[Extracts from the Moral and Material Progress Report of India, 

 Decennial Issue, 1913, pp. 249-52.'] 



CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT SOCIETIES. 



The Co-operative movement in India is a recent development, due 

 to action taken by Government. It has hitherto been concerned 

 almost exclusively with credit societies, though activity in other 

 directions is beginning. The movement is not confined to 

 agriculturists, but it was with a view to their benefit, mainly, that 

 societies were started, and the great bulk of the societies are rural. 

 It may safely be said, also, that no line of advance offers greater 

 possibilities in the way of the improvement of agriculture. 



The possibility of improving the credit of the rural population in 

 India by the establishment of a system of Co-operative Credit 

 Societies had, at the beginning of the period under review, been for 

 some time engaging the attention of the Government of India. The 

 question had previously been taken up independently in some 

 provinces, and in some cases practical steps had been taken. The 

 most striking development of the co-operative principle on indigenous 

 lines had taken place in Madras, where the nidhu, described as mutual 

 loan funds, had attained on the whole a very considerable degree of 

 success, in spite of numerous failures due te fraud, ignorance, the 

 unsuitability of the law, and the absence of supervision. There were 

 in 1901 over 200 nidhis, with 36,000 members and a subscribed 

 capital of 1,700,000. They found their clients, however, among a 

 more highly educated and advanced class than the mass of the 

 agricultural population, to whose needs their constitution was not well 

 adapted. In other parts of the country the societies that had been 

 started had hardly passed the experimental stage. In the United 

 Provinces steps had been taken in 1000, at the suggestion of the 

 local Government, to establish societies in many districts ; in the 

 Punjab a few societies had been formed about 1898 by district 

 officers on their own initiative, and in Bengal several societies Jjad 

 been started, and appeared to have attained some success under the 

 fostering influence of sympathetic officials. 



In 1901 a Committee was appointed by the Government of India 

 to consider the whole subject in the light of reports from the local 



