New Delhi, Apr 13 (IANS): Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said "we all have to accept professionalism and embrace all principles of corporate governance with a cooperative spirit".
Addressing the national convention on the Cooperative policy here, he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set the goal of 'Sahakar se Samridhi' in front of the cooperative sector after creating a separate Ministry for Cooperation.
He further said: "If we are able to do this, then in the coming 20-25 years, we can take the cooperative sector to new heights and we can create such a situation that the cooperative sector should have a large share in the development of the country.
"We have to accept professionalism and embrace all principles of corporate governance with a cooperative spirit and while creating an economic model for rural development and providing employment to the poor people, so that they can live a dignified life, cooperatives to play a huge role," the Minister said
He also said that a very large section of the country which is economically backward, cooperative is the only model that can make 80 crore people of the country financially prosperous.
Describing that the equitable distribution of profits can be done only by the cooperatives, the entire profit goes to the stakeholders and the expenditure on management is minimal, this can happen only through the cooperatives
Shah also said that there are many models in our country like IFFCO, Amul which have also kept the spirit of cooperative intact while following the footsteps of corporate governance
"There are about 8,55,000 cooperatives running in the country today, 1,77,000 are credit societies, another 700,000 are cooperative societies, 17 are national-level cooperative unions, 33 are state cooperative banks, there are more than 63,000 active PACS and more than 12 crore members, and today around 91 per cent of the villages have presence of cooperatives," he said.
Describing the need for a new cooperative policy, the Minister also said that the impediments which are there have to be removed by making new provisions, making new policy and harmonization and this can happen only if a co-operative policy is made to meet all the needs of today in a holistic manner.
He also said that in the next eight to nine months, a completely updated cooperative policy will be prepared.
Computerisation of the entire cooperative sector and modernisation and professionalism will also have to be brought in the working of big cooperative societies, he further said, adding that after the brainstorming in this two-day discussion will make a new policy.