In The Wake of Freedom: India's Tryst with Cooperatives

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The impulses of the freedom movement gave birth to many initiatives and institutions in the post-Independence era, all too eager to consolidate freedom and build a new India. The Indian Cooperative Union (ICU) was one such institution born in 1948, led by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya.

The ICU pioneered many self-help endeavours among the landless agricultural workers and small farmers, raising of the Faridabad township by 50,000 refugee settlers from the North-West Frontier Province, development of Central Cottage Industries Emporium for providing inter-state and export markets for artisans in handicrafts and handlooms, development of Super Bazaar- cooperative store in consumers interest.

As at the grassroots level, the ICU was also in the forefront of advocacy of cooperative principles and policy to influence India's approach towards people-led development sustained by democratic decentralization. The book here includes the ICU's well-researched treatise on Cooperative Principles and their relevance to India's socio- economic goals, Cooperative Farming, Rural Credit, Cooperative Law, Community Development and Development of Handicrafts.

Forty years ago, the ICU also foresaw the need for voluntary organizations in India uniting together and helped to setup the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development (AVARD).

This book recalls ICU's contribution especially in the immediate post-independence period and highlights the enhanced relevance of cooperatives today.

L.C.Jain-Born 13 December 1925. Joined the Quit India movement during the freedom struggle, was invited by the Central Relief Committee of All-India Congress Committee to look after the post-partition refugee camps; later joined Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya in founding the Indian Cooperative Union (ICU) to build rural cooperatives and revive the traditional handicrafts and handlooms of India. Starting as a village cooperative organiser in 1948, was later elected General Secretary of ICU. Apart from rural cooperatives he was actively involved with major endeavours of ICU: building of the Faridabad industrial township by refugees on self-help basis, development of the Central Cottage Industries Emporium and the setting up of the first Super Bazaar, as a cooperative store, and research studies. He was also non-official Chairman of the All India Handicrafts Board. Over the past five decades he has been active in advocacy of democratic decentralisation and just and equitable economic policies whether as a member of the State Planning Boards of Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Assam and Tamil Nadu; and the National Planning Commission, or as a writer in newspapers and journals. He received the Magsaysay award for Public Service in 1989. Currently, he is Chairman of Industrial Development Services-a techno-economic consultancy organisation, and of the Institute of Social Change and Development, an ICSSR-sponsored institute for the north-east region. He is co-author of Grass Without Roots, Rural Development under Government Auspices.

Karen Coelho-Born 3 June 1963. Currently holds a faculty position at the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) at the University of Arizona, has an M. Phil. in Development Studies from the University of Sussex, UK. She earlier worked for several years with Asian Community Health Action Network (ACHAN) in Madras, and has extensive experience in networking and training in various Asian countries and in different parts of India. In 1994 she worked as a Consultant on Women and Panchayati Raj with Mahila Samakhya, Karnataka (MSK), where she helped to document the experiences of the newly elected Panchayat members from the MSK women's sanghas, and to devise training curricula for them. Her current work at BARA includes food security analyses of various African, Latin American and Canbbean countries for CARE, and a project on integrating gender concerns into agricultural policy for the FAO.

WHEN the country attained its freedom in 1947, the cooperative ide representing economic democracy was seen to provide a ray of hope and an appropriate institutional vehicle for the economic and social ad!! vancement of millions of small farmers and artisans dispersed over lakhs of villages. Ever since then, the cooperatives have been struggling" for liberation, albeit unsuccessfully, from draconian cooperatives law!!! and administration which have, in fact, been worsening. This in spite of the fact that the State has regularly proclaimed its support for cooperatives. But what the State actually did in practice was destructive of the very first cooperative principle, namely, inner democratic control of members over their affairs. Though statistically, the number of cooperatives has gone up, the promise of the cooperative idea had remained stillborn.

There is, however, a change in the objective situation today. The focus of the economic policy on creating a competitive environment offers, in theory at least, unexpected opportunities, not only for the corporate sector, but also for the cooperatives. It provides a hope for the revival of the cooperative idea and instrument. In practice, however, it may be long before the potential of cooperatives is realized, given the fact that? the slate is unclean, with the bureaucracy deeply entrenched in the cooperative sector. It is not surprising, therefore, that the State which is otherwise spearheading liberalization is continuing to impede the independence of the cooperatives from the bureaucratic stranglehold. In contrast, it has acted swiftly to provide a full dose of liberalization to the corporate sector. The only notable exception is the State of Andhra Pradesh which enacted a liberal democratic cooperative law in 1995.

Comprehensive and sustainable economic reforms require that the organizational investment and productivity needs of millions of our small farmers, artisans and small enterprises in the unorganized sector, who constitute the bulk of our workforce, must also be met. The corporate sector, private or public, has throughout been indifferent to the organizational and productivity needs of these millions of small, rural and urban producers. It is not likely to have any unique interest in them in the future as well. Thus, the cooperative form of institution still remains the only option for the poor and unorganized rural and urban producers. There is no other institutional form which can help them to survive in the emerging, market-dominated economic milieu.

