By Binod Anand, Founder & Executive President, World Cooperative Economic Forum (WCOOPEF), and Secretary General, Confederation of NGOs of Rural India (CNRI)

When the Village Wakes Up Together

It is just past dawn in a small village. The fog has not yet lifted from the fields. Outside the Primary Agricultural Credit Society, a woman stands with her passbook held close to her chest, the way one holds a prayer book. Beside her is an old farmer whose hands carry the cracks of fifty monsoons. Neither of them has ever read an economics textbook. Yet together, standing in that quiet line, they are living the greatest economic idea Bharat has ever given the world: that no one rises alone, and no one should be left behind.

That woman does not know that her small savings are part of a national promise. That farmer does not know that the society he helped build with his own sweat is now being studied in the halls of the United Nations. But they feel it. They feel it in the trust that holds the village together, in the neighbour who lends a bullock without asking for a receipt, in the dairy where every litre of milk is counted with honesty. Cooperation, for them, is not a policy. It is a way of breathing.

This is the heartbeat that Sahkar Sankalp was born to carry. And this is the spirit that the World Cooperative Economic Forum has pledged to carry across the oceans.

“Bina sahkar, nahin uddhar” — without cooperation, there is no upliftment. Our elders said it in the language of the soil. Today, we must say it in the language of the world.

Sahkar se Samriddhi: A Promise to the Last Person in the Line

When Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi gave the nation the mantra of Sahkar se Samriddhi, it was not a slogan. It was a promise. A promise that prosperity would not trickle down from the top, but rise up from the roots. With the creation of a dedicated Ministry of Cooperation and the leadership of Shri Amit Shah, that promise found a home, a budget, and a direction.

The new National Cooperative Policy, the computerisation of PACS, the multi-purpose PACS that now run warehouses, fuel outlets, Jan Aushadhi Kendras and Common Service Centres, the national cooperatives for exports, seeds and organic produce — each of these is a brick in a great house. A house in which every farmer, every weaver, every fisherwoman and every milk producer has a room of their own.

But a house is not a home until someone tells its story. Policies are written in files. Prosperity is felt in kitchens. Between the file and the kitchen lies a long, difficult road — a road of awareness, of trust, of capacity, of courage. Someone must walk that road with the people. Someone must explain, encourage, question, celebrate and, when needed, warn.

That is where the journey of Sahkar Sankalp and the World Cooperative Economic Forum begins.

Sahkar Sankalp: Giving the Movement Its Own Voice

For too long, the cooperative movement has been spoken about, but rarely allowed to speak for itself. Its successes were reduced to a paragraph in a government report. Its failures became headlines. Its thinkers wrote in isolation, and its grassroots heroes were never written about at all.

Sahkar Sankalp was conceived to end that silence. It is not meant to be just another cooperative magazine. It is meant to be the Journal of Cooperative Economics and Public Policy — the Global Voice of the Cooperative Economic Framework. Its dream is bold and unapologetic: to make Bharat the global capital of Cooperative Economics.

Every issue of Sahkar Sankalp rests on five pillars — Knowledge, Advocacy, Innovation, Capacity Building and Global Cooperation. Every article must earn its place through a rigorous editorial standard that asks a simple, sacred question: will this help a cooperative member live a better life? And every quarter, the journal will close with a Sahkar Sankalp Policy Resolution — evidence-based recommendations placed before governments, regulators, federations and development partners.

Within its pages, the woman at the PACS counter will find her story in Women in Cooperation. The young graduate who wants to build a cooperative start-up will find a home in the Youth Cooperative Forum. The PACS secretary struggling with digitisation will find answers in Technology & AI. And the policymaker in Delhi, Nairobi or Kathmandu will find a mirror and a map in Policy Watch and the International Window.

This is what a sankalp means. Not a wish. A vow. A vow that the voice of the cooperative member will never again be the last to be heard.

