Overview

Principles of Co-operation — what this chapter actually covers

A co-operative society is not just another way of doing business — it is a way of doing business built on a shared idea: that ordinary people, by joining hands voluntarily and working together on fair terms, can meet needs that none of them could meet alone. But an idea alone is not enough to run an organisation. Over more than a century, the co-operative movement worldwide has distilled that idea into a set of guiding principles — plain, tested rules that tell a co-operative how it should be organised and how it should behave if it is to stay true to its purpose.

This chapter studies the seven Principles of Co-operation as they are laid down by the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) — the global apex body of the co-operative movement. These principles were first framed by the early co-operators and were formally reviewed and re-stated by the ICA, most recently in its 1995 statement on the co-operative identity. They are accepted as the common code of conduct for co-operatives everywhere, including the thousands of co-operative societies registered in Maharashtra.

The seven principles, in order, are: (1) Voluntary and Open Membership, (2) Democratic Member Control, (3) Member Economic Participation, (4) Autonomy and Independence, (5) Education, Training and Information, (6) Co-operation among Co-operatives, and (7) Concern for Community. This chapter first explains what these principles are and why they matter, and then takes up each one in turn, explaining its meaning and how it works in practice. The values that underpin a co-operative — self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity — run through all seven.