cooperative sugar mills account for 35% of the sugar produced in the country.

• Cooperative Movement in Banking and Finance

• ˆIn banking and finance, cooperative institutions are spread across rural and urban areas.
• Village-level primary agricultural credit societies (PACSs) formed by farmer associations are the best example of grassroots-level credit flow.
• These societies anticipate the credit demand of a village and make the demand to the district central cooperative banks (DCCBs).
• State cooperative banks sit at the apex of the rural cooperative lending structure.

• There are also cooperative marketing societies in rural areas and cooperative housing societies in urban areas.

Related Laws

• Agriculture and cooperation are in the state list, which means state governments can govern them.
• A majority of the cooperative societies are governed by laws in their respective states, with a Cooperation Commissioner and the Registrar of Societies as their governing office.
• In 2002, the Centre passed a MultiState Cooperative Societies Act that allowed for registration of societies with operations in more than one state.
• These are mostly banks, dairies and sugar mills whose area of operation spreads across states.
• The Central Registrar of Societies is their controlling authority, but on the ground the State Registrar takes actions on his behalf.