There is a popular misconception that the market comprises of only private corporate enterprises. It needs to be understood that cooperatives too are a part of the same market from which they also draw their strength and sustenance - or at least want to in preference to dependence on the State.

Besides the push provided by economic reforms, there is also likelyt to be a pull for developing cooperatives from panchayats. The recent 73rd Amendment to the Constitution relating to panchayats has opened up unprecedented and challenging opportunities; for cooperative endeavour and cooperative enterprises in the rural areas. As a result of this Amendment, panchayats will come into existence in every village and every district of the country by the year 1996. The Amendment has mandated that the primary function of the panchayats will be to undertake "area planning for economic development and social justice".

In the nature of things, agricultural development implying efficient management of land, water and labour will necessarily constitute the: core of the village area plans. These area plans have also to be implemented. But panchayats are essentially political institutions, which have to play an enabling role. They will themselves not be able to undertake economic activities.

As has been pointed out earlier there is little prospect of the corporate sector or public sector coming down to the village level to assist the village panchayats and the village economy in meeting this challenge: In the circumstances, cooperatives are the only institutional vehicle available to assist the panchayats in the implementation of the various components of the local area plans.

THE historical circumstance was the partition of India. Millions were uprooted. They crossed the borders and made for the first refugee camp. There were hundreds of such camps and thousands of volunteers to serve them. There were 10,000 refugees in Hudson Lines in the Kingsway Camp close to Delhi University where I was enrolled for a Master's degree. Before I knew, I had abandoned classes and volunteered to look after this camp. Yes, we had tents, kitchens, dispensaries and schools all improvised overnight. Just as I began to feel that life in the camp was settling down after many a storm, a visitor came and unsettled it all for me. That visitor was Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya a veteran freedom fighter and socialist leader. And it took just a couple of questions from her to unsettle the settled: "What is their future? How long are they to live in the camps?"

As busloads of refugees poured in day after day, and all day long, with food to be cooked and distributed for 10,000, thrice a day and uncontrollable emotional traumas and upheavals to be contended with and soothed, we lived by the hour. None of us, the volunteers in the camp, had a moment to entertain any question about the day after, let alone the future.

Kamaladevi's questions transfixed me. We arranged to meet the following day. The "we" included a group of those who were called socialists in the Congress Party After hours of deliberation we arrived at the conclusion that the refugees had to build their own future and that self-help, or self-initiative was fundamental to this. Given the enormity of the problem and the meagre resources of the individual households, which had lost most of what they had in the migration from Pakistan to India, mutual aid was indispensable. The only known instrument fitting this description was a "cooperative". The next step was to share the idea with the refugees for their response. But cooperation was only an idea What content each cooperative would have, what tasks it would under- take and how it would accomplish them, had to be determined by each cooperative itself. Nevertheless, to carry the idea to them, to receive their response, to offer them counsel, and to facilitate their journey in case they chose the path, necessitated a platform. We needed something like a mother-cooperative which would foster new cooperatives and create an environment to protect them from unfriendly external forces. We started with inspiration of cooperative principles: one person, one vote and democratic control of members over management, i.e. both equity and accountability. We took to the road with cheerful assumptions of setting in motion a process for building a new India, through mutual effort largely outside the State, though along with it.

It was thus that almost overnight, the Indian Cooperative Union (ICU) was born to act as a mother-cooperative, with Kamaladevi as its President. I volunteered to move from the refugee camp and became the ICU's first village-level organizer in 1948 at Mehrauli village near the Qutb Minar. We had little knowledge of the ground realities surrounding a cooperative. Soon the beams of the roof started collapsing on our heads day by day, the cooperative law, the cooperative rules, the cooperative department, the registrars, the inspectors, the cooperative auditors, the cooperative bank, maximum credit limits.

The departments were immune to the passion for building a new India, and also immune to the tragedy wrought by the partition on its victims-the refugees. They were indifferent to the state of mind of the refugees, of being uprooted not only geographically, but also in terms of self-confidence. How do you retain self-confidence when you are unable to save your family, children, ancestral home and property and often human life itself from marauders? All of it was snatched before your very eyes and you stood a helpless witness. How could self-confidence survive such an onslaught? The refugees were drained of their inner strength.

But the laws and the cooperative department could not care less. They had only one song-"you have to conform: we cannot bend ourselves to suit your circumstances". In that hour, cooperation, when I first experienced it as a practice, appeared as a monster which could do no more than devour you. How were the helpless then to rebuild a life through its aid, when it was more ready to bite than to build? Nevertheless, the ICU fought on and continued to build, while the system continued to bite. The ICU succeeded but only sometimes.

We are still far from the goal we set for ourselves at the dawn of Freedom. And, as many continue to pursue the goal undaunted by the frustrations of the past, it is handy to have an account of the endeavours and struggles of groups like the ICU in the formative years of Free India. This is the raison d'etre of this book.

**Contents and Sample Pages**