Co-operative Farming in India
In India agriculture is reduced to an uneconomic proportion through extreme fragmentation of holdings. Co-operative farming is that land should be held and tilled and cultivated collectively by the owners who should also hold capital, tools, animals, seeds etc. in common. This will ensure a saving of labour, capital, tools etc. and make available to them money of the advantage incidental to large-scale farming that are intrinsically worth having. Co-operative farming would banish poverty and idleness from their midst. But all that would be possible only if people became friends of one another and as one family. When that happy even take place, communal trouble would be a thing of the past.
For after all we have to deal human beings, and no co-operation is true if it is established on the strength of coercion. The very basis of co-operation is that people should participate in it of their own free will. Otherwise they become regimented and worked more or less in accordance with order from above. Co-operation means that the efforts should come out your own self and with your own will. Secondly, good wishes alone are not enough to make co-operative farming or joint cultivation or any other co-operative activity a success. We have to learn it an learn it like any other difficult job. Only then does it function well. In India many co-operative societies have been established, though not for co-operative farming. people are surprised that crores of people in India should be engaged in this activity. At many places, especially in the South, Madras and Mumbai, as also at a few other places these societies have been proved quite successful. But the main reason of their failure elsewhere was that people had not been adequately prepared and trained for this work. When we think of spreading the co-operative activities on a big scale the first thing we stress is training the people. There should be trained people at various levels and some of them should be masters of the co-operative method, so that they can conduct the activities. The training should be graded down according to capacity, and panchas and sarpanchas should be instructed in the classes for a couple of weeks in the basic principles and practice of co-operation. After all its success depends upon how unitedly people can work. That is the basic thing. Some people say that it is a difficult thing. Why difficult? Because of the people's habits. Especially our peasant is by instinct an individualist. That is why peoples say it difficult. But whenever a good thing is difficult there is all the more reason why we should do it with all our heart. But what method shall we employ viction, not through coercion. The more we force it down on people the more difficult it becomes. Therefore, the method we placed before the country is to set up all sorts of service co-operatives. They include all co-operative activities except farming. and therefore there is no difficulty.
Even buying and selling?
Yes, many things including buying and selling. There can be co-operative activities over and above farming. There can be small village industries and schools on a co-operative basis. The Panchayat and the co-operative can together manage all the affairs of the village. Co-operative farming comes next. It has two aspects. Those who have much land can join it with advantage but if they do not do so, there is no harm. But those have an acre or half an acre can never do well if they work alone because they do not have enough resources for joint farming. If they pool their resources, all of them can have good ploughs and good equipment. Secondly, it is also easier for the government to give aid to a co-operative society than to individuals. I whole-heartedly support co-operative farming and it is my desire that we should advance step by step in that direction. We are training people for this work. As I have already told, we have lakhs of co-operative farming societies. These too would come gradually, but at present we are not insisting on them. The farmers can decide for themselves. We have even given the concession that if they want to get out of the co-operative society after joining it, they can do so. Of course, they cannot join it just for fun. They cannot be in it one day and out of it the other. They will have to stay in for some time, say for three years. If they want to get out, that will also be done according to rules and regulations. If it is possible, they will also get back their lands. Perhaps, there might be some difficulty in it. Then they would be given some alternate piece of land or compensation in accordance with the rules. Any way, we should do not want to keep them in co-operatives by force, for it is not good that quarrelsome people, who may not work well, should remain members.
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