The Withering Bloom of PACSs in Odisha

Odisha is primarily an agrarian economy. Statistics as divulged by 2011 census illustrate that 83.31 percent of Odisha's population resides in rural areas, depending directly or indirectly upon agriculture for their livelihood. Odisha's economy is expanding through sectoral shifts in GSDP from agriculture to industry to service. While the economy is transferring towards industry and services, the labor force remains concentrated in agriculture. As against the national average of around 52 per cent of labor share in agriculture & forestry in 2010–11, the State has a much higher labor share of 59 per cent. Co-operatives play a very important role in Socio-economic upliftment of the bucolic populace, predominantly, the primary agricultural credit co-operative societies. They are considered to be pillars of the entire cooperative edifice and continue to be the main source of agricultural credit to the farmers in rural areas. But the manner in which they are organized and functioned are not encouraging to efficient and prudent use of the vast resources at their disposal. This paper is an endeavor to evaluate the performance and progress of primary agriculture co-operative societies all through the period from 2002–03 to 2011–12 in Odisha.