India’s Cooperative Economy: The Employment We Still Cannot Fully Count
A research-based examination of jobs, self-employment, livelihoods and the missing national picture of cooperative employment
Sudipta Malakar
Cooperative-Sector Professional | Writer
ArthaPath | West Bengal, India
Abstract
India has one of the world’s largest cooperative movements. Cooperatives operate across agriculture, dairy, fisheries, housing, labour, credit, marketing, textiles, consumer services, processing and several other areas of economic life.
Yet one basic question remains surprisingly difficult to answer:
How many people actually work because of India’s cooperative economy?
The difficulty is not simply a shortage of numbers. It is also a problem of definition and measurement.
A cooperative member is not necessarily an employee. A farmer using a cooperative is not necessarily a cooperative worker. A person earning through a cooperative-enabled economic activity may be self-employed rather than directly employed by the cooperative. And employment created across a cooperative's wider value chain may remain statistically invisible.
India's National Cooperation Policy 2025 states that the country has more than 8 lakh cooperative societies and around 30 crore cooperative members, while PACS alone have more than 13 crore members. But these figures describe the scale of the cooperative movement—not the number of jobs it generates.
This distinction is at the heart of the employment question.
In 2026, however, an important statistical development is taking place. The National Statistical Office has launched the Rapid Survey of Functional Cooperatives (RSFC), described as the first pan-India survey specifically focused on functional cooperatives to quantify the economic impact of India's cooperative sector. The survey is collecting data for 2020–21 and 2023–24, including employment generation, across 30 sectors.
This may represent a significant transition: from counting cooperatives and members to measuring their actual economic and employment contribution.
1. Is a Cooperative Only an Institution?
When we hear the word cooperative, we often think of a registered society, an office, a committee, a membership register, an account book or a service point.
But the economic life of a cooperative is much larger than its office.
A dairy cooperative can connect a milk producer to a collection system, a chilling plant, a processing facility, a transport network and a market.
A PACS can connect farmers with credit, agricultural inputs, storage, procurement and other economic services.
A fisheries cooperative can connect fishers with production, marketing and market access.
A labour cooperative can organize workers around collective economic activity.
A housing cooperative can generate activity across construction, maintenance and services.
In each case, the cooperative may become an economic bridge between people and markets.
That raises a more important question:
Should the economic contribution of that bridge be measured only by the number of people employed inside the cooperative office?
Clearly, that would capture only part of the story.
2. Four Different Layers of Cooperative Employment
To understand the employment question properly, we need to separate several concepts that are often mixed together.
Layer 1 — Direct Employment
These are people employed directly by cooperative institutions.
They may include:
managers
accountants
clerical staff
field workers
technical employees
plant workers
drivers
support staff
sales and marketing personnel
This is the most conventional definition of cooperative employment.
But it is only the first layer.
Layer 2 — Cooperative-Enabled Self-Employment
Millions of cooperative members participate in economic activities through cooperative structures.
A farmer who markets produce through a cooperative, a milk producer linked to a dairy cooperative, or a fisher participating in a fisheries cooperative may derive income through a cooperative-enabled economic system.
These people should not automatically be counted as cooperative employees.
They may be self-employed producers or entrepreneurs whose economic activity is strengthened by cooperative organization.
That distinction is essential.
Layer 3 — Indirect Employment
Cooperatives also create demand across wider supply and value chains.
Transporters, processors, packaging workers, equipment suppliers, service providers, traders and other participants may benefit from cooperative economic activity.
These jobs may exist partly because a cooperative creates an organized market or production network.
Layer 4 — Livelihood Impact
There is an even wider category.
A cooperative may improve income stability, market access, bargaining power, access to credit, access to inputs or economic security without creating what statisticians would conventionally classify as a new job.
This is livelihood impact, not necessarily employment.
And this distinction matters enormously.
3. So, Is India’s Cooperative Sector an Employment Giant?
It would be tempting to answer yes.
But responsible research requires restraint.
We cannot simply take the number of cooperative members and call them employees.
India's National Cooperation Policy reports approximately 30 crore cooperative members, with PACS alone having more than 13 crore members.
Those figures demonstrate extraordinary scale.
They do not prove that 30 crore people are employed by cooperatives.
Similarly, the existence of more than 8 lakh cooperative societies does not tell us how many of those societies are economically active, how many employees they have, what their labour intensity is, or how many livelihoods depend upon them.
The correct research question is therefore not:
How many cooperative members does India have?
It is:
How many people receive employment, self-employment opportunities, income or livelihood support through the cooperative economy—and how can these different contributions be measured without confusing one with another?
That is a much harder question.
But it is also a much more meaningful one.
4. The Most Important Change May Already Be Underway
For decades, much of the public discussion around cooperatives has focused on the number of societies, membership, financial performance, institutional coverage and sectoral development.
