Source: Indian Express A good article to read and self explana | ECONOMY by VIVEK SINGH

Source: Indian Express
A good article to read and self explanatory, but would like to add certain points.

The author has said that Cooperatives have not been successful in India like banking, sugar etc. except for Dairy Sector which has been quite successful in India. In India, private sector has tremendously grown post liberalization (in 1991), but Cooperatives have not been successful except Dairy. From my experience of the Industry, let me give you some practical insights why is this so:

1) Cooperatives are formed by thousands of members who decide to co-operate among each other and set up an entity where the members are the owners and they are the decision makers (through their representatives). So, thousands of members come together and they are the real producers and the owners and the returns are shared among the members. In contrast to this, a private company (the private sector) is driven by one man's DREAM, VISION and PASSION. The zeal and fire of one man to become rich drives the private sector (of course supported by thousands of employees). I think this one man's dream/passion/vision outweighs 1000s of people collaborating in cooperatives. [It is rightly said that everyone's responsibility is no ones responsibility]. This is based on my experience as I have personally met several times Mr. Gautam ADANI (the chairman of Adani Group) where I worked for FOUR years after my MBA. I have also worked in Dairy sector.

2) This passion/zeal of one person makes the organization efficient because that one person is willing to bring all the desired resources which are required to grow the company (and make profit) like capital, professional management, transparency etc. which the cooperative sector is not able to do.

3) Then why Dairy cooperative is successful and not other cooperatives??
Answer: AMUL (the cooperative) was established long back in 1949..........but the major role was played by one person "Verghese Kurien" (the Milkman of India). He saw farmers getting exploited at the hands of local traders and this led him to jump into this and may be he was driven by a social cause and he saw an opportunity to fulfill his dream of helping the poor farmers and that time private sector was almost missing from the Indian economy. Dairy sector was liberalized in 2002 and from then on private sector has entered aggressively and now the private sector milk procurement is same as cooperatives and there is much higher growth in private sector. So, the success of Dairy cooperatives can be attributed again to one man's dream (Verghese Kurien) and this sector getting a headstart in 1949, with a lot of support of capital from the Govt. at that time while private sector came in 50 years after AMUL was established.

Which way should we grow??? Private or Cooperative that we can always debate with merits and demerits........But cooperatives will always require Govt. support to grow and there are limitations. The Growth that we are talking about for India which can pull millions out of poverty may not come from cooperatives and private sector is the only hope... but again it has its own issues and demerits (rising income disparity).... but that Govt. can devise mechanisms to improve it like funding more into health, education and Infra... etc.