Q1. Hi Ganesh, welcome to ICA-AP! Do tell us about your background, and what brought you to working with cooperatives?

It is exciting to be part of the ICA-AP as part of the European Union Project! Over the past seven years, I have worked with a few organisations in various roles across sectors such as technology-innovation, entrepreneurship, finance and policy research.

My last stint was with the National Centre for Financial Education (NCFE) at Mumbai, the nodal national organisation accorded responsibility for spreading financial literacy in India. My role involved coordinating with multiple stakeholders, ministries and apex bodies for implementing targeted financial education programmes. Here, I also had the opportunity to be part of the team framing the National Strategy for Financial Education and lead the development of a e-learning management system(e-LMS) for financial literacy.

Previously, I had worked with the then newly formed Kerala Start-up Mission (under the Government of Kerala) which was the nodal organisation to promote start-ups and tech-innovation within the State. Here I had the opportunity to learn, experiment and tinker with a gamut of activities and even don the hat of an entrepreneur. I also had the opportunity to work with two non-profits operating in the domains of policy analysis & research and technology-skills respectively. Both these roles were interesting and brought about key learnings particularly in policy research, programme implementation and project management.

With my roots belonging to a state like Kerala, where I was exposed to a robust cooperative ecosystem that encourages the virtues of awareness, equality and democratic principles; the core ethos of the cooperative model is not alien to me, and something that I believe in and connect with.

Q2. That's interesting! Given your engagement with start-ups, and your own experience as an entrepreneur, what advantages do you see in the cooperative business model?

The cooperative model embodies tenets of humanity, equity and along with their collective strength seeks to address some of the most pressing challenges of our age. They are local agents of capital accumulation who work towards economically sustainable development that is translated in local spending and community resilience. Cooperatives with their bottom-up ownership dynamic, place the interests of their enterprise, and therefore their members’ interests, ahead of the organization’s short-term financial interests. Thus, through their collective strength they seek to address the most pressing challenges of our age including rising inequality, unsustainable development, unemployment, climate change and so on.

In the face of a changing workplace and the impending fourth industrial revolution, there is a massive untapped potential for technology driven cooperatives in the coming days. Notably, the cooperative business model, which is part of the larger Social Solidarity Economy(SSE) is one which has proven to be resilient in the wake of crises.

Q3. Great! What is your role going to be at ICA? And how does working with cooperatives align with what you want to do?

I have joined as part of the European Union Project at the ICA-Asia Pacific Regional Office. My key role would be to ensure the effectiveness of youth entrepreneurship projects, inclusion of innovation in such projects, infusion of technology to the extent of catalysing the larger objectives of cooperatives and to support policy advocacy based on research and training outputs. The role within the project would also entail undertaking detailed research pertaining to the existing legal frameworks and cooperative laws in countries within the Asia-Pacific region, and further attempt to create an enabling environment for enterprise creation, by liaising with various stakeholders in the region.

Cooperatives per say, is a new field for me, and looking at the history of the cooperative movement and the principles that form the bedrock of their collective identity, I feel immense satisfaction to be working for a cause with such a rich and noble legacy.

Personally, I am also excited to work, experiment and explore the encouraging potential that cooperatives at this juncture offer to the world. I look forward to learning a lot more in my journey with the International Cooperative Alliance.