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We have a new Ministry of Cooperation! Now what?
By Balasubramanian Iyer
The creation of the new Ministry of Cooperation has been greeted with euphoria and jubilation by members of cooperatives across India. The general public was left wondering what ‘cooperation’ was all about and the political class up in arms about usurping of state rights. Therein lies the challenge and the opportunity for the new Ministry – educate the public about cooperatives as people-centered enterprise model, shed the political and bureaucratic baggage, and create an environment to revitalize and rejuvenate the cooperative movement.
Cooperatives have been in existence in India for 117 years! The first cooperatives were started under British Rule in response to agricultural distress and indebtedness. Since then, they have grown across sectors and today there are around 850,000 cooperatives with over 290 million members (roughly 20% of the population)! Over time, new forms such as Self-Help Groups
ICA President Ariel Guarco has published a book on the contributions of the contemporary cooperative movement to tackling today’s most pressing global challenges.
The book’s eight chapters explore the positive impact of the cooperative model on society, the economy and the planet. Guarco argues that achieving sustainable development, gender equality, peace and decent work requires promoting business models that are compatible and convergent with these objectives.
He calls on co-operators across the world to “build a close and dynamic link between the Cooperative Identity and the challenges that humanity faces today”.
By doing so, cooperatives can position themselves as a leading actor in international cooperation efforts for peace and sustainable development, he argues.
The ICA Cooperative Law Committee was set up in 2019 to provide independent advice to the ICA. The committee is composed of legal experts from multiple jurisdictions who are well versed in cooperatives.
Along with facilitating the reconstitution of the ICA Cooperative Law Committee, the ICA has, since 2017, coordinated review and reports on as many as 60 national pieces of legislation through research undertaken by the ICA-EU Partnership on Cooperatives in Development in collaboration with regional offices. The reports, which also measure how supportive of cooperatives national legislation is, can be accessed here.
In their advocacy towards favorable and conducive legislation, cooperatives are expected to protect the ICA Statement on the Cooperative Identity, which secures the cooperative and ethical values along with the seven operational principles of cooperatives and the all-encompassing international definition of cooperatives.