Q.Ten friends of moderate income wish to own flats of their own in the city but none of them can afford to buy or build a flat individually. Suggest a suitable form of co-operative organisation for them and explain how it would help.

When several people of small means share the same need for a home, co-operation offers a way none of them has on his own.

The friends are all of moderate income, all face the same problem, and none can solve it alone. This is exactly the situation co-operation is meant for, so the suitable form is a housing co-operative society — and because they want flats in the city, specifically a tenant-co-partnership housing society.

How it would help them:

1. Pooling of resources — By joining together and each taking up shares, the ten friends pool their limited savings into one fund, making possible what none could do individually.
2. Bulk purchase of land — The society can buy a single plot of land in bulk, which works out far cheaper per member than each trying to buy separately, and it gets the land developed.
3. Arranging long-term finance — The society can raise large long-term loans from co-operative housing bodies, banks and government schemes and pass them on to the members, who repay in easy instalments — finance an individual would struggle to get.
4. Construction and fair allotment — The society prepares plans, gets them approved, builds the flats and allots one flat to each member according to its bye-laws, without favouritism.
5. Affordable ownership and secure tenure — Because the society works on service and not profit, the cost per member stays low, and each friend obtains a flat to occupy as a tenant-owner, with security and freedom from a private landlord. …

Do not stop at merely naming 'a housing society' — the question asks you to explain how it helps, so give concrete points (pooling, bulk land, finance, construction, allotment). Since t …