Abstract:
Despite the immense significance of the various cooperatives in India – from agricultural produce cooperatives through cooperative banking to consumer organizations – the movement has received little historiographic attention. The paper aims at addressing the reasons for this lacuna. It gives a broad sketch of the movement in the period, tracing the coop project from its roots in late 19th century debates on famine and debt to the colonial inauguration of co-operative credit societies and into the period of independence, in which cooperatives played a central role in the five year plans of rural development. The paper then draws on existing historiography on rural India and cooperatives in particular and touches on a) tropes of failure and, b) what might be dubbed ‘court histories,’ that is histories produced by the cooperative movement for the cooperative movement. Finally, the paper lays down possible avenues for research, proposes a more rigorous academic attention to cooperatives and suggests what the added value of such approach could be.