Delivered Extempore
ADDRESS BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, VICE-PRESIDENT OF INDIA, AT THE INAUGURATION HEAD OFFICE OF THE APEX COOPERATIVE URBAN BANK OF MAHARASHTRA & GOA LTD
MUMBAI, AUGUST 30, 1996
Hon'ble Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Shri Manohar Joshi, Hon'ble Union Minister, Shri Ramakant Khalap, Hon'ble Shri S.B. Chavan, Hon'ble Ministers of the Maharashtra Government, Chairman of the Apex Cooperative Bank, Shri Om Prakash Deora and distinguished friends,
I have been invited today to inaugurate the Apex Cooperative Urban Bank of Maharashtra and Goa which is already in existence. I have read your invitation carefully and I find that my job is to inaugurate the Head Office of the Apex Cooperative Urban Bank of Maharashtra and Goa. I accept this kind invitation with great pleasure and consider it an honour. I understand that this Apex Bank has been registered in October 1994, declared as a State Urban Cooperative Bank in 1995 and the Reserve Bank of India has issued a licence for it in March this year. Apart from that I understand that this Apex Bank is already involved in granting loans of sizeable amounts to institutions.
The cooperative movement in the world, as a whole, came about historically, as a movement in the middle ground between the private capitalism and massive state capitalism. The early idealist of the cooperative movement thought of it in terms of an alternative democratic institution on which the social system can be based. Therefore, this is a movement started with a great deal of idealism involving voluntary action by the people, self help by the people and running the economic system through cooperation rather than conflict. Indeed in a cooperative movement, the spirit of conflict is alien, it is a contradiction in terms. But as our Law Minister has said just now, the spirit of healty competition is relevant and highly important.
Soon after Independence, we in India had promoted cooperation, particularly in rural and agricultural fields. But this had overflown into the urban areas also. In fact, the Indian cooperative movement has formed under the names, Smt. Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay, who built up the Faridababd township for refugees from Pakistan. I think about 50,000 refugees were housed, given employment and the way of honourable existence in Faridabad. She built up a cottage industries emporium in Delhi which provided an outlet to the products of our cottage industries and our artisans from the rural areas to the towns, to the cities and also to the world as a whole in terms of export. The Indian Cooperative Union also started the first Super Bazar in Delhi. The urban cooperative become popular later. But it has over a hundred years of history. I have read that the first cooperative bank was established in the old Bombay Presidency in Baroda in 1889 known as the Annunya Sahakari Monthly, and that grew into a mass movement in the State of Maharashtra and Goa, in Karnataka, and in fact, all the Southern states have become centres of this urban cooperative movement. Maharashtra itself has over 27% of the Urban Cooperative Banks in India and the total deposits in Maharashtra and Goa is over 56% of the total deposits of all the Cooperative Banks in India.
Thus Maharashtra has led the way in urban cooperative banking system as it has led the way in many important economic and cultural activities in our country as a whole. The formation of this Apex State Bank is, therefore, an important occasion. The urban cooperative was intended to serve low sections of the urban population which do not recieve credit from the commercial banks of the country. The small traders, professionals and the small man running an enterprise who could not get credit from the commercial banks were the target of the Urban Cooperative Banks. In that sense this would fill in important gap in India's credit system. We have today an immense middle class. This middle class runs into between 200 and 300 million people and it is because of their dynamism and entrepreneurship and economic initiative that India is today moving as new liberalised economy. In this process the small trader, small industries and professionals have to be helped with credit so that this middle class can become a self-sustainable class in our country. But at the same time, we cannot forget our link with our rural areas.
The cooperative was intended originally in India for rural development and an urban cooperative is an overflow of the rural cooperative as the urban population is the result of an immense overflow from our rural areas. It is therefore, important that while the great urban cooperatives flourish we should not forget the vital importance of rural development, agricultural development and of rural employment in our country, I am therefore, very glad to see that in the activities of the urban cooperative banks in Maharashtra and Goa and in other other states, there is considerable emphasis in helping the agricultural sector, in helping dairy farming, poultry farming and in agricultural operations and innumerable other ways of helping the agricultural sector. Because the urban areas are bound together in our country with the rural population, we cannot be separated, and the vital activities of this apex bank are directly involved, intertwined with rural and agricultural development.
I am very glad to see that this emphasis is found in the activities of the urban cooperative banks. We have measures of building a decentralised democratic system and a self-reliant economy based on the initiatives of the people, the involvement of the people, the voluntary participation of the people in economy activities. Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minister, had emphasised as early as before 1950 that the root of the foundation of the Indian democracy should lie in the revitalised of villages in three central institutions - a school, a panchayat and a multi-purpose cooperative. These three institutions were considered to be the vital, basic institutions for building up a voluntary democracy based on the initiative, participation of the people and directed towards the improvement of the conditions of the people. I am happy to see that urban cooperative banks in Bombay and Goa and other states are involved in this task and have placed before them the vision of India based on grassroots initiatives. In the future urban sector is going to be a predominant sector in the Indian society and economy. Already it is predominant.
But in the future, it would be more so, but it is important that through these cooperatives, we tried to tackle some of the problems of the outlying rural areas, better the conditions of the people, give more employment there, more industries there, more prosperity there, so that this endless migration from rural areas to urban areas can be stemmed so that the urban areas can maintain their prosperity and transmit their prosperity to the rest of India. I am hopeful that this cooperative would work towards that end and deal with the innumerable complex problems of modern urban centres and also in the process, tackle some of the problems of the rural areas and make this country vibrant with grassroot initiative and immense involvement, of our immense population in a democratic process in building a better India. I wish this apex cooperative every success.
Thank you.
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