Agriculture Minister unveils 'Sahakar Pragya' to impart training to primary cooperative societies in rural areas

Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar today unveiled Sahakar Pragya. The 45 new training modules of Sahakar Pragya of the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) will impart training to primary cooperative societies in rural areas of the country along with Lakshmanrao Inamdar National Cooperative Research and Development Academy (LINAC).

On this occasion, Mr Tomar called upon the cooperative sector to play a role in making the village-poor-farmers Atma Nirbhar. He said, today, India boasts a huge network of over 8.50 lakh cooperative societies with about 290 million members and around 94 per cent of the farmers are a member of at least one cooperative society.

He said that cooperatives have a major role in Atma Nirbhar Bharat and they lend strength to farmers to minimize risks in agriculture and allied sectors and act as a shield against exploitation by the unscrupulous trader.

These 45 training modules pf Sahakar Pragya to be delivered at LINAC and its countrywide network of Regional Training Centres will address the need for training of Primary cooperatives, FPO-Cooperatives and Self Help Groups federating. The training programmes will be supported under NCDC schemes, 10,000 FPO formation scheme of Government of India, Agri Infra Fund scheme of Government of India , PM-FME scheme of Min of Food Processing Industry, Dairy Infra Dev Fund scheme of Government of India, Fisheries Infra Dev Fund scheme of Government of India, PM MatsyaSampada Yojana of Government of India, Min of Rural Dev schemes State/UT schemes Other organizations' schemes.

The Agriculture Minister said, NCDC has emerged as a financial powerhouse of giving the client cooperatives a wide range of products and services. So far, it has advanced loans to the tunes of 1.58 lakh crore rupees to cooperative societies of various categories across the country. He said, Sahakar Pragya is the latest in the series of farmer-focused steps by NCDC.

Sahakar Pragya embodies enhancing NCDC's training capacity by 18fold through an elaborate network of 18 Regional Training Centres across the country by the dedicated, Laxmanrao Inamdar National Academy for Cooperative Research and Development (LINAC) set up and fully funded by NCDC.

Working with the ideals mooted by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for Doubling the Farmers' Income, Stand Up India and Skilling India, NCDC has earlier launched various initiatives and programmes like SAHAKAR-22 to develop cooperatives in Focus 222 districts, including aspirational districts, Nurturing Primary Level Cooperatives, SAHAKAR MITRA – Scheme on Internship Programme, YUVA SAHAKAR- Start-Up Scheme in Cooperatives and AYUSHMAN SAHAKAR- for creation of healthcare infrastructure and services.