Amit Shah unveils a five-year roadmap to modernise India's cooperatives
Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah addressed the 5th Foundation Day of the Ministry of Cooperation in New Delhi, highlighting reforms to modernise India's cooperative ecosystem. He said the ministry, created under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, touches more than 30 crore people and over 8.5 lakh cooperative institutions. A major emphasis was a unified national cooperative database covering 8.58 lakh cooperative societies across 30 sectors and more than 32 crore members, with audit status, turnover and grading. Shah said the Bharat Beej Sahakari Samiti is expected to become India's largest non-government seed production company within three years, and the new Gomay Cooperative Society will support dung management and organic fertiliser. On credit, Rs 3,000 crore was allocated for PACS computerisation, with about 50,000 PACS converted into e-PACS. He said cooperation would be a strong foundation of a prosperous India by 2047.
Key Facts & Details
9 points- 1Amit Shah addressed the 5th Foundation Day of the Ministry of Cooperation, which touches over 30 crore people and 8.5 lakh cooperative institutions.
- 2A unified national cooperative database now covers 8.58 lakh cooperative societies across 30 sectors and more than 32 crore members.
- 3The Bharat Beej Sahakari Samiti is expected to become India's largest non-government seed production company within three years.
- 4Rs 3,000 crore was allocated for PACS computerisation, with about 50,000 PACS converted into e-PACS and 39,000 PACS functioning as Kisan Samriddhi Kendras.
- 5Shah said the total business of district cooperative banks rose from Rs 19.6 lakh crore to more than Rs 25 lakh crore, while gross NPAs of urban cooperative banks fell from 12.8% to 6.2%.
- 6The National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) has invested Rs 70,000 crore in the cooperative sector.
Deep Dive
- +A network of nine national-level cooperative societies is being created to link village producers with wider value chains in agriculture, dairy, exports and green energy.
- +The newly launched Gomay Cooperative Society will promote animal feed, dung management, organic fertiliser and renewable energy for a circular economy in dairy.
- +The event saw the launch of NCD 3.0, a geo-tag mobile app, NDDB's milk supply dashboard, and an MoU between BBSSL and ICAR to strengthen seed systems.
Exam Focus
Examiners may test the number of cooperative societies in the national database, the amount allocated for PACS computerisation, or the aim of the Bharat Beej Sahakari Samiti.
Related Topics
Exam Relevance & Angle
Cooperatives underpin rural credit, dairy and agriculture for hundreds of millions of Indians. Shah's roadmap linking a national database, seed cooperatives and PACS computerisation signals a structural push to make the sector transparent, technology-enabled and competitive, with direct implications for farmers, rural banking and the wider agrarian economy.
Target Exams
Background & Context
The Ministry of Cooperation was carved out in 2021 to give a separate administrative focus to India's vast cooperative movement, which was earlier handled within the agriculture ministry. Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) are village-level cooperatives that provide short-term credit and services to farmers, forming the base of the three-tier cooperative credit structure topped by district and state cooperative banks. Cooperation is a State subject under the Constitution, so the central ministry supports policy and modernisation while states retain regulatory responsibility. Digitising PACS and building sectoral databases aim to widen services and improve transparency.
Related GK Concepts
Must KnowTest Yourself
1 / 3How many cooperative societies does the unified national cooperative database cover, according to Amit Shah?
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