Ashish Ranjan
In the next five years, the government will establish two million Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS), dairy, and fishery cooperatives.Wednesday’s meeting of the Union Cabinet, presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, resulted in this decision.
The Ministry of Cooperation has proposed a plan to “strengthen the cooperative movement in the country and extend its reach to the grassroots level.”
The Cabinet also approved the formation of a “high level Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC)” to oversee the plan’s implementation, led by Minister of Home and Cooperation Amit Shah.
According to an official statement, the Cooperation Ministry has formulated a plan to establish viable PACS, dairy, and fishery cooperatives in villages and to strengthen the existing cooperatives by leveraging the ‘whole-of-government’ approach to converge various schemes of the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry, and Dairying.
“Within the next five years, two million PACS, dairy, and fishing cooperatives will be founded. NABARD, National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), and National Fishery Development Board (NFDB) would establish the action plan for the project’s implementation, according to the Union Cabinet statement.
Noteworthy since there are still 1.6 million panchayats without PACS and over 2 million panchayats without a dairy cooperative society, the action is significant. According to the Ministry of Cooperation, there are around 99,000 PACS with 13 crore members, 1,99,182 primary dairy cooperative societies with approximately 1.5 crore members, and 25,297 primary fishing cooperative societies with approximately 38 lakh members.
Four schemes have been identified for convergence to facilitate the development of two million PACS, dairy, and fisheries cooperatives, according to the announcement. These four schemes are the National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD) and the Dairy Processing & Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF) under the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, and the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) and the Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund (FIDF) under the Department of Fisheries.
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The government has also established a high-level committee to ensure the successful implementation of the cooperatives plan.
