NABARD setting up datawarehouse to find solutions

Keynote address by Chief Guest Shaji K. V., Deputy Managing Director, NABARD at FCBA 2021. Edited excerpts:

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Shaji K. V. says that NABARD intends to take one-time data and enrich that data on a periodical basis through the data warehouse

If we see the cooperative sector as a whole, it has transformed since liberalization. If we look at the recent economic survey 2021, the share of agriculture in GDP has reached almost 20% for the first time in the last 17 years. The rural agricultural and retail sector has changed but whether the cooperatives have changed to meet emerging challenges of the sector is there to be seen. Considering the agriculture sector, it has changed from deficit agriculture or subsistence agriculture to surplus agriculture that means the mode of interventions to these sectors needs to be different. So, cooperatives have to polish their strategies from pure production credit providers to processing credit or postharvest credit providers.

The government of India also recognized the importance of the sector and the need for transformation, so it has created a separate ministry of the cooperative sector in July 2021. Cooperatives are different from private enterprises because they are community-focused with a governing structure and they are well placed to help inclusive and sustainable growth. Since establishment, NABARD has been an active part of the cooperative sector development.