Haryana’s villages do not run on big industry alone. They run on cooperatives — the Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) that finance the sowing season, the cooperative banks that keep credit local, and the labour cooperatives that give dignity of collective bargaining to workers. As someone who has served the Cooperation Cell (Sahkarita Prakoshth) of BJP Haryana — first as State In-charge for Co-operative Banks from 2020 to 2022, and now as State Co-Convenor — I see this movement up close every day.
From the ground in Haryana
During the cooperative bank and PACS elections, our teams travelled across districts and saw both the strength and the neglect of this sector. Where a PACS functions well, farmers get timely credit without leaving the village. Where it doesn’t, families fall into the hands of moneylenders. The difference is governance — and governance is exactly what can be fixed.
The national vision: “Sahkar se Samriddhi”
The Government of India’s vision of prosperity through cooperation — a separate Ministry of Cooperation at the Centre — has given the movement a new momentum. From computerising PACS to forming new multi-purpose cooperatives in every panchayat, the direction is clear: cooperatives should become the delivery vehicle for rural prosperity.
My responsibility
As Project Director with the National Labour Cooperative Federation of India (NLCF), my work focuses on organising workers — many of whom have no safety net — into cooperative structures that give them scale, security and a voice. A construction worker who is part of a registered labour cooperative is no longer invisible.
The cooperative movement is not nostalgia; it is infrastructure. Strengthen it, and Haryana’s rural economy strengthens with it.
— Peeyush Mehta (पीयूष मेहता), State Co-Convenor, Cooperation Cell, BJP Haryana