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New national cooperative policy aims to cover 500 million people

The Centre on Thursday unveiled a new National Cooperative Policy, the first since 2002, which calls for creating a task force to bring 500 million people under the ambit of cooperatives, up from the 300 million. It also aims to ensure autonomous functioning and democratic member control of cooperatives. The policy, which seeks to triple the sector's contribution to the Indian economy over the next 10 years, also proposes raising the number of cooperative societies by 30 per cent from the current 830,000. Releasing the policy, Union Minister for Cooperation Amit Shah said a key objective was to ensure that every village has at least one functional cooperative, while each tehsil in the country should have at least five model cooperative villages. The policy also calls for free and fair elections of the Board of Directors and office bearers of cooperatives. While there is no direct data on the share of cooperatives in India's total gross domestic product (GDP), sector-wise figures indicate they accounted for around 14 per cent of total agricultural credit, 25 per cent of fertiliser production, 31 per cent of sugar output, 85 per cent of liquid milk distribution, and around 15 per cent of total storage capacity in the country. The policy was framed by a panel of experts chaired by former Union Minister Suresh Prabhu. Its implementation will be monitored at the national level through a two-tier mechanism, chaired by Amit Shah himself. Among other recommendations, the policy seeks to encourage branding of organic, agricultural, and dairy products under the 'Bharat' Brand as an umbrella brand, while also leveraging the established brands of individual states. It also proposes the creation of a 'Cooperative Stack', a digital framework for data-driven decision-making and improved service delivery. The policy calls upon Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) to work as 'Bank Mitras' of district cooperative banks to provide banking products and services directly to members at their doorsteps.