Indonesia Misunderstands the Meaning of Cooperative
Currently the cooperative is not so interesting to the intellectuals. As a result of mistakes in understanding, the development of cooperatives in Indonesia is not running properly. Cooperative is a unique organization that must be understood and developed from its uniqueness. This misconception has lead to mismanagement.
This view was delivered by an Economic Expert of IPB, Dr. Lukman M. Baga in the Evening Dialogue at RRI Bogor (12/7) in order to commemorate the 64th anniversary of Cooperative Day.
Bung Hatta, the Father of Cooperative, studied about cooperatives in the Netherlands and other European countries. He had a very good understanding of the cooperative. At that time, Bung Hatta was obsessed to establish cooperatives in Indonesia as it was more possible for Indonesia to develop cooperatives because cooperation or working together is highly upheld in Indonesia.
In the current conditions, while the education about cooperatives is carried out in elementary, junior and senior high schools, the spirit of cooperative is established. This is unfortunate because the result is misunderstanding of the cooperative that ends up with mismanagement.
Before dealing with the mismanagement, according to Dr. Lukman, there is a bigger problem that we have not looked at, that is, the lack of cooperative motivator. "Now people have already got a negative image of the cooperative. Meanwhile, the excellent human resources capable of becoming leaders prefer other institutions to develop themselves. Cooperatives are, then, merely managed by those with limited enthusiasm, knowledge and limited skills in managing the cooperative," he said.
A cooperative is considered as an institution that can help low-income communities. And that’s a mistake; we can see that the cooperative is now identified with peasants, laborers, teachers having on average mediocre earnings. This is different from that of other countries. There is a cooperative of dentists, of pharmacists, of translators, of consultant and others. People are educated to take part in the development of operatives because they feel that in whatever they do, they have limitations as individuals, so they must cooperate with others to build a synergistic force.
In agriculturally advanced countries with hundreds of farm land also need cooperatives because of the greater challenge or competition outside. Despite the pressure of merchants and the small number of members in their cooperatives, they can determine the price. This is hard to dominate unless they join in the cooperative, thus they cannot be broken apart and they were able to increase their bargaining power.
"The principle of the cooperative is to build a synergistic force. Something that can not be done alone would be more likely to happen when it is done together. The problem is the existing negative image of the cooperative that has made the educated people not interested to look at it. Finally, the people operating and developing the cooperatives are those of relatively weak human resources, "he explained.
But no need to lose hope as yet, according to him, some time ago Dr. Lukman heard that some of our intellectual will establish a Cooperative Society of Indonesia. This is a new trend; there may be a form of awareness that we indeed have been wrong, ignoring the cooperative. The awareness is among the educated and those who really have a great leadership capacity. (Mtd)
