The policy and promise of India’s co-op reform

On July 24, Union Home Minister and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah unveiled India’s National Cooperation Policy (NCP) for 2025-2045. The broad two-decade strategy rests upon six pillars: governance system strengthening, institutional dynamism, future challenges preparedness, inclusive outreach, sector diversification, and youth engagement.

One of the key aims of the policy is the formation of one cooperative society in each village in five years and 200,000 new Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS). According to the Press Information Bureau, there have been 23,173 new registered multipurpose PACS, dairy and fishery cooperatives, which are offering a range of services including grain storage, fertiliser supply, generic drugs through Jan Aushadhi Kendras, and banking through Common Service Centres, all powered by an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system customised with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).

As of mid-2025, official statistics record 108,000 PACS with 13 crore members – 63,000 of these PACS are at advanced stages of computerisation, anticipating a transition to fully digital, multipurpose rural institutions.

Despite the estimate of 850,000 societies in India’s cooperative space, only 2.52% of them are businesses that are exclusively women’s businesses. However, outstanding cooperatives like the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), with 3.2 million women members, the Amul dairy cooperative chain, with 3.6 million women milk producers, and Lijjat Papad, with 45,000 home-based women producers, are a testimony to the empowerment potential when scale and inclusion align with efficient cooperative governance models.

Literacy rates among the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe women reveal significant gaps with women in the general category and reflect the prevailing caste and gender barriers that restrict access to opportunities and hinder economic progress.

Peer-reviewed empirical research confirms these trends: according to a survey of 290 members of 29 PACS in West Bengal’s Nadia district, 76% of the sample reported enhanced empowerment of women through cooperative membership, enabled by decision-making roles, enhanced public scheme awareness, and vocational training offered by cooperatives. A study of tribal women in Jharkhand participating in poultry-based, women-owned cooperatives found statistically significant increases in their household income, decision-making autonomy, self-esteem, and effective leadership, confirming how value-chain cooperatives can be empowerment catalysts for traditionally marginalised groups.

Meta-analyses of global community producer associations, with Indian evidence, register standardised effect sizes of around 0.40 for access to credit, 0.50 for leadership and self-efficacy, and significant reductions in political marginalisation faced by female cooperative members.

Organisational structure-wise, NCP includes constitutional guarantees and institutional setup, ensuring a standalone Ministry of Cooperation, spreading the motto sahkar se samriddhi (prosperity through cooperation), and enshrining legal measures for enabling cooperatives to be established by backward sections of society like Dalits, Adivasis, women, and youth. Apart from this, the policy calls for state-specific cooperative programmes to be implemented by January 2026, setting up a National Cooperative Tribunal, a National Cooperative Bank, and a National Cooperative Database to enable data-based planning activities and capacity-building programmes.

Agency and participation

Models such as the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED), working under the aegis of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, offer proof of context-specific, inclusive enterprises’ scalability. The Van Dhan Vikas Yojana, launched in April 2018, had, by June 2020, managed to enable the growth of 1,205 tribal enterprises from around 18,000 Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and engage around 360,000 tribal gatherers. In most instances, this has led to enormous value addition. TRIFED notes that in Langleng in Nagaland, tribal communities used to sell a variety of broom grass at Rs 7 per kg. They now make four or five brooms from 1 kg of grass, earning Rs 60 per broom. This is a multiplier effect NCP aims to replicate across tribal districts in the country.

By integrating efforts to modernise PACS infrastructure, impose representation norms through model by-laws, institutionalise cooperative societies into frontline delivery of services, and facilitate sector-specific livelihoods, statistical and case-study estimates suggest the potential for 10 to 20 million Dalit, Adivasi, and rural women to become formal members of cooperative institutions within five years. Increased governance participation can enhance agency, social capital, and empowerment among communities deprived of institutional voice.

To realise the potential of the policy, focus must be on strict enforcement of reservation provisions ensuring actual inclusion of SC and ST women in cooperative governance roles; regular capacity-building initiatives that will ensure avoiding stagnation and institution-building capacity at the margins; adopting digital inclusion plans tailored to SC and ST women that will enable access to smartphones, quality internet connectivity and appropriate digital literacy training; sectoral enterprises with socio-cultural focus like forest-based tribal handicraft cooperatives that function beyond generic tourism proposals; taking cooperatives into health, education, and sanitation systems to address deep-rooted maternal, nutrition, and literacy problems among SC and ST women; and good social audits and grievance-redress mechanisms to prevent elite capture or coercive control.

With care and diligence, with institutional support and attention to the intersectionality of gender and caste, the National Cooperation Policy 2025 can transform the cooperative movement in the country into a driver of inclusive rural development, thereby bringing opportunities, equity, and dignity to Dalits, Adivasis, and women.

(Neil is head of the Department of Political Science, St. Joseph’s University, Bengaluru; Daniya is a research scholar at the university)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.