An inclusive development strategy for enhancing shared economic prosperity—‘Sahakar se samriddhi’—has yielded impressive outcomes for India so far. The cooperative movement started in the pre-independence era to take on the challenge of alleviating poverty that often resulted from recurrent droughts and usurious exploitation.While the initial driving forces powering the movement may be losing steam, there are many emerging challenges for the rural economy that require a new direction for the movement as the country marches ahead on its goal of achieving a Viksit Bharat by 2047. The new challenges range from raising farmers’ income to achieving an efficient rural supply chain, lowering food inflation on a durable basis, creating non-farm employment opportunities, enhancing farm productivity and climate resilience, and harnessing opportunities in a digital world. Cooperative institutions may be particularly suited to manage these challenges because of their strong local knowledge, ability to forge and strengthen forward and backward linkages, and readiness to adapt to a new business environment.For designing supportive policies, it may be useful to draw insights from the UN’s July 2023 report on cooperatives in social development, which stresses, “Cooperatives make significant contributions to the national economy by addressing market failures, empowering marginalised people, creating employment opportunities and supporting sustainable development.”The report recommends an entrepreneurial ecosystem approach for the cooperatives, connecting all players through an interconnected network within a local environment. India’s own success with milk and sugar cooperatives attests to the significance of an integrated approach. Another major success is India’s oldest workers’ cooperative—the Uralungal Labour Contract Co-operative Society in the infrastructure space in Kerala, which is celebrating its centenary in 2024—that exemplifies an alternative entrepreneurial model.
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