Cooperative movement in India

Saraswani milk producing co-operative society milk collection center in Gujarat. Collected milk is sent to Amul for further processing and distribution.

Dairy farming based on the Amul Pattern, with a single marketing cooperative, is India's largest self-sustaining industry and its largest rural employment provider. Successful implementation of the Amul model has made India the world's largest milk producer.[3] Here small, marginal farmers with a couple or so heads of milch cattle queue up twice daily to pour milk from their small containers into the village union collection points. The milk after processing at the district unions is then marketed by the state cooperative federation nationally under the Amul brand name, India's largest food brand. With the Anand pattern three-fourth of the price paid by the mainly urban consumers goes into the hands of millions of small dairy farmers, who are the owners of the brand and the cooperative. The cooperative hires professionals for their expertise and skills and uses hi-tech research labs and modern processing plants & transport cold-chains, to ensure quality of their produce and value-add to the milk.[4]

Sugarcane weighing at a Cooperative Sugar mill in Maharashtra, India.

Most of the sugar production in India takes place at mills owned by local cooperative societies. The members of the society include all farmers, small and large, supplying sugarcane to the mill.[5] Over the last fifty years, the local sugar mills have played a crucial part in encouraging political participation and as a stepping stone for aspiring politicians.[6] This is particularly true in the state of Maharashtra where a large number of politicians belonging to the Congress party or NCP had ties to sugar cooperatives from their local area and has created a symbiotic relationship between the sugar factories and local politics.[7] However, the policy of "profits for the company but losses to be borne by the government", has made a number of these operations inefficient.[8][9]

As with sugar, cooperatives play a significant part in the overall marketing of fruit and vegetables in India. Since the 1980s, the amount of produce handled by Cooperative societies has increased exponentially. Common fruit and vegetables marketed by the societies include bananas, mangoes, grapes, onions and many others.[10]

There are three distinct types of housing cooperatives in India approved by each state, through the Co-operative Societies Act, based on the co-op housing objectives and functionality [14]. The categories of cooperative housing are tenure, finance, and building co-operatives [15]. The classifications of these cooperatives vary across states, and its approval is not exclusive to each state [16].

Ganapati (2008) defines these categories as the following:

"In Tenure co-operatives, members collectively own and manage housing, similar to co-operative housing in the Western countries. Finance co-operatives provide loans for new construction or housing repairs to members. Building co-operatives construct housing for their members, but they may also be involved in land development" [17]