A two-day national conference on India’s Cooperation Policy inaugurated by the home and cooperation minister took place earlier this week. The programme was attended by several officials of the Centre and states along with other national institutes and cooperatives. Marked by characteristic incisiveness, the pith of the minister’s address was a call to usher-in a ‘movement for cooperation’. Bureaucrats were quick to draw up the achievements of their respective departments of cooperation—in a manner that showed their preparation for the mandate of the policy. Albeit useful, this missed a major point: that cooperation is not an end in itself. Cooperation is an approach, or, as the draft National Policy on Cooperatives puts it, “a preferred instrument of execution of public policy especially in rural areas". And fundamental to this approach are the attributes that describe our society in general but are amplified in the context of Indian villages. These are the attributes of community ties, collective decision making, mutual trust, shared ownership and social responsibility.
After 74 years of independence and an array of schemes to meet the basic needs of citizens, it is only a matter of logical progression that the state should now focus on creating a society of self-dependent people with adequate livelihood opportunities. And cooperation is being seen as key to this transition. From farming and food-processing to fisheries and self-help groups (SHGs); cooperatives are touted as catalysts for social and economic progress. But what does this renewed focus mean for the effectiveness of a policy? This article picks up elements of cooperation from a scheme aimed at enhancing the livelihood of forest-dependent Tribal communities to answer this question. Rolled out in 2018, the Pradhan Mantri Van Dhan Yojana (PMVDY) leverages the traditional knowledge of Tribal communities to harvest forest produce and strengthen their market linkages. Central to its operations is a Van Dhan Vikas Kendra (VDVK). It is a Tribal-owned centre that undertakes aggregation, processing and packaging of forest produce for sale. The functioning of the scheme hinges on the attributes of cooperative existence.
The first step in cooperation is to bear in mind the affinity among members while setting up VDVKs. With mutual trust and a certain degree of affiliation among members, VDVKs can survive the initial cycles of loss and may continue to exist even after the state pulls out support.
A promising demonstration of this is seen in the Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, where a group of 200 women have created a market for neem pesticides with their coordinated action. These women lost their first batch of produce to the rains. Starting out slow, they manufactured pesticides and used them in their own farms initially. Promising results prompted much buy-in from others. Today, all the farmer groups in the area buy this organic pesticide from that VDVK.
In yet another VDVK, in Jharkhand, the women said that they were amazed to see the quantum of forest produce that they collectively procured. Earlier, they would sell these products individually and make do with prices fixed by their buyers. As they have started aggregating products now, their negotiating power has also increased. “The traders now come to us to buy mahua flowers, karanj and imli instead of us having to go to them," exclaimed the president of the kendra.
Cooperation also entails convergence. In some VDVKs in Odisha and Chhattisgarh, training for beneficiaries is being conducted in convergence with other schemes like the Entrepreneurship and Skill Development Programme or the Samarth Yojana. As beneficiaries bring home more money, their social standing also improves, reckon women in Kondagaon district of Chhattisgarh. “My husband would not let me participate in the SHG meetings earlier but now drops me off at the kendra every day at 9am," one of them said.
Finally, the autonomy of these cooperatives, which finds mention in the draft policy, is critical to their survival. In the case of VDVKs, the community is free to procure non-timber forest produce for sale. Communities that have control over forests also understand the limitations and requirements of sustainable harvesting. Without community-based forest rights, the sustenance of the scheme would be jeopardized. Recognizing this, Odisha held several meetings of forest officials with community members right at the planning stage, so as to ensure their support later on.
The PMVDY offers a classic example of how the cooperative spirit can be harnessed for social fulfilment and economic growth. This is not to say that cooperatives are not susceptible to failure, inefficiency or corruption. But the multiplier effect created by the success of a few kendras in terms of families empowered and forests preserved would offset the cost of failure of many others. And with enough successful kendras, a cleaner, rule-based and more efficient system would eventually develop. It is yet to be seen how India’s cooperation policy is eventually realized in practice. But schemes such as the PMVDY show that it does offer hope and merits our attention.
Sakshi Abrol is a policy manager at Nation First Policy Research Centre
Source: Mintepaper, 19/04/22