The employment dimension has been much harder to see as a single national picture.
That may now be changing.
The Rapid Survey of Functional Cooperatives (RSFC), launched by the National Statistical Office in April 2026 for the Ministry of Cooperation, is specifically designed to quantify the economic impact of functional cooperatives across India. It covers 30 sectors and seeks to estimate indicators including Gross Value Added and employment generation. The survey is using the National Cooperative Database as its sampling frame and is targeting approximately 21,000 units during fieldwork scheduled from April to September 2026.
This is significant.
Because for the first time, the question is being approached through a national statistical exercise rather than through scattered institutional estimates.
The eventual findings may not answer every employment question.
But they can provide something that has long been difficult to obtain:
a systematic national statistical foundation for understanding the economic contribution of cooperatives.
5. The National Cooperative Database: Before Counting People, We Need to Know What Exists
There is another important foundation beneath this effort: the National Cooperative Database.
Counting employment requires knowing what institutions are operating.
A cooperative economy cannot be measured properly if the statistical universe itself is incomplete or inconsistent.
This is why the development of a national cooperative database matters.
India's current cooperative landscape includes institutions across a remarkable range of sectors—from PACS and dairy to housing, fisheries, labour, consumer, marketing, textiles, transport, tourism, processing and others. The Ministry of Cooperation's current sector-wise database reflects this breadth.
The first challenge, therefore, is institutional identification.
The second is functionality.
The third is economic measurement.
And only then can employment be measured meaningfully.
6. National Cooperation Policy 2025: Has Employment Become a Policy Concern?
The National Cooperation Policy 2025 represents a major policy development in India's cooperative landscape.
The policy was unveiled on 24 July 2025 and contains six strategic pillars, 16 objectives and 83 recommendations.
It also recognizes the broad diversity of India's cooperative ecosystem, covering sectors such as housing, dairy, labour, sugar, consumer, marketing, fisheries, textiles, services, processing and hospitals.
This matters for the employment question because a cooperative policy is no longer concerned only with the existence of cooperative societies.
It increasingly deals with:
institutional strengthening
skills
youth participation
women
rural development
technology
professional capacity
new economic activities
better market access
The policy direction therefore creates an important research question:
Could employment generation be one of the under-examined economic rationales behind India's renewed emphasis on cooperatives?
This should be treated as a research hypothesis—not as a predetermined conclusion.
The evidence must decide.
7. And Then We Must Remember the Human Being
Statistics are necessary.
But statistics alone cannot tell the whole cooperative story.
Behind every cooperative office is a person.
A person who opens the office in the morning.
A person who maintains records.
A person who works through difficult seasons.
A person who serves members even when resources are limited.
A farmer who depends on a cooperative to reach a market.
A milk producer whose daily income depends on a functioning collection system.
A woman who finds an economic opportunity through collective organization.
A young person who sees a cooperative not as an old institution but as a possible route into a changing rural economy.
These people are part of the economic story.
And sometimes the most important contribution of a cooperative is not visible in a payroll register.
It may be visible in whether a family can continue earning.
Whether a producer can access a market.
Whether a worker can negotiate collectively.
Whether a small economic activity becomes viable.
Whether a rural household has one more option before migration becomes the only option.
This is why employment and livelihood must be studied together—without treating them as the same thing.
8. PACS, Dairy and the Emerging Cooperative Economy
India's cooperative economy is also changing in character.
Traditional cooperative functions are increasingly being accompanied by diversification, digitalization, infrastructure development, processing, storage, marketing and other economic activities.
PACS are particularly important because of their grassroots presence.
Dairy cooperatives represent another major economic network.
The National Cooperation Policy itself places farmers, women and rural development at the centre of the cooperative vision.
But again, caution is essential.
The number of PACS or dairy societies does not automatically translate into a number of jobs.
What matters is:
How many are functional?
How many employ workers?
What is their labour intensity?
What economic activities do they undertake?
How many members earn through those activities?
What value chains do they support?
How much income and employment is generated beyond the cooperative's own payroll?
These are measurement questions.
And they require data.
9. Is the Government Promoting Cooperatives Because of Unemployment?
This is one of the most interesting questions—and one of the easiest to answer incorrectly.
It would be too simplistic to say:
“The government is promoting cooperatives because India has an unemployment problem.”
The cooperative policy agenda is much broader.
It includes rural development, farmer welfare, women, institutional strengthening, economic participation, technology, markets, infrastructure and cooperative governance.
At the same time, employment and skill development are clearly becoming increasingly relevant within the cooperative ecosystem.
The 2026 RSFC itself is significant precisely because employment generation is now being incorporated into a national statistical assessment of cooperative economic impact.
Therefore, the more defensible proposition is this:
Employment may be one important economic dimension of India's renewed cooperative policy—but it should be investigated through evidence rather than assumed in advance.
