Primary agricultural credit society needs to be propped up for better agricultural development in the country. Examine (200 Words)
Refer - Financial Express
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 4 years
KEY POINTS
· Primary Agricultural Credit Society is the first building block of the century-old cooperative banking system of India.
· Each PACS was designed to be a village-level credit society into which the farmers brought in share capital, deposits and provided loans to each other.
· Elected members, one- member-one-vote, transparency, ground-level reach, ease of operations, speed, human connect almost everything about the structure of a PACS makes for robust ‘public policy for credit’. Yet, PACS have run into many problems too.
Multipurpose societies for multiple reasons
· The year 2020 has become a war-zone of sorts. The recent amendments in critical Acts are a response to the new reality and work towards opening up the market for the Indian farmer.
· These amendments reinforce the role PACS can play in bringing farmer communities closer to credit, inputs, market and value addition. The AIF, set up for establishing decentralised farm gate infrastructure, holds huge promise for a nation which still loses 15% of its food grains due to poor post-harvest management (PHM) facilities and lack of farm-gate storage.
· The recent decision by NABARD to develop 35,000 PACS into MSCs in mission-mode is a step in this direction. The initiative will enable PACS to support farmers in post-harvest marketing activities and provide ancillary services to its members like creation of storage and processing facilities, custom hiring centers and collective purchase of inputs.
· Though such services are being provided by the cooperatives in a sporadic way, this intervention will help in structuring these services in a sustained and scalable manner, covering a much larger number of PACS. This will also help in increasing non-fund based income of the PACS. On the sidelines, a PACS can also play a major role by integrating its warehouse with physical and financial supply chain of agro-commodities in the upcoming Gramin Agriculture Markets (GrAMs) or large warehouses in private sector.
· No commercial bank branch can ever come close to providing the kind of services a PACS can,and, that within itself shows just why PACS need to be propped up.
· Surely, the short-term cooperative credit eco-system with over 15,000 branches and over 95,000 PACS. Helping them turn into multi-service societies may just as well be the last chance we have of giving them this chance.
A.R 4 years
Please review
IAS Parliament 4 years
Try to provide the reasons for PACS has to be propped up? Keep Writing.
K. V. A 4 years
Pls review
IAS Parliament 4 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.
