Indian farmers: A history of cop-outs, promise of new co-op policy

New Indian Express

26-07-2025

In 1946, Tribhuvandas Patel, a Gandhian close to Sardar Patel and Morarji Desai, went by foot from one village to another to create a cooperative of farmers chanting the mantra of collective action and collective good. After months of campaigning, Patel collected a critical number to set up the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union. Verghese Kurien leveraged the model to establish the efficacy of cooperative action. But Kurien struggled for two decades to set up a national grid to usher in the milk revolution. India depended on imports in the 1950s. And in 2025, India's Amul is competing in the global markets and its cheese is competing with Swiss brands.
The idea of cooperatives is not new and owes its origins in modern times to Welsh philanthropist Robert Owen. In India, cooperatives were visible in community ownership of resources known, for instance, as the Devarai and Vanarai movements. The formal structures came with the passage of the Cooperative Societies Act in 1904. Over the decades, cooperatives have suffered political piety and economic decimation. The history of India's cooperative movement is pock-marked with cop-outs.
In 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru said everything else can wait but not agriculture. He declared cooperatives as a template for development. The success of Amul established the idea of cooperatives as a viable format, illustrated in Maharashtra where cooperatives steered change. Yet, vested political interests successfully rendered agriculture into a case of political charity and, verily, the killing fields.
This week, the government unveiled a 'new cooperation policy'. Dubbed a re-birth of cooperatives, it is ambitious in its intent. The plan is to set up cooperative units in every village across the rural landscape of 6-lakh-plus villages. The mission: create an enabling legal, economic, and institutional framework to deepen the cooperative movement and facilitate cooperatives with systems and technology to emerge as economic entities for creating value. The idea is built around '6 mission pillars, 16 objectives and 82 strategic actions'.