13 Cooperatives and Rural Development

As I STAND here, there come to my mind the memory of three stalwarts of the Cooperative Movement — Vaikunth Mehta, Prof. Gadgil and Prof. Karve. They are no longer with us; but their spirit and inspiration pervade this college campus. Vaikunth­bhai Mehta gave great service to the cooperative movement. It is but fitting that the cooperative management training institute started by the National Cooperative Union of India and accom­modated by the Reserve Bank within its Cooperative Bankers' Training College premises, should be named after him. Prof. Karve was steeped in the problems of rural economics and brought his great knowledge and experience to bear on the consideration of agricultural credit policies. It was under Prof. Karve's inspiration that the Reserve Bank's Cooperative Bankers' Training College was founded. And finally, it was to Prof. Gadgil, the doyen of cooperators during the last two or three decades, that the Chairmanship of the Committee of Direction of the Vaikunth Mehta Institute was entrusted during the last years of his life. I consider this campus as a monument to these three giants of the cooperative world.

I am glad to find both cooperative bank executives as also the Project Officers of Small Farmers Development Agencies amongst the trainees at this Institution. I am particularly happy that the Reserve Bank of India is using this college as a means of spread­ing among the banks and SFDA project officers knowledge of special lending techniques evolved to meet the requirements of small farmers. It is important that small farmers, constituting as they do a large portion of India's cultivating population and having at the same time for so many years been the most neglected section of it, should now have the closest possible atten­tion focussed on their credit needs.