New Delhi, Nov 25 (UNI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the ICA Global Cooperative Conference 2024 here and said that for India, Co-operatives are the basis of culture and a way of life.
He stated that it was the first time the Global Cooperative conference of International Cooperative Alliance was organized in India when there was an expansion of the cooperative movement in India, an official statement said.
Modi expressed confidence that the future of India’s cooperative journey will get necessary insights from the global cooperative conference. He added that in return, the global cooperative movement will receive a new spirit and latest tools of the 21st century from India’s rich experience of cooperatives.
The PM also thanked the United Nations for declaring 2025 as the International Year of Cooperatives.
Emphasising the centuries-old culture, he said, “For the world, cooperatives are a model but for India it is the basis of culture, a way of life.”
Noting that even India’s freedom struggle was inspired by the cooperatives, Modi remarked that it not only gave economic empowerment but also gave a social platform for the freedom fighters. He said the Gram Swaraj movement of Mahatma Gandhiji gave fresh impetus to community participation and started a new revolution with the help of cooperatives of Khadi and Village industries.
The PM noted that Sardar Patel united the farmers using milk cooperatives and gave a new direction to the independence struggle. “AMUL, a product of India’s Independence Struggle, is one amongst the top global food brands.”
He added that the co-operatives in India have travelled from idea to movement, from movement to revolution and from revolution to empowerment.
Modi said, “Today we are working towards making India a developed country by bringing together governance with cooperativism. Today, India has 8 lakh co-operative committees, meaning that the world’s every fourth committee is in India,” adding that their range is as diverse and wide as their numbers.
Underlining that co-operatives cover almost 98 percent of rural India, the Prime Minister said, “About 30 crore (three hundred million) people, meaning one out of every five Indians is associated with the cooperative sector”.
Highlighting that both urban and housing cooperatives have expanded a lot in India, Modi said that cooperatives play a huge role in the sugar, fertilizers, fisheries and milk production industries, adding that there are about 2 lakh housing co-operative societies in the country.
He said that over Rs 12 lakh crore is now deposited in co-operative banks across the country, reflecting the growing trust in these institutions. “Our government has implemented several reforms to enhance the co-operative banking system, including bringing them under the purview of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and increasing deposit insurance coverage to Rs 5 lakh per depositor”.
The PM said, “India sees a huge role of cooperatives in its future growth and therefore, in the past years, the Government had worked to transform the entire ecosystem related to cooperatives through multiple reforms”.
Modi informed that the Government was forming multipurpose cooperative societies in 2 lakh villages where there was no society at present. He added that the co-operatives were being expanded from manufacturing to the service sector.
Touching upon the massive movement of women empowerment through women participation, in the form of Self-Help Groups, he noted that there were 10 crore women of India as members of Self Help Groups. The PM added that the government had given cheap loans of Rs 9 lakh crore to these Self Help Groups in the last decade.
Modi said that co-operatives could help the countries of the Global South, in particular, to achieve the kind of growth they need. Therefore, he said, today it was necessary to innovate new ways for international collaboration of co-operatives and today’s Global conference could be of great assistance.
The Prime Minister also welcomed Prime Minister of Bhutan Dasho Tshering Tobgay, Deputy Prime Minister of Fiji Manoa Kamikamica, Home Minister Amit Shah, Resident Coordinator of UN in India Shombi Sharp, President of the International Cooperative Alliance Ariel Guarco and other dignitaries.
ICA Global Cooperative Conference and ICA General Assembly is being organised in India for the first time in the 130 year long history of International Cooperative Alliance (ICA). The Global Conference, hosted by Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), in collaboration with ICA and Government of India, and Indian Cooperatives AMUL and KRIBHCO will be held from 25th to 30th November.
The theme of the conference, “Cooperatives Build Prosperity for All,” aligns with the Indian Government’s vision of “Sahkar Se Samriddhi” (Prosperity through Cooperation).