GANDHINAGAR: Union Home minister Amit Shah inaugurated the EARTH Summit 2025 in Gandhinagar, giving a big fillip to the country’s march towards digitally empowered rural development and a robust cooperative ecosystem.
Being held by NABARD, the summit on rural innovation is intended to create a modern, technology-driven cooperative framework to achieve the vision of Gram Swaraj.
Addressing the gathering, the minister said the summit is part of a three-part national initiative aimed at revitalising agriculture, animal husbandry and cooperatives—sectors he called the backbone of the country’s rural economy.
He added that since 2014, the combined budget of the ministries of rural development, agriculture and cooperation has tripled to over Rs 3.15 lakh crore, reflecting the prioritisation given by the govt towards rural growth.
He said every Panchayat will get a PACS and that the contribution of the cooperative sector to GDP is targeted to be tripled.
In addition, Amit Shah also said, “Sahkar Saarathi” is the newly launched platform by NABARD, which will offer rural banks cutting-edge digital services at no cost, covering end-to-end operation in KYC, loan disbursal and recovery. Farmers holding Kisan Credit Cards will soon get world-class digital banking features like premium credit cards.
Shah noted that the newly-launched Sahakar Taxi service is poised to become the largest cooperative taxi company in the country in the next two years, and said nearly 51,000 drivers have already registered since its pilot launch.
The inauguration of 14 digital services inter alia includes Sahakar Setu: a single-window online loan portal; digiKCC: a fully digitised KCC; ePACS: ERP for 25,000 PACS; and the Cooperative Governance Index: the first-ever governance index for assessing the governance of cooperative banks in the country.
The portal related to the World’s Largest Grain Storage Plan was also inaugurated to monitor national storage infrastructure.
For cybersecurity and compliance strengthening, platforms such as CISO Sarathi, CBS Sarathi, and Regulatory Compliance Sarathi were introduced, along with Shiksha Sarathi for staff training and collaborative networks for CTOs and CISOs. AI-driven Cross Sell Sarathi, Campaign Sarathi, and the unified collections call-centre system were also launched.