Leveraging Co-operative Advantage in Banking : Challenges, Prospects, and Global Paradigm

The cooperative movement is one of the most successful models globally for organising and conducting a wide cross-section of economic activities through a social enterprise. With its quintessential vision of balancing the typical profit goals with broader social objectives, the cooperative business model has tremendous scope to offer innovative solutions to various economic challenges. In case of banking and financial sector, the challenges relating to financial inclusion, funding gap at the grass-root level, and participative economic development, can be effectively managed through co-operative banking model with professional ethics and sound governance standards. This paper presents an analysis of cooperative banking structure in India to bring out its key challenges and prospects in juxtaposition to the global paradigm of cooperative banking