It is for this reason that we cannot afford to be complacent about the movement with the success of a few cooperative ventures here and there. No doubt a successful venture means that its participants would be economically better-off. But if these persons, the successful cooperators, forsake the path of cooperation and take to capitalistic organisations for greater personal profit, the very idea of cooperation will die. Possibly their success might inspire others to undertake joint ventures. But if the all-important emotional attachment to this form of organisation is wanting among the cooperators, cooperation instead of taking us towards greater socialisation of productive resources may take us backward to a capitalistic order. This is a danger against which we shall have to be constantly on our guard. It would be necessary for the State to intervene effectively to ensure that resources arising out of cooperative ventures are channelled into various other cooperative organisations.
The social implications of cooperative movement relate to its capability to bring about greater equality, first economic and then social, among the people. A really successful movement should hasten our pace towards bringing about a more egalitarian social structure where ideas of hereditary privileges and discrimination would have no relevance. This will not be possible if the cooperatives are constituted on either caste basis or on the basis of social status. They may succeed as economic ventures but will fail to destroy the age-old social barriers. All of us who feel intimately involved in the cooperative movement must fight this tendency of restricting the cooperatives to certain groups. We cannot afford to be complacent about this merely because the Rules of Association provide that the membership of cooperatives is open to all. If the origin of the society either lies in the caste system or is restricted to a particular strata of society, we can be quite certain that the future membership of such societies will also remain so restricted. It, therefore, becomes a matter of our prime concern that through education, enlightenment, guidance, encouragement and if necessary through corrective action only such cooperatives are promoted which transcend all social barriers. Cooperation divorced of its egalitarian impact on the society would not be of great significance to us.
