One of the earliest strategies for rural development in general was to encourage setting up of the cooperative societies in agriculture. It could be termed as cooperativisation of agriculture. Many of the top leaders of the Congress Party including Nehru and Gandhi along with the leaders of the Socialist and the Communist Parties were convinced about the benefit of cooperativisation. They shared this view that it would lead to major improvement in agriculture and which would also be beneficial to the poor. Cooperativisation constituted an important component of the fist phase of land reforms. But the goal of cooprativisation was also faced with the problem. Like in the case of land reforms there existed no consensus in favour of it among the peasantry. The Kumarappa committee on Agrarian Reforms set up by Congress Party in 1949 recommended that the states should be empowered to enforce the application of varying degree of cooperation for different types of farmings. The family farmers could use cooperative societies for marketing, credit and other matters.

The first five year plan recommended that small and medium farmers should be encouraged to group themselves in to cooperative farming societies. Another recommendation of the same plan was also that if majority of the occupancy tenants and landowners owing at least half of the land in a village wanted to enter into cooperative arrangement of the village land, their decision should be binding on other residents of the village also. The second five year plan declared that its objective was to provide sound foundations for the development of cooperative farming so that substantial portion of land could be cultivated on the lines of cooperative within a period of ten years.

In the field of cooperativisation China was the model because it had achieved dramatic results in agricultural production and extension of infrastructure through cooperativisation. In the middle of 1956 two Indian delegations consisting of the leaders of the cooperative movement, members of parliament bureaucrats with experience in the field of cooperatives and technical experts were sent to China to gain from their experience. The Nagpur Resolution of the Congress Party in 1959 underlined the twin needs of village panchayats and village cooperatives. This resolution also emphasised that these institutions should have enough powers and functions to discharge the functions allotted to them satisfactorily. This resolution aimed at achieving the goals of joint cooperative farming within and period of three years. The programme of cooperativisation was subjected to severe criticism both in the press and on the floor of the parliament. Apprehensions were expressed that this programme was a step towards ending private property and would lead to expropriation of the landed classes. Even senior Congress leaders like N G Ranga, C. Rajgopalachari and Charan Singh accused this programme of being totalitarian. They were of the view that Communist programmes were being imposed on India. To allay such apprehensions Nehru assured in the parliament no coervice method was going to be used to implement the

programme of cooperativisation. The strong criticism of the 1959 Nagpur resolution of the Congress Party weakened the resolve of the Congress to go ahead with the intent of the original resolution. A climb down was reflected in the Congress proposal put forward to set up service cooperatives all over the country within a period of three years and leaving the idea of setting up farm cooperatives in the cold storage. Even the objective of setting up service cooperatives did not succeed. State Congress leaders did not evince much of interest. The plan was finally abandoned in 1959. The third five year plan further watered down the objective of cooperativisation. So far as cooperative farming was concerned, it aimed at setting up ten pilot projects in every district. It also made it clear that cooperative farming had to develop through the community development movement. It could come about with cooperation in credit, marketing, distribution and processing. It is obvious that the third five year plan did not have any concrete plan of action on how to achieve the goals of cooperativisation.

The cooperative movement in India cannot be called a success. As far as joint farming was concerned two types of cooperatives had come up. The first type of cooperatives had come up to avoid the provisions of ceiling and tenancy laws. The influential members of big land holding families gave bogus membership to agricultural labours and ex-tenants to keep the management of the cooperatives in their hand flout the provisions of land ceiling and tenancy legislation and at the same time benefiting from financial assistance, improved seeds, fertilizers made available by the state. Another type of cooperative farms was where poor quality of land was made available to poor landless labour and dalits. These lands had non-existent irrigation facility. These were government sponsored cooperative farms. They lacked initiative and motivation. They proved to be an expensive affair without any commensurate returns.

Service cooperatives did not do that badly. Yet, they faced some major shortcomings. They re-enforced the hierarchical structure of the rural economy. The office bearers of these cooperatives invariably came from families that not only controlled land but also trade and money lending. By capturing the key positions in these cooperatives these influential families could corner the benefits like agricultural inputs and credits. The rural notables used the funds of the credit societies for their business and some times even for money lending. These institutions were virtually taken over by the dominant sections of villages. The benefit of these organisations was not reaching the poor in the countryside. The cooperatives insisted on giving loans against land as security. This virtually ruled out the benefit of credit to landless but enterprising farmers. The report of the All India Credit Review Committee, 1969 and the Interim Report on Credit Services for Small and Marginal farmers by the National Commission on Agriculture in 1971 confirmed the virtual exclusion of the landless and only nominal benefits reaching to small and marginal farmers. One of the major weaknesses of the Cooperative movement was bureaucratic nature of its approach to the problem. The cooperative societies resembled any other government department at state, district or block level. Even the officials of this department were amenable to pressure and influence from local notables. Another defect that plagued the cooperative credit societies was the recovery of loans. Surprisingly the defaulters were not only the poor and small farmers but also the well to do farmers.