Cooperative: policy Environment and management, (16 June 1998)

This book is about catalysing co-operation, it is about building people's organisations that will survive and succeed in the rough and-tumble of today's competitive world. Many scholars and prac titioners firmly believe that co-operatives and people's organisations succeed only when they have outstanding leaders and managers. Others believe that they succeed where (or when) social conditions are ripe for them. Still others believe that collective action works when the groups involved are small and homogeneous, and their members enjoy a high level of equality in their socio-economic status. Yet another influential view is that co-operation succeeds only when it occurs from below and through local action by village people and not when it is imposed from above or driven by external action.

These viewpoints are based partly upon behavioural assumptions about individuals and social groups associated with different systems of thinking on society and partly on a particular manner of reading the empirical evidence on co-operation. In this book, we argue in favour of an alternative manner of reading this empirical evidence. Our reading suggests that co-operation on a large scale occurs only infrequently on its own; even when it does, it seldom sustains on its own. Large co-operative organisations in India represent one or more of the following four typologies:

Coercive co-operation occurs when the state stipulates that indi viduals can undertake certain activities or get access to certain benefits/resources only through a co-operative. Forest lands are being leased to tribal communities only if they form a co-operative. In 1989, the Gujarat government issued a fiat that canal water would be supplied only if farmers formed water-users' associations.