WCOOPEF: Carrying Bharat’s Cooperative Soul to the World

If Sahkar Sankalp is the voice, the World Cooperative Economic Forum is the journey that voice will take across the world.

The world has its forums for capital. It has its summits for climate. It has its councils for security. But where is the global table for the farmer, the artisan, the fisherman and the self-help group sister? Where do the 300 crore people touched by cooperatives across the planet sit when the rules of the world economy are written? For far too long, the answer has been: nowhere.

WCOOPEF was born to change that answer. Committed to advancing the Cooperative World Economy, it aspires to do for cooperative economics what the great global forums have done for finance and for climate — to create a permanent, respected, convening platform where nations, institutions and communities sit as equals. The New Delhi Declaration of WCOOPEF was our first footprint. Our engagement with nations such as Nepal and Angola, and our proposed strategic collaboration with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs on Cooperatives as Infrastructure for Inclusive, Digital and Sustainable Development, are the next steps on this long road.

Imagine a Global South Cooperative Policy Lab, where a dairy model from Gujarat meets a coffee cooperative from East Africa. Imagine a digital and AI literacy mission that reaches the cooperative member in a Bihar village and a Peruvian highland at the same time. Imagine cooperatives standing proudly in every nation’s report on the Sustainable Development Goals. This is not fantasy. This is the agenda WCOOPEF has placed before the world.

And at the centre of it all stands Bharat — not as a lecturer, but as an elder brother who has walked this road for more than a century, and who now offers his hand to every nation that wishes to walk it too.

One Bridge, Two Pillars: From the Village Chaupal to the World Stage

Think of a great bridge. One pillar stands firmly in the soil of the Indian village. The other stands on the world stage. Sahkar Sankalp and WCOOPEF are those two pillars, and the Cooperative Economic Framework is the bridge between them.

Sahkar Sankalp will listen to the village. It will document the PACS that turned into a smart agri-hub, the women’s dairy cooperative that sent its daughters to college, the fishermen’s society that bought its own cold storage. It will turn these lived experiences into research, evidence and policy. It will ask hard questions where cooperatives have been captured by vested interests, because a movement that cannot face its own wounds can never heal them.

WCOOPEF will then carry that evidence to the world. A success story printed in Sahkar Sankalp today can become a model discussed with UN agencies tomorrow and a programme adopted by a partner nation the day after. In the same way, the best practices of cooperatives from Kenya, Brazil, Japan or Nepal will flow back into these pages, enriching our own movement.

This two-way flow is the true meaning of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in economic life. The world is one family, and cooperation is the language that family speaks at its best. When the millet grower of Jharkhand, the weaver of Varanasi and the dairy sister of Anand see their stories travel to Geneva and New York, they will know, deep in their hearts, that they are not small. They never were.

This is how Sahkar se Samriddhi will rise to a new height: not by shouting louder, but by building trust — from one passbook, one society, one district, one state, one nation, to one world.

A Sankalp for Every Reader

Dear reader, this portal is not a place to merely read. It is a place to belong.

If you are a PACS secretary, send us the story of your society — its struggles and its triumphs. If you are a scholar, bring us your research, and let it stand the test of evidence. If you are a young person, tell us how you dream of building a cooperative for the digital age. If you are a policymaker, read our resolutions, challenge them, improve them. And if you are simply a citizen who believes that Bharat can rise only when every Bharatiya rises, then share these words with one more person today.

The road to Viksit Bharat @2047 does not run only through expressways and stock exchanges. It runs through the dusty lanes where a PACS opens its shutter every morning. It runs through the hands of the woman with the passbook and the farmer with fifty monsoons in his palms.

Let us make them a promise together. That their sweat will become our research. That their dreams will become our policy. That their cooperation will become the world’s inspiration.

This is our sankalp. This is our sahkar. And this, with the blessings of the annadata and the strength of every cooperator, will be our samriddhi.

Sahkar se Samriddhi — from Bharat’s soil to the world’s soul.

Jai Sahkar. Jai Kisan. Jai Bharat.