Management of consumer's co-operative in India

At various stages of consumer trade, middlemen invariably tend to add the cost of goods and thus considerably increase the price spread between the producers and the ultimate consumers. There are persistent complaints, not only of unduly high prices and the prices of many articles in short supply prove to register unwarranted increase The consumers in India are victims of rampant adultera tions, soaring prices, under-weighments and many other malpractices. Adulteration of food is on exorbitant scale and is said to range from 16 to 66 per cent.

A strong consumer co-operative movement can alone provide a natural counteracting force against such vagaries and malpractices of trade and Industry in developing countries. The solution to the problem of exploitation (consumer: exploita tion) is "to become your own merchants and your own manufacturers be able to supply yourself with goods of best quality and at the lower price. There is no comprehensive and universally accept able definition for consumer co-operative society. In the view of Mathur a conumer co-operative stores is a voluntary organisation of consumers, organised to obtain their requirements consumer goods and services on terms of greatest advantage to them. At present we have four tier structure-National Fede ration at the national level, State Federations at the State level, Wholessale/Central Stores at Dis trict level, supported by number of primary stores as the base,

The Natesan committee significantly observe in their report that the consumer co-operative move ment in India had not Succeeded, and could not effectively compete with the private trade, because the movement comprised almost entirely small primary consumer co-operative, which depended on the private wholesalers for supplies, and did not have wholesale organisations of their own, which could procure consumer goods in bulk, in whole sale lots, from producing centres or manufacturers, and make supplies to them. A few State Federa tions have been set up in the year 1964-65 in order to coordinate the activities of wholesale stores, make bulk purchases on inter-state basis and import consumer goods from abroad.

A few studies and reports attempted on state Federations do not make an indepth study with regard to purchases, sales, manufacturing, finance and personnel functions. This book is intended to make an indepth study covering all these as pects.