The ailing cooperatives sector needs a fresh lease of life as well-managed cooperatives can be the best way for both rural and urban people to improve their livings standard with wider and organised access to technology, finance and public property, economists and rights activists believe.
They stress the need for adequate support and strong monitoring by the government to protect cooperatives management and public property from the clutches of local vested interests.
‘Market-oriented economic policy and philosophical guideline of the country are not conducive to development of cooperatives, which could be highly rewarding as at least 50 per cent of the people live below poverty line,’ Professor Anu Muhammad, a teacher of economics in Jahangirnagar University, told New Age. The cooperatives sector has always been kept as an ornamental instrument, he observed. ‘Cooperatives require democratic culture that does not go with the state and the ruling class now.’
The state does not think that it has accountability to the citizens, he said.
Since 1904, cooperatives have officially been recognised as a series of organised activities with a common goal and have been referred to as economic enterprises for the benefit of their members and service users.
Bureaucratic hindrances, absence of true democratic spirit, bad reputation of many cooperatives organisations, lack of incentives, and, in many cases, politicisation, however, also held back the prospect of the cooperatives sector, which has the potentials to mobilise savings and finance commercial activities to generate income and employments, stabilising prices and supply chain of essential commodities for providing better living standards for the people, cooperatives people and experts said.
Anu said that successive governments had developed a mechanism in the name of privatisation to allow the people of the ruling class and their cronies to make money and grab public and common property.
‘Powerful quarters grab water bodies in the name of cooperatives of fishermen,’ the economist said.
He said that the people need to make cooperative efforts to create space for them to uphold their rights in the face of increasing monopoly and oligopoly.
Only about 18,000 out of about 170,000 registered cooperatives are now active, according to documents available with the Department of the Cooperatives.
There is a huge difference between the outlook of the government regarding cooperatives and what cooperatives actually mean, Hossain Zillur Rahman, executive chairman of the Power and Participation Research Centre, told New Age.
The idea of cooperatives is initiatives of individuals to grow together, he said. ‘But the government considers cooperatives as a state initiative in which the cooperatives are made accountable to the Rural Development and Cooperatives Division instead of the members of the cooperatives.’
In fact, the role of the division should be to facilitate the cooperatives, Zillur, also a former adviser to the caretaker government, said.
Asked whether cooperatives can play a role in the current market-oriented and individualistic economic policy, he said, ‘The answer is both yes and no.’
The state-controlled cooperatives will not bring benefit for the people, he said.
Cooperatives, if they are formed and democratically controlled by the members, can still play a role for the betterment of the members, he said, adding that small farmers’ cooperatives are working well in the United States.
‘Here we have not yet been able to develop an organised cooperative marketing system to market and sell the surplus produce of the members of the cooperative societies to benefit both the members and general consumers,’ he said.
Quazi Faruque, president of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh, said, ‘Agriculture marketing is still a vast untapped area where cooperatives can ensure proper prices for the growers as well fair price for consumers.’
The government, however, needs to strengthen monitoring to protect cooperatives management and public property from the clutches of powerful vested interests, they said.
Successful cooperatives are already providing their members with access to technology, finance and public property, they said.
-With New Age input
