The Union Cabinet in India has granted approval for the creation of 200,000 new Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS), dairy cooperatives, and fishery cooperatives in previously uncovered villages and panchayats over the next five years. This initiative aims to strengthen the cooperative movement in the country and will be executed with the support of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), and the National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB).
The plan involves leveraging a ‘whole-of-Government’ approach and converging various schemes of the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying. The government will provide forward and backward linkages to farmer members, assisting them in marketing their produce, increasing income, and accessing credit facilities and other services at the village level.
Currently, there are approximately 98,995 PACS in the country with a member base of 130 million. PACS constitute the lowest tier of the Short-Term Cooperative Credit (STCC) structure, providing short-term and medium-term credit and other input services to member farmers.
The plan also targets the establishment of viable dairy cooperatives in each uncovered Panchayat/village and viable fishery cooperatives in each coastal Panchayat/village or those with significant water bodies. The Ministry of Cooperation, led by Amit Shah, is spearheading this effort to address the existing gaps, with nearly 160,000 Panchayats lacking PACS and around 200,000 Panchayats lacking any dairy cooperative society.
Primary dairy cooperative societies, numbering around 199,182 with approximately 15 million members, play a crucial role in milk procurement, providing testing facilities, selling cattle feed, and offering extension services to their members. Primary fishery cooperative societies, around 25,297 in number with roughly 3.8 million members, focus on supporting marginalized sections of society by providing marketing facilities, assisting in procuring fishing equipment, fish seed, and feed, and offering limited-scale credit facilities to members.
