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Cooperatives
in South Asia: Change is Essential
Khilendra
BAsnyat
In South Asian Countries, along with common people, many
development ministries, departments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and even social activist
organizations have started to organize cooperatives in their respective sectors
of operation. This scenario gives an impression that cooperatives are thriving
in these countries.
Actually,
anyone who has a serious intention to use cooperative ideals as a tool for
development should seek solutions of the following issues that caused failure
in the past: Is there any change in cooperative management that has helped to
make things different from the past? Has the level of understanding in terms of
knowledge of cooperatives among members increased? Do the members have created
their own objectives and goals to meet their needs ? Do people know what is cooperative
and how it is managed? How many experts are manned by these government
agencies, NGOs and INGOs in the cooperatives? How many actors of cooperatives
recognize that cooperative is a discipline and needs an in-depth knowledge to
make it a success? Is the registration process correct? What makes the genuine
cooperative distinguished from a pseudo-cooperative? These are some of the
questions to be answered by the concerned authorities. Answers to these
questions are so important for the beginners of the cooperative activities that
they might cause devastating results if they are not properly addressed.
Experiences show that in most south Asian Countries the above-mentioned issues
were not adequately dealt in the past and caused detrimental effects to the
organization and management of cooperatives.
In south Asian
countries, there are people who still advocate cooperative as a charity. They
need training on cooperative. If the present situation persists, It will be
very difficult to launch the cooperative movement in these countries in the
right direction.
South Asian countries owe to the west for modern cooperative
ideals. However, it seems they imported only the term but failed to internalize
the cooperative management aspect.