When we say an enabling environment we mean that it needs to be at the policy and regulatory levels too, says Chatterjee
The lack of an enabling environment emerged as one of the biggest challenges facing women's cooperative in the country at a national workshop held in the city.
Chairperson of SEWA Cooperative Federation Mirai Chatterjee said that of the over 8 lakh co-operatives in India, less than 1% were women's cooperatives.
"We need an enabling environment that is conducive to the growth of such co-operatives. We have found that there is no flexibility in norms when it comes to lending to women's cooperatives and such flexibility is a must. There are also several regulatory and policy barriers," said Chatterjee.
"When we say an enabling environment we mean that it needs to be at the policy and regulatory levels too," said Chatterjee. "Take the case of lending. When it comes to financial institutions the lending norms are the same even for co-operatives of poor women. Many such cooperatives are unable to compete for government tenders because there is no level playing field," said Chatterjee.
Vechulou Kanuo, from Nagaland, said that their experience with co-operatives is that formal lending agencies in the Nagaland preferred to lend to women-run co-operatives since they had a better record of repayment.
Dr Simel Esim, director of ILO Cooperative said that there was also a dearth of data on the actual number of co-operatives being run and how many of them were women based cooperatives.
Chatterjee said that 95% of India's workforce was in the unorganised sector and the co-operatives were a way to formalise the informal sector. "Yet the rules and regulations and everything else is framed keeping in mind only those in the formal sector," said Chatterjee.
The women also rued the fact that even when women form a substantial part of a workforce, the resulting co-operative rarely reflects their contribution. They gave an example of how most agricultural cooperatives are run by men while most of the farming work is actually done by women. "It is a reflection of our patriarchal mindset. Even when the government trains farmers through different initiatives and workshops, women are rarely considered even though their contribution is no less," said Chatterjee.
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 "Mirai Chatterjee")
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