As part of the Coopathon 3.0 initiative, the International Cooperative Alliance Asia and Pacific organized a webinar on 25th November 2020 on “Data and Cooperative Identity”. The speakers were Mr. Moses Sam Paul and Mr. Joel John, Fellows at the Bharat Inclusion Initiative (BII). BII is an initiative of Centre for Innovation Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad.
Mr. Ganesh Gopal, Programme Officer, ICA-AP started the session with opening remarks and presented the larger idea of why technology-infusion and digital-transformation is the need of the hour for the coop ecosystem. He emphasised, how, by pursuing this, cooperatives, with their inherent structural advantages can become an aspirational entity in the digital era. He welcomed the speakers and touched upon the theme of Coopathon 3.0 – Technology and Cooperative Identity and expressed hope that several innovative solutions would emerge to address emerging needs.
The presentation largely led by Mr. Moses Sam Paul started by discussing the importance of the “Third Pillar” (as described by Dr. Raghuram Rajan in his book by the same name) and the role that ‘communities’ play as one of the three building blocks of a good society; with the other two being the State and the Markets. He spoke about the existence and emergence of skill-based communities and their importance within the societal structure over time. From this, he built upon how one can envision the development of a data distributed community platform where cooperatives can play a pivotal role. The presentation also addressed the role that Cooperatives could play as data-fiduciaries and custodians of data for a group of people by essentially helping them retain control and choice over the use of their data. This can even be used as a tool to further the benefits of stakeholders including - access to credit, financial services, employment based on skill-based matching etc.
Moses said that with the advantages of cooperative model, they can be transformed into organisations which can be agile and at the same time increase access to several services. therefore, He stressed on the need to build the next such ‘Tesla for cooperatives. He stressed on the need for initiatives like the Coopathon and on the importance of youth, young-innovators, and technology enthusiasts to be part of such forums to exchange and develop ideas and solutions.
Towards the end of the programme, there was a very lively moderated questions & answers (Q&A) session with several questions discussed around data democratisation; how technology can be applied with the Coop-model to make it inclusive for marginalised groups, how blockchain can be used concerning the discussed models.
Ms. Shivali Sarna, Communication Officer, ICA-AP, thanked the speakers for the enlightening session and made the closing remarks. She spoke more about the Coopathon 3.0, encouraging more registrations and support from the youth and cooperative fraternity. She mentioned that this is the first time that the cooperative hackathon is being organised fully online and at an international level.
The webinar saw active participation with several participants from all over the Asia and Pacific region. The recording of the webinar can be found here .
