Benefits of govt schemes should reach women coops: Sanghani

Inaugurating a National Workshop on “Strengthening Solidarity: Enabling Women’s Cooperatives & Collective Enterprises to Thrive” organized by SEWA Cooperative Federation, National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI), International Cooperative Alliance–Asia and Pacific (ICA-AP) and SEWA Bharat on December 13, Dileep Sanghani, President, NCUI, said that the benefits of government schemes should reach the women, for which the role of women cooperatives is very important.

Assuring all support from the NCUI to strengthen women’s cooperatives in India, he emphasized the need for strong marketing of women’s cooperative products. The workshop was attended by more than 100 women cooperators from 20 states.

Sanghani further said that for actualizing the objective of Sahakar se Samriddhi, everyone should be provided employment, and for this expanding the network of women cooperatives is important. As an example, he said that due to the good work of Bhagyalaxmi Mahila Sahakari Bank, Maharashtra, the farmers have benefited in a big way.

Dr Chandra Pal Singh Yadav, President, ICA-AP, said that based on the good work of women cooperatives like SEWA, awareness programmes for women all over the country needed to be organized so that women were mobilized to form cooperatives. He said that the NCUI Cooperative Education Project staff all over the country should help in the registration of women cooperatives and in providing them all support. He said that women should have equal leadership positions, like men, in all sectors of the cooperative movement.

Mirai Chatterjee, Chairperson, SEWA Cooperative Federation, stated that recommendations of this workshop will be submitted to the sectoral groups of the committee constituted to finalize the National Cooperative Policy.

Renana Jhabvala, President, SEWA Bharat and a Padma Shree, stated the need to make the registration process simpler for new cooperative societies and ensure flexible and easy loan provisions for emerging women cooperatives and SHGs. She urged the NCDC to support such initiatives.

The Delhi Declaration for Women Cooperatives was adopted at the end of the two-day national workshop. It advocated for appropriate laws, policies and programmes that promote women’s cooperatives and their collective entrepreneurship. It also emphasized building an enabling environment for ease-of-doing business by simplifying registration procedures, enabling the creation and registration of innovative cooperatives, through a consultative process with women cooperatives.

The Delhi Declaration will be presented to the National Committee constituted for formulating the National Cooperative Policy so that the issues pertaining to women cooperatives get their due place.