Industry-academia linkages for the cooperative societies are ensured through continuous engagement of the sector experts and practitioners in the various training, awareness and other academic programs run by NCCT (National Council for Cooperative Training), an autonomous society under the Ministry of Cooperation.

    The industry-academia linkage in training programs is built through an institutional mechanism of Program Advisory Committee (PAC) in the 19 regional and state level institutes of NCCT. PAC is headed by the Registrar of Cooperative Societies of the state concerned and other members of PAC include Chief Executives of State Cooperative Unions/Federations, Directors of Industries, Handlooms, Fisheries, Agriculture of the state concerned, industry sector experts, etc.

    Further, seminars/webinars with industry/sector experts, lectures from practitioners, industry exposure visits and internships are also organized regularly to further strengthen industry- academic partnership in the cooperative sector.

NCCT in collaboration with NABARD, SOFTCOB Scheme (Scheme of Financial Assistance for Training of Cooperative Banks Personnel) conducted 690 training programs between 2020-21 and 2022-23 for 20,955 participants, who are mainly farmers, to strengthen Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS) and other primary cooperative societies. Besides, NCCT also conducted 2342 training/awareness programs between 2020-21and 2022-23 for 1,61,043 farmers in rural areas.

This was stated by the Minister of Cooperation, Shri Amit Shah in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today.

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RK/AY/SM/AKS/RR/748

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