Former MP calls for setting up panel to revive cooperative sector in Puducherry

Former MP and Puducherry Maanila Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (PMMMK) president M. Ramadass has urged the government to constitute a committee of experts to evolve a road map for the development of the cooperative sector in Puducherry.

In a statement, Mr. Ramadass pointed out that in the assessment of the Union Ministry of Cooperation, Puducherry lags behind among 28 States and 8 Union Territories. The government should rectify the situation by charting out a road map for the growth of cooperatives, focused on the primary cooperative networks, digital infrastructure, policy reforms and prosperity of communities, especially, farmers and labourers.

Stating that the government had missed an occasion to reflect on the state of the cooperative sector during the celebration of International Day of Cooperatives recently, Mr. Ramadass felt that the movement which had struck deep roots over the course of seven decades in sectors, such as agriculture, livestock, fisheries, weaving, sugar mills, public distribution system and consumer welfare, was today crippled by multiple problems.

“The movement, which should have been a people’s movement by the people and for the people, has become a bureaucratic one defeating the principles of cooperation,” he said.

There was no Cooperative Election Commission to hold periodic and regular elections to cooperatives and to ensure the rule of the members. More often than not, the officials of the Department act as Administrators of the societies as a result of which the members were reduced to strangers in their own institutions. In the absence of elected committees, central and higher-level societies were operating according to the whimsical and arbitrary orders of politicians.

Moreover, the activities of the societies have not been audited periodically and neither the politicians nor the officials of the Department owned accountability for not holding elections, annual meetings and conducting auditing, he added. As a result of political interference and administrative incompetence, several cooperative spinning mills and sugar mills had turned defunct, he said.

The Cooperative Advisory Committee as mandated in the Puducherry Cooperative Act 1972 has not been formed. The number of officers has not increased in consonance with the growth of the cooperative sector and consequently the workload has increased and hampered the cooperative department from performing its duties properly, Mr. Ramadass said.