Ministry of Cooperation

  • The Union government on July 6, 2021 announced the creation of a new ministry called the “Ministry of Co-operation” to implement the vision of ‘Sahkar se Samriddhi’ or prosperity through cooperation. The ministry will help deepen cooperatives as a true people-based movement reaching up to the grassroots.
  • As per the Government press release, the ministry will provide a separate administrative, legal and policy framework for strengthening the cooperative movement in the country.
  • “The ministry will work to streamline processes for ease of doing business for co-operatives and enable development of Multi-State Co-operatives (MSCS),” according to the government’s statement.
  • The creation of a separate ministry is also indicative of the Union government’s commitment to community based developmental partnership and fulfils the budget announcement made by the finance minister earlier this year.
  • In the past, the government has renamed several ministries to expand their work profile. For instance, the ministry of environment was named as the ministry of environment, forests and climate change; similarly the ambit of the ministry of animal husbandry was expanded to include Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying and the HRD ministry was renamed as education ministry.