Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation, Shri Amit Shah, today chaired a “Manthan Baithak” with the Ministers of Cooperation of all States and Union Territories in New Delhi. The event marks the celebration of International Year of Cooperatives (IYC) 2025. The meeting was organized by the Ministry of Cooperation, Government of India. The successful organization of the “Manthan Baithak” is a significant step towards strengthening the cooperative sector. The Ministers of Cooperation, Additional Chief Secretaries, Principal Secretaries, and Secretaries of Cooperative Departments from across the country enthusiastically participated in the meeting. The purpose of the Manthan Baithak is to review ongoing schemes to strengthen the cooperative movement in India, assess achievements, and provide a dynamic platform to promote collaboration.

In his address, Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation, Shri Amit Shah, said that Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi established the Ministry of Cooperation with the objective of reviving the long-standing tradition of cooperation in the country while also keeping the present perspectives in mind. He said that social change and a new landscape of development have emerged in the country since the Narendra Modi government came into power. He mentioned that around 60 to 70 crore people in India lacked even the basic facilities and were living for generations in scarcity. He said that within the 10-year period from 2014 to 2024, the Modi government fulfilled the dreams of these crores of people by providing them with housing, toilets, drinking water, food grains, healthcare, gas cylinders, and other facilities. Shri Shah further said that these people now want to improve their lives further by becoming entrepreneurs, but they lack the initial capital, and the only way for them to do some significant work with their small amounts of capital is through cooperation. He emphasized that for a country like India with a population of 140 crore, two things are extremely important — the growth of GDP and GSDP, as well as the creation of jobs for all 140 crore people. He said that cooperation is the only option for generating employment for every individual in the country, which is why the Ministry of Cooperation was established four years ago with great foresight. Shri Shah said that with sensitivity, cooperation must be revitalized for the welfare of millions of small farmers and rural people in the country because there are immense opportunities in this sector.

Shri Amit Shah said that the purpose of this reflection and brainstorming can only be fulfilled if all 140 crore people of the country get employment and live their lives with hard work, and to make this successful, the Government of India has taken 60 initiatives. He said that one important initiative among these is the creation of the National Cooperative Database, which will help identify gaps. He explained that this National Cooperative Database has been created so that cooperative institutions at the national, state, district, and tehsil levels can collectively see which villages in which states do not have even a single cooperative institution. Shri Shah said that the Modi government’s goal is that within the next five years, there should not be a single village in the country without a cooperative, and the cooperative database should be used to achieve this goal.