Democratic in features, the movement was also an effective instrument for development of degraded waste lands, increasing productivity, providing food security, generating employment opportunities in rural areas and ensuring social and economic justice to the poor and vulnerable. In light of this, the cooperatives occupy an important position in the Indian financial system.
Cooperatives were the first formal institutions to be conceived and developed to purvey credit to rural India and have been a key instrument of credit delivery to enable farmers to meet their production needs and so increase production and productivity in the rural areas. Evolution of cooperatives in India 5.