Kumaran’s arms move with a youthful rhythm as he talks spiritedly about the decades of life as a mason of the Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society (ULCCS), which is a week away from celebrating its hundredth anniversary. At 85, he now spends his waking hours at Madithattu, a senior citizens’ day care centre run by the same society in a tastefully designed building at Karakkad village in Kozhikode district. Keeping him company are about 30 senior citizens from the locality, including fellow society workers such as 86-year-old Devootty and her sister, 82-year-old Lekshmi.
“Back when I used to work, we did everything manually, as there was hardly any machinery. I started very young with a payment of 2 annas (the coins used in British India), which improved considerably by the time I retired. Three of my six children work with the society. Now I enjoy my days here, exercising, singing, and interacting with others of my age. The staff take care of us like our children do,” says Kumaran.
A wood work and furniture-making unit run by the Uralungal Labour Contracting Cooperative Society in Kozhikode. To ensure quality and quick delivery of raw material, the society has been for some years operating its own building material manufacturing units. | Photo Credit: S.R. Praveen
A few kilometres away, at the society’s headquarters near Vadakara along National Highway 66, things are, in contrast, moving at a frenetic pace. Daily review meetings of the over 300 active works, ranging from highways, bridges, and buildings along the length and breadth of Kerala, valued totally at over ₹6,500 crore, are ongoing. In its centenary year, the cooperative society, built and owned by the working class, has spread its wings from a village-based cooperative to become an integral part of the State’s infrastructural development process.
It is the only primary cooperative from India to be a permanent member of the International Cooperative Alliance and was voted there as the second-best cooperative in the world in 2018 and 2019, behind the Spain-based Mondragon Corporation.
Just like Kumaran, the society’s present vice-chairperson M.M. Surendran, 60, remembers starting out as a mason in his late teens, moving up step by step, through democratic, non-political elections amongst the workers. Almost everyone at the helm of the society now has a past of labouring under the sun.
At the core of the leadership’s thought process over the past two decades, the period of its peak growth, has been diversification into information technology, arts and crafts, futuristic prefabricated construction, material testing, housing, and constant upskilling of its 18,000 workers, engineers, and other staff. It has strived to place itself as a cooperative alternative to corporate giants.
Amid the verdant greenery of Nellikode stands UL Cyberpark, the first information technology park in the Malabar region, set up by the society in 2016, which now is fully occupied by 41 information technology (IT) companies, employing 2,700 people and having software exports of ₹164 crore in the first three quarters of the current financial year.
Along with other IT biggies, including Tata Elxsi, one of the companies occupying the space is UL Technology Solutions (ULTS), the society’s IT subsidiary, which executed a project to implement a digital, paperless system at the Kerala Legislative Assembly and the Internet of Things (IoT) and a data analytics-based project to optimise water management in Thrissur Corporation. Built following a collaborative, open office concept, borrowed from Google, the ULTS office is filled with youngsters, many of whom hail from the Malabar region.
Rameshan Paleri, Chairperson of the ULCCS, who has been helming the cooperative for the past three decades. | Photo Credit: S.R. Praveen
“As the effects of liberalisation and globalisation began taking effect in our villages in the late 1990s, we realised that there would be a demand for white-collar jobs among the next generation of the workers’ families. The Uralungal cooperative society has always evolved by imbibing the changes happening in the larger social structure. Many did make fun of our plans for an IT company, questioning the rationale of road workers building an IT company, but we look at the world differently, and it paid off,” says T.K. Kishor Kumar, Chief Operating Officer, UL Cyberpark.
Beginnings
Inspired by the teachings of social reformer Vagbhatanandan, a group of youths from Uralungal village formed Atmavidya Sangham, an anti-caste collective, in the early 1920s. With their activities leading to systematic denial of jobs and education, the youths formed the Uralungal Cooperative in 1925 with 37 paisa as the initial capital to provide jobs to backward caste people who were being ostracised.
85-year old Kumaran (centre), a former employee of ULCCS at Madithattu, an elderly day care run by the cooperative society at Karakkad in Kozhikode. | Photo Credit: S.R. Praveen
Some of its earliest works were as part of rebuilding efforts following the unprecedented floods of 1924, but it still had to struggle initially to secure government contracts. Almost a century later, the society would be part of the rebuilding works following the floods of 2018 and 2019 as well as the Wayanad landslides of 2024.
