For decades, cooperative movement in the country remained stymied, making insignificant contribution to the economy due mainly to lack of policy support and lukewarm leadership devoid of the passion and energy to use it as a tool for achieving collective economic well-being.
The moribund movement no more entices people while hundreds of existing cooperative societies have been paralysed by bureaucratic hindrances, absence of true democratic spirit, greed and corruption, lack of incentives, and, in many cases, politicisation, observed experts, bureaucrats and cooperators.
Such degeneration has held back the prospect of the cooperative sector, which has the potential to mobilise savings, finance commercial activities to generate income and employments, help stabilise market prices and the supply chain of essential commodities for enabling the people to have a better living standard, they said.
‘There are tens of thousands of cooperatives in the country. But it does not portray the actual momentum of the cooperatives movement,’ Quazi Faruque, chairman of Sampriti Cooperative Credit Union Ltd, told New Age. ‘Quality cooperatives are not many.’
Since 1904, the cooperative movement has been officially recognized as a platform for organised activities with a common goal for collective well-being and referred to as economic enterprises for the benefit of the cooperative society members and service users.
The Comilla approach—a concept of two-tier cooperatives— once generated huge enthusiasm in rural areas about formation of Krishak Samabay Samity and boost agriculture production to a greater extent.
But now only about 18,000 out of about 170,000 registered cooperatives are
active, according to the documents of the Department of the Cooperatives.
Faruque said the constitution ‘rates cooperatives as the second most important form of ownership. But it is regrettable that the problems the sector is now faced with are due to negligence of the successive governments.’
Article 13 of the Constitution deals with the principle of ownership of property, stipulating three types of ownership: ownership by the state through the creation of public sector, ownership by cooperatives on behalf of their members, and ownership by individuals within limits prescribed by law.
At least nine million people, including 1.5 million women, are now members of both active and inactive cooperatives working in the fields of agriculture, fisheries, livestock, housing, micro-credit operation, milk production, employees saving societies, credit societies, freedom fighters, poor and landless, youth and market based cooperatives, etc.
Up to July 2010, the capital of the functional and non-functional cooperatives stood at Tk 50 billion, value of shares at Tk 5 billion and savings Tk 12 billion.
There are loopholes in the laws and rules by which the activities of cooperatives are regulated, experts said.
At present, the activities of cooperatives are regulated by Cooperative Societies Act 2001 (which was amended in 2002) and the rules and regulations made under it.
Under the existing law, the government exercises through the cooperative department immense power over the activities of the cooperative societies at different levels, Hossain Zillur Rahman, executive chairman of the Power and Participation Research Centre, told New Age.
The cooperative law and the cooperative department have been control-minded rather than dissemination and motivation-minded, Rahman, a former adviser to non-party caretaker government, said.
Professor Tofail Ahmed, a teacher of public administration at Chittagong University, said in a paper that NGO activities have become the part of the country’s development programmes now and efforts are quite visible to establish such activities as alternatives to cooperatives.
There were also allegations that elections to the managing committee in many cooperative societies were manipulated to ensure return of the nominees of the party in power, some cooperative organisers alleged.
This was particularly true for those cooperative organisations which received funds from the government or financial institutions on easy terms for implementing their credit programmes, particularly government administered credit programmes.
As a result, those cooperative societies were run on partisan considerations, which went against the non-partisan charter of cooperative movement.
Many cooperatives are formed only to grab public property, they alleged.
Asked about the mismatch between the numbers of cooperatives and fading glory of the cooperative movement, M Asaduzzaman, additional registrar of the Department of Cooperatives, said most of the cooperative bodies were formed whimsically and without adequate understanding about cooperative activities.
Most of the cooperatives organisations became inactive due to lack of quality leadership and waning interest of the members to continue, he said.
Asked about bureaucratic exercises by the cooperative department, he said how only two staff, who do not have any transport, can handle several hundred cooperatives in each upazila.
State Minister for LGRD and Cooperatives Jahangir Kabir Nanak said cooperatives movement would be expanded to every village through the one House one Farm project to accelerate rural development and reduce the rural-urban gap.
The proposed cooperatives would help rural folks gain expertise on economic and livelihood development that include
poultry and livestock rearing, plantation, fisheries and vegetable cultivation, he said.
However, senior official of the cooperatives department believe that the cooperatives directly supported by government become dead organisations after completion of the project.
-With New Age input
