Gujarat Cooperatives Summit 2015
The cooperative sector in India is the largest in the world and it plays a very important role in employment generation, poverty alleviation and ensuring food security. Post-Independence, cooperatives assumed a great significance in poverty removal and socio-economic growth. They became an integral part of the five-year plans. As a result, they emerged as a distinct segment in the Indian economy. In the First Year Plan, it was specifically stated that the success of the Plan would be judged, among other things, by the extent it was implemented through cooperative organisations. Co-operative movement in India is the result of a deliberate policy of the State and is vigorously pursued through formation of an elaborate governing infrastructure. The successive five-year plans looked upon the co-operation sector as the balancing factor between public sector and private sector.
Gujarat is well known as the home to cooperative societies. It is the first state in India which has over fifty cooperative dairies, and it is the second state which has the largest number of cooperative banks after Maharashtra. Further, this state has shown immense growth in development of farmers through agricultural cooperatives.
Banking, agricultural and dairy cooperatives also changed their style of functioning according to the technological changes. For example, now there is ERP-based supply chain planning system in the dairy cooperatives. In the field of agriculture, services like mobile-based help lines, SMS-based help lines and web portals have been provided to the farmers and traders. Similarly, cooperative banks have changed according to the technology, like mobile banking, ATMs, Smartcard etc.
Date: 22 June 2015
Venue: 22 June 2015, Mahatama Mandir, Ghandinagar
