Indian Economy Quiz: Cooperatives and Self-Help Groups

It was the first law on the subject and gave village credit societies a legal form, following the recommendation of the Famine Commission and the study of European land banks by Frederick Nicholson, with the German Raiffeisen societies as the model.

The correct answer is B, the State List, where cooperative societies appear as entry thirty-two, which is why every State has its own cooperative societies Act and its own registrar of cooperative societies.

The correct answer is B, Part IXB, made up of Articles 243ZH to 243ZT, which the Constitution (Ninety-seventh Amendment) Act, 2011 inserted to lay down rules on the board of a cooperative society, its five-year term, reservation of seats, audit and elections.

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development began work on 12 July 1982 on the recommendation of the Committee to Review Arrangements for Institutional Credit for Agriculture and Rural Development, chaired by B. Sivaraman, and it has its head office at Mumbai.

The correct answer is C, the Primary Agricultural Credit Society, the body of farmer members in a village or a group of villages that lends directly to the cultivator for seed, fertiliser and other short-term needs.

NABARD began the programme as a pilot, linking a few hundred self-help groups to banks so that a group with a record of regular saving and internal lending could borrow as a single account, and it has grown into the largest microfinance programme in the world measured by households reached.

The size is deliberate: large enough for the pooled savings to be useful and for the group to stand behind each loan, and small enough for every member to attend a weekly meeting, know every other member and keep the accounts without outside help.

The correct answer is B, Verghese Kurien, who built the dairy cooperative of Kaira district at Anand in Gujarat, known by the brand name Amul, and then carried the Anand pattern across the country through the National Dairy Development Board, whose Operation Flood began in 1970 and made India the…

Kudumbashree, which means prosperity of the family, was launched in 1998 as a poverty eradication and women's empowerment mission of the State government working through neighbourhood groups, area development societies and community development societies, and it is among the largest women's networks in the country.

The correct answer is A, the Ministry of Rural Development, which runs the mission to organise poor rural households, mainly women, into self-help groups, give each group a revolving fund and a community investment fund, federate the groups at village and cluster level and arrange bank credit with interest subvention.

Muhammad Yunus began lending very small sums to poor women in groups, without collateral, and the experiment became the Grameen Bank; he and the bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, and the model was studied by every country that later took up microfinance.