But the huge number of State government projects in the society’s kitty has also invited its share of criticism in recent years with Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan in 2023 slamming the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front government for “unjustifiable patronage” of the ULCCS, which he called “the place where the CPI(M) parks its corruption money.”
He questioned the practice of awarding work contracts to the society without a tender. The Enforcement Directorate’s informal inquiry at the ULCCS head office as part of a money laundering probe also set tongues wagging.
Rameshan Paleri, chairperson of the society, for the past three decades, says that the society does not have any politics, although individual members can have their personal preferences.
“Even the elections here are not based on politics. The society became an accredited agency under the tenure of the Congress-led United Democratic Front government. During Oommen Chandy’s tenure, the initial agreement was to complete the Kozhikode Bypass, including the Korapuzha bridge, within 24 months. The Chief Minister had asked whether we could finish it in 18 months. We ended up finishing the 5.1-km project in 14 months. The society has always worked with the successive governments in power with none of our works ever facing any blame for delays or cost overruns. In fact, we have taken up and completed many projects that were abandoned by other companies, like the Manaveeyam Veedhi project in Thiruvananthapuram. This is a public institution which is open to scrutiny by any agency,” says Rameshan.
Under the Kerala government’s norms, labour contract cooperative societies get preferential treatment and exceptions, including eligibility for contract up to 10% above the lowest quotation from private contractors.
Last year, a Division Bench of the Kerala High Court dismissed appeals filed by private contractors challenging government orders giving preferential treatment to labour cooperatives. The court observed that labourers who lacked the resources forming a cooperative society to compete with affluent individual contractors who had all wherewithal could not be considered as belonging to the same category.
Rameshan says that the cooperative has grown big enough to compete against infrastructure majors such as Adani Enterprises and win tenders, as it did in the six-laning project of the 39-km National Highway 66 from Talapady to Chengala in Kasaragod district. Among the 22 ongoing national highway projects from one end of Kerala to the other, it is only this stretch handled by the ULCCS which has now neared completion, he says.
Amid the flurry of projects, providing jobs for its employees would remain the society’s primary motive, which means that it never subcontracts its works, with all of them executed by employees in its payroll.
The employees are provided benefits, including biannual bonuses, provident fund, gratuity, health insurance, outstation allowance as well as free food and accommodation at all work sites of the society. The kitchen utensils always arrive before the work machinery does, says one of the workers at the Unity Mall site at Pallippuram in Thiruvananthapuram, a pilot project of the ULCCS under its new subsidiary U-Sphere, to make large prefabricated steel-based structures in quick time.
Workers with ‘A’ class membership hold shares of the company and have voting rights, while entry level workers get ‘C’ class membership with all benefits other than voting rights. The State government in its role as guarantor of ULCCS loans is considered as holding ‘B’ class shares.
To ensure quality control and quick delivery of raw material, the society has been for some years operating its own building material manufacturing units. With its placement as a total solutions and services provider, its in-house team does all the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and design related works related to any project.
Cultural foray
Amid a scenic hillock in Thiruvananthapuram overlooking the Kovalam beach is located the Kerala Arts and Crafts Village, the society’s major project to promote skilled artisans as well as performing artistes. Modelled after the ULCCS-run Sargalaya village in Kozhikode, it is now home to the annual International Indie Music Festival and the Ragbag Performing Arts Festival.
Sivaprakash, a terracotta artisan from Nilambur and one of the occupants of the 28 permanent artisan studios here, says that the village has given his trade a new lease on life. “I used to depend on exhibitions to sell my ware. But with a steady inflow of tourists here, I now manage sales of around ₹1 lakh monthly,” says Sivaprakash.
For the intellectually challenged
One of the interesting initiatives of the ULCCS has been the UL Care Nayanar Sadanam for vocational training and placement of intellectually challenged adults. According to M.K. Jayaraj, Director of ULCCS Foundation, a total of 138 adults trained at its facility in Kozhikode are now placed for various jobs in hospitals, shops, and clinics, while another 80 are undergoing training at present.
Meanwhile, the ULCCS is carefully planning its foray into more sectors. “Whatever changes happen across the world, we are confident to reorient and adapt to it,” says Rameshan.
Published - February 06, 2025 08:57 pm IST
