Cooperatives should be seen as “business entities”: Devendra Kumar Singh, Secy, Ministry of Coop

There is a lot of curiosity about what the newly-formed Ministry of Cooperation is up to. The bureaucratic reins of the Ministry, which has Amit Shah at its helm as the minister, are in the hands of Devendra Kumar Singh, Secretary. A 1989 batch IAS officer of the Kerala cadre, Singh spoke on “Agricultural and Rural Prosperity Through Cooperatives and Farmers’ Collectives” at the Rural Voice Agriculture Conclave and NEDAC Awards 2021 in New Delhi on December 23.

Singh said, “People have a lot of expectations from the Ministry as it has been newly formed.” He started his new assignment by trying to understand things through his visits to states like Gujarat and Maharashtra and his meetings with State Cooperative Banks (SCBs), District Cooperative Banks (DCBs) and Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS).

“The government has come up with the vision of Prosperity Through Cooperatives (more popular as Sahkar se Samriddhi). It has also said that a new policy will be brought to realize this vision.” Singh said the Ministry had started the consultation process in order to bring this policy. And, he said, a fresh approach was being made. Cooperatives should be seen as “business entities” and economic improvement should be the goal. For this, the established principles of business need to be adopted.

Singh said suggestions had been sought from all IIMs. And one of them, IIM Jammu, had positively responded. Similarly, he has written to the technological institutes — IITs, NITs and IIITs — to bridge the wide technological gaps in the cooperative sector.

Cooperative is an enterprise, feels Singh. For this he referred to his experience at the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), where he served as Additional Secretary and Development Commissioner. He had started Udyam registration there. In his new role at the Ministry of Cooperation, he sought the Udyam data. Interestingly, of the 60 lakh entrepreneurs registered on the Udyam platform, 6,000 were cooperatives. And that, too, across 86 categories. Which suggests that cooperatives consider themselves to be “enterprises” and that they are “diverse”.

Singh said that the Ministry had a three-pronged focus to begin with: digitization of PACS; national policy on cooperatives that would be inclusive; mainstreaming of cooperatives. “We shall try to ensure that cooperatives are included in the schemes of different ministries.” If cooperatives are not eligible for a particular scheme, that should be a “conscious decision”, not an oversight.

“We firmly believe that the cooperative sector is going to contribute significantly in the five-trillion-dollar economy,” Singh concluded. “And it is with this vision that we are trying to work.”