Bold and new? We had a cooperation ministry for 13 years (1953-66)

Such a ministry was first formed in 1953, and Surendra Kumar Dey was the first and only Union Cabinet minister for Cooperation and Panchyati Raj

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced the formation of a new ministry of cooperation. The formation of such a ministry had been announced in the Budget earlier this year. 

The move is being described by the more ardent amongst his supporters as bold and new. But nearly a week later no one knows what exactly the ministry’s mandate is going to be. 

The press release merely says “It will help deepen cooperatives as a true people-based movement reaching up to the grassroots”. Indeed, reaching up, rather than down where the grassroots are, could be the only new idea in this initiative.

Nor is the idea new. For, such a ministry was first formed in 1953 and remained in existence for 13 years. 

My father who served in districts for the best part of the 1950s was a great votary of the idea. That’s how I know about it.

S K Dey, the pioneer

The ministry was headed by Surendra Kumar Dey (1906 -1989). He was what is known as an NRI those days. He came back to help India. 

He was made India’s first--and only--Union Cabinet minister for Cooperation and Panchyati Raj. Both Prime Minister Nehru and the Congress party clearly believed that development had to start at the bottom. Dey, in particular, was of the view that democracy could not be practiced by bureaucrats handing down development plans. He worked hard to achieve his goals. 55,000 villages had to be covered.

In February 1960 The Hindu even wrote an editorial:

 “Mr. S.K. Dey, Minister of Community Development and Co-operation, said in the Lok Sabha on February 10 that Government had decided to stick to the original target of bringing the whole country under the community development programme by 1963. Mr. Dey said that the U.N. Mission had made the suggestion for staggering the programme in India on the ground that the technical and administrative staff for implementing the programme was not adequate. The staff position has now improved and the Government were trying to make up for the loss of momentum by introducing such schemes such as ‘panchayati raj’ to maintain popular interest.”

But that was not to be because by 1963 the empire had struck back. The ministry ran into huge opposition from the Congress party.

In 1963, Nehru asked Dey whether he was happy. Except in Gujarat and Maharashtra, said Dey, I have not received much cooperation. 

In 1983 India Today reviewed Dey’s book in which he recorded his last meeting with Nehru: 

“One evening in late April 1964, near midnight, there came a call from Nehru asking me to see him in his study. Nehru was sitting at his desk, uncharacteristically sad and melancholy. Soon after my arrival, Nehru asked me softly without lifting his head, 'Tell me, my dear fellow, what is happening to your Panchayati Raj institutions? Do you think they can withstand an organised pressure on them, if the system were to be reversed?…You have no time, you have no time, dear friend. Take it from me, you will have no time,' was the reaction from Nehru."

A quiet burial

He was prophetic. In January 1966, when Mrs Gandhi formed her new government, she discontinued the Ministry of Community Development. "With this transaction," Dey concluded, "community development was buried - perhaps forever."

 Dey concluded, "community development was buried - perhaps forever." He had run into the classic agency problem where the incentives are such that the agent stops acting in the principal’s best interest, or what the principal regards as his or her best interest.

I should add here that the control of cooperatives is a great zero cost way for the ruling party to reach villages. One Congress chief minister who saw the potential captured the milk cooperative in MP because the jeep that went to collect milk every morning had a party worker who also went along.

That said it is unclear as to what a central ministry is going to achieve in a state subject. Is it going to be just one more joke on cooperative federalism?