There is, however, great scope for improving the working of the cooperatives to make them succeed as economic entities. The first pre-requisite is, of course, that the unit must be viable. But after it becomes viable, it should look for backward and forward linkage of its activities. This is particularly true of cooperatives working in agricultural sphere. Cooperative farming can lead to the cooperative processing and then to cooperative marketing. This chain can be extended to obtaining agricultural services on a cooperative basis as also to the credit needed for agricultural operations. Although some progress has been achieved in this direction, greater effort is needed to make it a normal phenomenon of the movement. Another direction in which further effort is called for is the diversification of activities by cooperative units. For example, a cooperative farming society can easily take up poultry farming as an ancilliary activity. The basic idea should be that cooperative complexes grow and ultimately cover all the activities which are in one line and such other activities as can be considered complementary to their main activities. It is a basic requirement that the cooperatives must be economically viable. Unless the economics of the movement is proved to the people, unless people became alive to the possibilities of better return from this form of organisation, it would be difficult to sustain and promote the movement. The cooperatives, in the very nature of things, should be voluntary and should spring from the desire of the people to join hands for economic betterment. This is a vital condition, because although governmental effort is necessary to nurture the movement in its early days, it cannot be permanently sustained by governmental leadership without becoming devoid of the content of cooperation. Similarly, although cooperation cannot be divorced from its ideal of public welfare, that alone will not be able to infuse people with the requisite enthusiasm. In the ultimate analysis it must have an economic appeal for the people which alone will ensure that the movement will take firm roots in the country and become self-reliant for growth.
Success as an economic venture cannot, however, be the end-result of a cooperative venture. This is so because even when restricted to economic activity, cooperation cannot be divorced of its far-reaching social and political implications. In the truest form it should be viewed as the prime vehicle of social change, because we seek to give a meaningful significance to our political democracy by ushering in an economic democracy. One important goal that we seek to achieve is to assure everyone a place in the society. Without cooperative effort and development, with its capacity to take the benefits to the primary producers, the social barriers which we are breaking down today are likely to be replaced by economic barriers of an economically developed society of tomorrow. Without cooperative effort, the people who suffer on account of the social barriers today will continue to suffer tomorrow from economic barriers. It is, therefore, a matter of vital concern to us that the cooperative movement grows and flourishes till it becomes all pervasive and assumes the role of a major forum for organising our activities. Then alone can we achieve the stage where social and economic eminence will not be a matter of inheritance.
