winds of change-part I-growth & social justice-ch 12

12. Cooperation : Tasks Ahead

THE SYSTEM OF government in any country has far-reaching implications not only for the political life of the country but also for its social and economic life. A democratic govern­ment with its responsiveness to the wishes of the people is designed to secure the fulfilment of their aspirations. Our ultimate goal in accepting a democratic form of government was to attain a social­istic pattern of society. In any scheme of reaching that objective, institutional changes in the economic sphere are inevitable. The fundamental task is to bring about a greater degree of socialisa­tion of productive resources, to help even those with insufficient means to come forward to participate in the social and economic life of the country and to avoid all forms of exploitation. One of the major institutional changes which we have sought to bring about in this country is through the growth of cooperative movement.

The idea of cooperation is not necessarily confined to economic activity. In fact among the advanced countries of the West, it is to be found more in social spheres. In our country, however, in the context of the economic stagnation of centuries, coopera­tion has assumed the form of an economic organisation in different fields like agriculture, agro-based industries, financial institutions, small-scale industries, etc. This does not, however, mean that cooperatives have no implications in the social and political life of the country. In fact, to understand the aims and objectives of the movement and to assess its success, one has to take a three dimensional view covering its success as an economic entity, its impact on social conditions and lastly its influence on the political life of the country.

Cooperation has rightly been recognised as the ideal form of organisation for agricultural and ancillary activities in a country like India where the problems like low individual capacity to undertake progressive farming, fragmentation of holdings, the exploitation of primary producers by middlemen, etc., cannot be adequately tackled by any other form of organisation. Besides, in these activities a degree of personal interest, participation and enterprise is absolutely essential. Government had, therefore, to make determined efforts for sowing the seeds of the movement and nurturing it in its early days. After sustained efforts for over two decades, it could be said that cooperatives, as a form of economic organisation, have come to stay in certain fields of economic activity. That is not to say that the story of coopera­tion in India is a story of success everywhere. The impact of the movement varies from State to State as also in different fields. Tamil Nadu State, for example, leads in respect of linkage of cooperative credit and marketing, while the Punjab leads in co­operative farming societies and transport workers societies. Sugar factories have been taken up on a cooperative basis on a large-scale in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Mysore. Gujarat leads in cooperative dairy farming and cooperative processing of cotton crop. These are instances of what cooperation, when conceived and implemented with a willing acceptance of the principle of con­sensus, can achieve. In these States, cooperation has certainly succeeded in drawing more and more people into the develop­mental effort of the country.