Home Minister unveils shared-services platform for cooperative banks as government seeks wider participation and stronger credit systems in the countryside

India’s rural development agenda received a digital push on Thursday as Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah opened the second edition of the Earth Summit and introduced a shared-services technology platform for cooperative banks, pitched as a structural intervention rather than a symbolic gesture.

The initiative, known as Sahakar Sarathi, has been created to provide common technology and service functions to primary agricultural credit societies and other cooperative finance institutions. Officials said it aims to reduce operational disparities between urban and rural banking and establish a more consistent standard for credit delivery, particularly for farming communities and micro-enterprises that often struggle to secure finance for sustainable economic activity.

Shah also released a study by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development and the Boston Consulting Group on the future of rural banking, which sets out recommendations to widen credit access and improve institutional capacity. He said central spending on rural sectors had increased almost four-fold since 2014, and argued that higher participation in cooperatives could shape national economic expansion. He placed the potential membership of the system at fifty crore people with a larger contribution to economic output in the coming years.

Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendrabhai Patel said the state hopes to build a leadership role in agricultural technology and cooperative services. Nabard Chairman Shaji K V described the platform as an effort to reinforce a dispersed financial ecosystem that has long carried the burden of informal credit systems, particularly in areas where climate risk and erratic incomes limit formal lending.