Santosh Kumar

Namaskarams from the Kerala Crafts Village in Trivandrum, where the PCC is organizing its conference, Roots of Resilience. My name is Santosh Kumar, and I serve as the Legislation Director at the International Cooperative Alliance. I believe the cooperative definition, values, and principles—collectively known as the cooperative identity statement—are crucial to the digital economy for several reasons. First, the cooperative identity promotes members’ stewardship rather than private ownership. Second, it advances a concern for sustainability and posterity over capital-centered exploitative growth. Thirdly, the very concept of cooperation, which underpins cooperatives, facilitates scaling and collective bargaining, with ratios decided by the members of the cooperative.

My contribution to this conference is to present evidence supporting why laws in the Global South should include policies or provisions that allow for foreign membership in cooperatives. This is in response to the 2021 report of the UN Secretary-General on cooperatives and social development, which advocated for the membership of foreign nationals in cooperatives, particularly platform cooperatives. I am discussing this in the context of the global race to report on sustainable development, where enterprises are reporting their sustainability practices. I propose the creation of global platform cooperatives based in the Global South so that small and medium enterprises, especially cooperatives, can own and strategically analyze data on platforms they manage, and also be remunerated for it.