PREAMBLE

A consumers' co-operative is a business owned by its customers. Employees can also generally become members. Members vote on major decisions and elect the board of directors from amongst their own number. The first of these was set up in 1844 in the North-West of England by 28 weavers who wanted to sell food at a lower price than the local shops. With its 4,14,383 employees, 7,736,210 members and annual turnover of € 50 Bn per year growing at a steady rate of 4.41% as on 2011, Lega co-op, of Italy is arguably the world's biggest federation of cooperatives in the world at present.

Established during 1962-63 by a group of eminent residents of Kalyani, who wished to contribute to the welfare of the society, the Kalyani Co-operative Stores was a bold venture by any measure. This statement could be elaborated by saying that Kalyani Co-operative Stores is a true people’s institution formed by the people of the land who were inspired by great visionaries like Prof. Sushil K. Mukherjee, Prof. D. K. Sen, Prof. Pasupati Sengupta, Prof. S. B. Chattopadhyay, Prof. Ananda Bhattacharyya, Prof. S. R. Duttagupta, Prof. D. P. Roy Chowdhury, Sri S. N. Roy. Sri H. K. Dhar, Sri  Phani Bhusan Majumder,  Dr. U. R. Banerjee, Sri Rampada Gupta, Sri S. B. Ganguly and others. The proposal of establishing the Kalyani Co-operative Stores was accepted unanimously in a meeting held on 16th December, 1962 that was arranged and attended by the above eminent personalities. The Government of West Bengal promptly accepted the proposal and the Kalyani Co-operative Stores received official recognition from the Government of West Bengal with effect from 5th January, 1963.

In the tradition of their founders, all members of Kalyani Co-operative Stores believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others. It is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically controlled process. The Kalyani Co-operative Stores is open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership without gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination. It is exclusively based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. During nearly the fifty years of its journey, the Kalyani Co-operative Stores was honored twice (in 1993 and 1995) by the Government of West Bengal as the best run Co-operative Store in the state.

The main objective of the Stores is to supply all sorts of consumer goods, domestic appliances, things of daily necessities and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to its members as well as others willing to avail themselves of the said services at reasonable price. With 3553 share holders present as on 31st March, 2012 the Kalyani Co-operative Stores is indeed a force to recon with in terms of sales and profit. Profusely thanking each one of its customers for their whole hearted support, which is the key to its tremendous growth, the Kalyani Co-operative Stores crosses yet again a memorable milestone, the GOLDEN JUBILEE YEAR which magically coincides with the decision of the United Nations to celebrate 2012 as the International Year for Co-operatives (IYC). In this memorable moment of lunching a web site of the Stores, we, the members and employees of the Kalyani Co-operative Stores gratefully remember the contributions of those great visionaries who founded the Stores but are not with us at present.