56 SOCIAL SCIENTIST The initiative and encouragement for setting up this cooperative were provided by the local officials of the Bombay Provincial Co-operative Bank, which was already operating as a cooperative credit system in the area.3 By 1959, there were 18 registered cooperative factories as against 15 joint stock private ones. In the 1977-78 season, out of 66 sugar factories in production, only 10 were privately owned. Today, the cooperative factories have grown into a giant agro-industry with an annual turnover running into billions of rupees, and they, together with their precursors, the district cooperative banks, virtually control rural Maharashtra both economically and politically. The successful growth of the cooperative movement in the State can be traced historically to the non-Brahmin movement for social reform.4 Before 1930, the rural cooperatives primarily served the middle peasantry. Today they have been transformed into an important base of the rural elite comprising the rich peasants drawn mainly from the dominant caste of Marathas and in some parts of Kolhapur and Sholapur, from the Lingayat community.5 The direction which these cooperatives were to take subsequently is evident from the name of the very first cooperative sugar factory set up at Bclapur. This factory was registered in 1948 as the Big Bagaitdars (Pravara) Cooperative Sugar Factory/ The initiative for setting up a cooperative sugar factory is normally taken by the local leaders of the ruling party. The naming of several factories after the state ministers or Maharashtrian ministers at the Centre is an indication of the active role played by the leading rural-based politicians of the ruling party in setting up these cooperatives.7 In f.ict, such is the potency of political pressure that a licence for a cooperative factory was granted in an area of Marathwada region where sugarcane was not even grown.8 In the 1950's and 1960's these leaders or cooperators as they are also called, dislodged the already entrenched private interests in the sugar industry. In this task they received ample help from the state government, which was itself dominated by the rural elite.9 The state government approves and forwards applications for licences to the Central government of only those factories which are in the cooperative sector. In cases where the Central government has granted licences to private factories, ignoring the state government's advice, the latter is known to have raised various obstacles for these units and virtually forced their convcr-