The Government passed the Cooperative Societies Act in 1904 followed by a more comprehensive Cooperative Societies Act later in 1912. In 1915, the Maclagan Committee advocated that “there should be one cooperative for every village and every village should be covered by a cooperative.” The Royal Commission made the observation “if cooperation fails, there will fail the best hope of rural India”.
BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  6. In the second Phase (1930–1950), by virtue of the provisions of the RBI Act, the Reserve Bank was given a mandate to closely associate with matters relating to rural credit and banking.