A day before the reshuffle, Narendra Modi’s National Democratic Alliance government created a new Ministry of Cooperation.It would provide, said its statement, a separate administrative, legal and policy framework for strengthening the cooperative movement in India.A day later, it announced Union home minister Amit Shah would also head the new ministry.Singly and together, these announcements […]
Tag Archives: Cooperatives
Dairy cooperative Amul came in for high praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday. Talking to a gathering of farmers after inaugurating the cooperative’s new chocolate factory in Anand in Gujarat, Modi said the organisation represents a viable alternative to capitalism and socialism. According to a report in The Hindu, he also said, “It […]
out today, the second — and concluding — part of our report on how Kaira Union, the Amul Dairy set up by Verghese Kurien and Tirbhuvandas Patel is doing.
On March 31, K Rathnam abruptly resigned as managing director of the Kaira Union, the oldest of the 18 cooperatives that market their products under the Amul brand name. The announcement came shortly after some board members of the union, including vice chairman Rajendrasinh Parmar, alleged a Rs 450-crore scam during Rathnam’s three-year stint running […]
Out today, the second — and concluding — part of our report on why Amul, India’s much-loved dairy federation, is in trouble.
In the winter of 2013, the inner workings of Amul briefly became public. A boardroom putsch was underway. The directors of no less than 14 of the 17 district milk cooperatives that were then part of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, which owns the Amul brand, had turned against chairman Vipul Chaudhary. A member […]
a long time back, when i was at businessworld, i had written my first story on agriculture. that was on fixing the mandis. i had met sharad pawar for that story. it was 2004. he was new to the agriculture ministry. i was young and impressionistic. the story that emerged was technocratic and naive. almost […]
today marks two years since shashi rajagopalan or, as i called her, dr rajagopalan, passed away. for more on her and her work on co-operatives, click here.
(Shashi’s friends continue to pen their recollections. In this post, I am appending the text of the obituary written by Sanjeev Chopra, a joint secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture I got to know via Shashi. This was published on 15th August in the Garhwal Post, Dehradun. You might also like to see former IIM-A professor […]
shashi rajagopalan passed away on friday morning. i have written about her earlier here. and, over here, you can see the complete transcript of that interview. the transcript is a must-read, i think. do take a look. on friday, i added an obit to that small list. which you can see here. Her stories — and […]
Your question was on how to revive PACs. We have to make them thrift-oriented where every member must save x rupees every month instead of waiting for banks to refinance or for Nabard to step in. That may continue but that cannot be a long-term plan. The long-term plan has to be your own funding. When […]
one of the most remarkable people i have met this year is shashi rajagopalan. a member of the Nabard and RBI boards, she has worked with credit cooperatives and farmers’ agri-processing units through much of her life. in this chat, she talks about why cooperatives are needed, and how to revive them. (this follows the interview with the […]
