Despite being a nation with over 600,000 cooperatives; direct participation of 250,000,000 citizens; and a 110-year old history, India’s largest segment, the youth, barely understand the potential or/and, have a misconstrued idea of cooperatives. The root cause can be laid at the dearth of formal education on cooperatives at almost all levels. To redeem this situation, ICA-AP Youth Committee (ICYC) has been engaging with the Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), University of Delhi in piloting an initiative on financial literacy for youth since December 2014.

The student-exchange visit by the students of the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire to SRCC provided a fillip to the initiative to engage youth. An interesting exchange took place between Meryl an exchange student and the students of SRCC. Meryl said she was associated with cooperatives as her parents were members of a local grocery cooperative and she saw the benefits; one of which was the discounts. This led the student group to wonder why Meryl’s parents received the discounts and this was something Meryl and her other exchange fellows seemed to identify cooperatives with? The answer came out in the discussion that Meryl’s parents were able to raise capital along with other members and jointly create the demand for the groceries cooperative! In other words, collective bargaining resulted in a simple yet good deal! The lively exchange between students reinforced the idea of cooperatives as a proven alternative to the profit maximizing model of enterprise. The SRCC initiative is being taken forward in 2016 by the ICYC-Secretariat and an effort is underway to form a student cooperative in SRCC.