A team of Sahakar Bharati, the pan India organization of cooperative institutions, met Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who is now in charge of the newly created Ministry of Cooperation to hold discussions and submit a list of issues facing the cooperative sector, which needs urgent solution. The team comprised Ramesh Vaidya, Uday Joshi, Sanjay Pachpor, Jyotindra Mehta, President, NAFCUB, Sunil Gupta and Satish Marathe, founder member, Sahakar Bharati and Director, Central Board, RBI.
The team basically discussed several issues facing the sector, including:
- Review and update of national cooperative development policy to expand and deepen the cooperative network in the country.
- Formulating national cooperative training and capacity building policy to meet the HR needs of 850,000 cooperatives in the country.
- National Council for Cooperative Training (NCCT) to be kept independent of National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI) and to be developed as National Centre of Excellence for Cooperatives.
- The case pertaining to the 97th Constitution Amendment pending in the Supreme Court for more than a decade. Steps to be initiated for withdrawal of the case or to be forcefully argued to have decision expeditiously. Favourable decision of the Supreme Court will result in liberalizing cooperatives from political and bureaucratic intervention.
- Cooperatives are economic enterprises. Hence, ease of doing business norms be extended to all cooperatives.
