Organizational roles performed by marine fisheries cooperative of Maharashtra state, India

Abstract

Cooperatives are well spread all over the world contributing significantly to the social, economic and welfare of their members. The marine fisheries cooperatives are well established in Maharashtra with the history of over hundred years. In this paper, an attempt has been made to find the organizational roles performed by cooperative societies of Maharashtra for their members. An interview schedule was administered to sample around 15% of cooperative societies i.e. 39 out of 266 functional marine cooperatives. From each coastal district, proportional numbers of cooperatives were randomly selected to the total number of cooperatives to avail the equal representation of cooperatives from each district. The key respondents like Chairpersons, Secretaries, and Members of Board of Management were interviewed. Through pilot study, the organizational roles were categories as handling, processing, marketing, input supply, services, fishery resources management, Facilitating Services (FS), Government Schemes (GS) and Social Services (SS). Kruskal-Wallis test was performed to test the significant difference in organizational roles of cooperatives among districts. The results revealed that, cooperatives perform various roles for their members. Cooperatives of Thane district were found to be involved in maximum organizational roles. It also showed that three organizational roles i.e. spare part supply, allocation of fishing grounds and NCDC scheme extended by cooperatives were significantly different among the cooperatives. The roles performed by cooperatives were strongly limited with administrative setup, financial status and infrastructural development of cooperatives. However, it can be concluded that fisheries cooperatives represent a promising organization that can undertake organizational roles requiring collective action for the development for their members.