Naresh Garg

Handloom Cooperative Societies in India: Benefits and How to Join

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Handloom Cooperative Societies in India: Benefits and How to Join

India‘s handloom sector employs over 31 lakh weavers and allied workers, yet most of them struggle with fluctuating incomes and limited market reach. The cooperative model has been one of the most reliable pathways for these artisans to secure fair prices, access subsidized raw materials, and gain visibility in both domestic and international markets. I’ve … Read more

How Haryana’s Milk Cooperatives Are Finally Challenging the Private Dairy Giants in North India

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How Haryana's Milk Cooperatives Are Finally Challenging the Private Dairy Giants in North India

In a tin-roofed collection shed on the outskirts of Adampur village, Hisar district, a 54-year-old buffalo farmer named Ramkishan watched the electronic milk analyser blink its reading — 6.8% fat, 9.1% SNF. Two years ago, he sold his evening yield to a private contractor for ₹38 per litre with no quality testing at all. That … Read more

Rajasthan’s Last-Mile Farmers Need Credit — Here’s Which Grameen Cooperatives Are Actually Reaching Them

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Rajasthan's Last-Mile Farmers Need Credit — Here's Which Grameen Cooperatives Are Actually Reaching Them

In Barmer district’s Chohtan tehsil, a groundnut farmer named Ramdev Bishnoi walked seventeen kilometres last monsoon season to reach the nearest bank branch — only to be told his loan application would take another forty-five days. By then, the sowing window had closed. He returned home, borrowed ₹38,000 from a local moneylender at 36% annual … Read more

Beyond Amul — The Lesser-Known Gujarat Cooperatives That Are Quietly Dominating Global Markets

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Beyond Amul — The Lesser-Known Gujarat Cooperatives That Are Quietly Dominating Global Markets

A milk farmer in Banaskantha earning ₹45,000 per month from eight buffaloes — not through Amul, but through a cooperative most Indians have never heard of. That single detail, which I stumbled upon during a reporting trip to northern Gujarat last year, cracked open a story I hadn’t expected: the world of Gujarat cooperatives that … Read more

How MP’s Tribal Cooperative TRIFED Is Turning Forest Produce Into Premium Export Products

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How MP's Tribal Cooperative TRIFED Is Turning Forest Produce Into Premium Export Products

In Dindori district’s Karanjia village, a Baiga tribal woman named Sukhiyabai earned ₹47,000 in a single season selling processed mahua flowers and sal seeds — nearly three times what middlemen paid her just four years ago. Her story is not an outlier. It is the direct result of a cooperative infrastructure quietly reshaping how India‘s … Read more

How Cooperative Supermarkets in India Are Challenging Big Retail Chains

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How Cooperative Supermarkets in India Are Challenging Big Retail Chains

When I walked into a Sahakari Bhandar outlet in Dadar, Mumbai, last year, the prices on staples like tur dal and sunflower oil were noticeably lower than what I had paid the previous afternoon at a nearby Reliance Smart store. That was not a coincidence. It was the result of a model that has been … Read more

RAJFED Has Been Running Rajasthan’s Agricultural Trade for Decades — Most Farmers Have Never Heard of It

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RAJFED Has Been Running Rajasthan's Agricultural Trade for Decades — Most Farmers Have Never Heard of It

In Nagaur district, a mustard farmer named Hanuman Ram sold his entire winter harvest at the local mandi in early 2026 for roughly ₹4,600 per quintal — about ₹250 below the MSP. He had never heard of RAJFED, the state cooperative body that was, at that very moment, running a price support procurement centre less … Read more

How One Decision Changed the Financial Future of an Entire Village

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How One Decision Changed the Financial Future of an Entire Village

In March 2022, Ramesh Jadhav — a smallholder cotton farmer in Khandala village, Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra — owed ₹1.4 lakh to a private moneylender at 36% annual interest. By January 2026, he was debt-free, had ₹80,000 in savings, and had just taken a ₹2 lakh crop loan at 4% interest from a cooperative he once … Read more

Gen Z Farmers Are Rebuilding the Cooperative Model With Tech — And It’s Working

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Gen Z Farmers Are Rebuilding the Cooperative Model With Tech — And It's Working

A 24-year-old sugarcane farmer’s son in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, recently convinced 47 fellow young growers to pool their harvest data on a shared WhatsApp dashboard before selling to a single buyer — and collectively negotiated a price 18% higher than the local mandi rate. He had never heard the word “cooperative” used to describe what he … Read more

How Himachal’s Apple Growers Cooperative Beat the Middlemen Who Were Taking 60% of Their Income

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How Himachal's Apple Growers Cooperative Beat the Middlemen Who Were Taking 60% of Their Income

In the autumn of 2023, a small-holding apple farmer in Kotkhai, Shimla district, watched a commission agent in Delhi’s Azadpur Mandi sell his Royal Delicious apples at ₹120 per kilogram — while he had received just ₹38 per kg at the farm gate. The arithmetic was brutal: the middleman chain swallowed roughly 60% of the final consumer price, leaving the person who actually grew the fruit with barely enough to cover inputs. That farmer’s name was among the first 200 to join a restructured fruit growers’ cooperative that would, within two seasons, change the equation entirely.

I have been tracking the cooperative movement in India‘s hill states for years, and what happened next in Himachal’s apple belt is one of the most compelling turnaround stories I have encountered. It is not a story of government subsidy alone — it is a story of growers choosing collective bargaining over individual helplessness.

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