That distinction is important for serious cooperative research.
10. What Can the World Teach India?
India is not alone in facing the challenge of measuring cooperative employment.
International cooperative institutions have long recognized that cooperatives contribute not only through direct employment but also through broader economic participation.
International experience also demonstrates that the definition of cooperative employment matters.
If one country counts only employees on cooperative payrolls while another includes cooperative-enabled self-employment and value-chain employment, their numbers cannot be compared without understanding the methodology behind them.
Therefore, India's emerging statistical framework has an opportunity.
It can develop a measurement architecture that clearly distinguishes:
Direct employment
from
Cooperative-enabled self-employment
from
Indirect employment
from
Livelihood impact.
Such clarity would make India's cooperative employment statistics much more useful—not only domestically, but internationally.
11. Beyond Employment: The Livelihood Question
There is another question that deserves equal attention.
Suppose a cooperative does not create a new conventional job.
But it helps an existing producer remain economically viable.
Has it created employment?
Perhaps not in the strict statistical sense.
Has it contributed to the person's livelihood?
Very possibly.
This distinction is especially important in rural India, where employment, self-employment, family labour, seasonal work and small-scale enterprise often overlap.
A cooperative can strengthen an economic activity without creating a conventional employer-employee relationship.
That does not make its contribution economically insignificant.
It simply means that the contribution belongs to a different statistical category.
A mature cooperative economy therefore needs more than a jobs number.
It needs a livelihood and economic participation framework.
12. The Number India Is Waiting For
Eventually, one number will attract attention:
How many jobs does India's cooperative economy generate?
But perhaps that is not the only number we should seek.
We should also ask:
How many people are directly employed by cooperatives?
How many earn through cooperative-enabled self-employment?
How many jobs are supported indirectly?
How many livelihoods are strengthened?
Which sectors generate the greatest employment intensity?
Which states have the strongest cooperative employment ecosystems?
What is the gender composition of cooperative employment?
What is the role of youth?
How much employment comes from rural versus urban cooperatives?
How does cooperative employment compare across sectors and institutional types?
How has cooperative employment changed over time?
These questions can transform the discussion.
Because once employment is measured properly, cooperatives can be understood not merely as institutions of collective ownership, but also as measurable economic actors.
13. The Missing Number May Not Have Been Missing from the Economy
Perhaps the most important conclusion is also the simplest.
For generations, millions of people have worked through cooperative systems.
Farmers have produced.
Workers have organized.
Women have built enterprises.
Milk producers have supplied dairy networks.
Fishers have marketed their catch.
Employees have run cooperative institutions.
Members have created economic activity through collective organization.
The economic activity was real.
The people were real.
The work was real.
What was often missing was a sufficiently integrated way of measuring the full contribution.
That is why the development of the National Cooperative Database, the National Cooperation Policy 2025 and the 2026 Rapid Survey of Functional Cooperatives matters. Together, they point toward a more measurable understanding of the cooperative economy.
The future question is therefore not simply:
How many cooperatives does India have?
It is:
How many people's economic lives are sustained, strengthened or transformed through those cooperatives—and how much of that contribution can we finally measure?
Conclusion
India's cooperative movement is too large and too diverse to be understood through a single number.
The number of societies tells us about institutional scale.
Membership tells us about participation.
Payroll tells us about direct employment.
Self-employment tells us about economic activity.
Value-chain employment tells us about indirect effects.
Livelihood impact tells us about human reality.
None of these should be substituted for another.
The real challenge is to bring them together without losing their differences.
That is the statistical and intellectual task ahead.
The 2026 Rapid Survey of Functional Cooperatives may become an important milestone in that journey. Its significance lies not merely in producing another dataset, but in helping India ask a better question about what its cooperative economy actually contributes.
And perhaps the deepest insight is this:
The employment may never have been absent from the cooperative economy. Perhaps it was simply absent from the way we measured it.
If India can measure that contribution with clarity, the cooperative movement will become easier to understand—not only as a social and institutional tradition, but as a significant component of the country's economic and employment landscape.
And once something can be measured properly, it can also be understood better, compared more fairly, improved more intelligently and recognized for what it truly contributes.
Research Note
This article distinguishes between direct employment, cooperative-enabled self-employment, indirect employment and broader livelihood impact. These categories should not be treated as interchangeable.
The employment question remains an evolving area of measurement. The National Statistical Office's Rapid Survey of Functional Cooperatives is currently undertaking a pan-India statistical exercise to estimate economic and employment contributions across major cooperative sectors. Its eventual findings should provide important evidence for future research.
Selected Primary Sources
Ministry of Cooperation, Government of India — National Cooperation Policy 2025
National Statistical Office, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation — Rapid Survey of Functional Cooperatives (RSFC), 2026
Ministry of Cooperation — National Cooperative Database and sector-wise cooperative statistics
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