Strengthening Accounting in Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies

The cooperatives in India are more than a century old. The emergence of cooperatives in a formalized form can be traced to the passing of the “Cooperative Credit Societies Act, 1904” even though some of the cooperatives may have been established prior to that. Subsequent legislative initiatives include Cooperative Societies Act, 1912 which provided for the formation of noncredit societies and federal cooperative organisations. Provinces like Bombay, Madras, Bihar, Orissa and Bengal enacted their own cooperative laws on the lines of the 1912 Act. In 1942, the government enacted the Multi Unit Cooperative Societies Act which was an enabling instrument for incorporation and winding up of cooperative societies.

- CMA Gopala Krishna Ayitam

The Short Term Credit Cooperative Structure (STCCS) is spread throughout the length and breadth of India with the presence of one Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) on an average in every sixth or seventh census village. The only other network that has similar geographical spread is the India Post. As at 31st March 2014 there are 93,0421 PACS in India as against 154,8822 Post Offices as on the same date.

The grass-root level PACS are supported by the federated structures at the district level – District Central Cooperative Bank (DCCB); state level State Cooperative Bank (StCB). With the exception that in some States two tier system exits viz., PACS and StCB. Within a state the StCB plays the role of an apex level entity at the state level and respective DCCB plays the role of an apex level entity at the district level or for a cluster of districts.

Significance of Cooperatives:

The significance of PACS can be highlighted with the following: the share of cooperatives in the institutional credit to agricultural was as high as 62% in the year 1992-933, even though this has been declining nationally (17% in 2011-124) in some states it is still more than 50%5 ; during the year 2011-12 the cooperatives provided agricultural credit to 30.9 million farmers as compared to 25.5 million farmers by the commercial banks and 8.2 million farmers by Regional Rural Banks (RRBs)6.

Reforms to address Challenges:

The Royal Commission on Agricultural observed that if cooperation fails there will fail the best hope of rural India 7. Notwithstanding such importance of the STCCS, these entities are repeatedly challenged on their poor governance and management and financial health. The following extract from the STCCS Revival Package emphasises the needed reforms to strengthen the STCCS and thus contains the message on challenges that STCCS faces: