Cooperative sector can play important role in making India self-reliant, says Amit Shah

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Cooperative sector can play important role in making India self-reliant, says Amit Shah

Amit Shah, Cooperation Minister, said on Monday that the cooperative sector can play an important role in making India self-reliant and ensuring economic prosperity for 70 crore poor who are aspiring to lead better lives. Shah, who is also the Union Home Minister, asked the cooperatives to channelise 70 crore people and make them financially self-reliant. The Minister said that the Modi government has launched a number of programmes for the upliftment of the poor and to ensure they get electricity, cooking gas, housing and health insurance in the last eight years, as well as to commemorate the 100th International Day of Cooperatives here. Shah said that 70 crore people are now aspiring for better lives and this can only be fulfilled by the cooperative sector. He attacked the Congress party for not doing enough to combat poverty while addressing a conference on the theme 'Cooperatives Build An Atmanirbhar Bharat and Better World. He said that capitalism and communism are extreme forms of governance and the cooperative model of development is best suited for the country, and that the cooperation ministry is working on various aspects to strengthen the cooperative sector by making them professional and multi-dimensional. He said that a cooperative university will be set up to provide skills training and offer courses in subjects like accounting, marketing and management, and that the ministry is taking many pro-active steps. He said that the trained manpower can be absorbed in cooperative societies and this will also eliminate nepotism in appointments. He said there was a need to make changes in laws as well as to make changes in the laws, but he stressed on self-regulations among cooperatives. The government recently decided to undertake computersation of all functional 63,000 Primary Agriculture Credit Societies PACS with an outlay of Rs 2,516 crore, and said the move will bring transparency in accounting and book keeping. The government has come out with draft model bye-laws that will allow PACS to diversify from their core business. He said that state governments are being sought as PACS is a state subject. There are around 8.5 lakh cooperative societies in India and around 12 crore people are directly linked to this sector. He proposed the broadening of cooperatives into other sectors, despite mentioning the contribution of cooperatives in many businesses like milk, fertilisers, sugar, fisheries, agri-credit and procurement of foodgrains. Shah said the cooperative sector is big and its size is larger than the economy of France. The minister stated that the cooperative movement should be popularised in the country and should peak when India celebrates its 100th year of independence.