Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Tuesday launched the National Cooperative Development Corporation's YouTube channel, 'Sahakar Cooptube NCDC India', to encourage farmers and the youth to take benefit of cooperatives.
He also released videos on formation and registration of cooperatives for 18 states in Hindi and regional languages. The videos will be aired on the new channel.
"Cooperatives are part of our culture. Through this channel, our effort should be to facilitate involvement of the youth in the cooperative movement," Tomar said after the launch.
Formation of new cooperatives is a prerequisite for bringing new life and dedication in the realm of the cooperative movement, he said.
The guidance videos in different languages covering 18 states would also strengthen and deepen the major initiatives of our government to promote and form 10,000 farmer-producer organisations (FPOs), he said in a statement.
Stating that NCDC has a major role in the formation of FPOs in the cooperative mode, he said more states will be added to the collection of guidance videos on Sahakar Cooptube NCDC India channel on YouTube in due course of time.
Further, the minister said NCDC as an apex-level statutory institution under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare has achieved tremendous success with a cumulative financial assistance to cooperatives to the tune of Rs 1,54,000 crore.
Beginning with a disbursement of Rs 2.36 crore in 1963, NCDC disbursed around Rs 28,000 crore during 2019-20, he said.
According to the government, cooperatives in India have come a long way and have proven their success in improving the condition of farmers and economic development.
Largely as associations of small and marginal farmers and the rural poor, the cooperatives have acquired a huge network of over 8.50 lakh organisations and 290 million members. Cooperatives lend support to farmers in minimising risks in the agriculture and allied sector and act as a shield against exploitation, it added.
