Ahmedabad: With states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar showing the way, it is time Gujarat ushered in reforms in the cooperative sector, feel the top cooperative leaders of the country.

"Andhra Pradesh led the way in 1996. Karnataka, which was wavering, plunged into cooperative sector reforms on January 1 this year. Gujarat, being the pioneer in cooperative movement, must not delay enacting a Parallel Cooperative Act to allow cooperative societies a level playing field in the competitive economy," Cooperative Development Foundation chairman Rama Reddy told IANS.

"It is all the more agonising that in Gujarat, which happens to be the citadel and source of inspiration of the cooperative movement, the government has not yet bothered to remove the unwarranted controls and free the cooperative societies for speedier progress," said former Planning Commission deputy chairman Mohan Dharia.

Dharia and Reddy were in Ahmedabad on Tuesday to participate in a seminar on the need for a parallel law for self-reliant cooperatives in Gujarat. It is strange that the government has liberalised the private sector but kept the cooperative sector under a tight leash through the Registrar of Cooperatives, Dharia said.

"At least there should be a level playing field for the cooperatives to take on the onslaught of the multinational companies. Freedom at least to those cooperatives which have no government equity," he added.

The "Parallel Act" seeks to free the cooperative societies from government control by not allowing government equity participation. The equity under the Parallel Act comes only from the members. "The benefit of having a Parallel Act is that it gives the cooperative societies option to either function with government equity under the old state acts or to break free from government control by having only members' equity," Reddy said.

Today seven states, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Karnataka, Chhatisgarh and Jharkhand, have Parallel Acts.

The Parliamentary committee, he said, has invited the CIP members for a discussion. The CIP has as its members Dharia, Verghese Kurien, the doyen of the cooperative movement in the country and the National Dairy Development Board's former chairman, and former Planning Commission member L C Jain.

India Abroad News Service