Assocham set to expand membership

NEW DELHI: Industry body Assocham wants to do a CII. Expansion of its membership and its divisions is high on the chamber’s agenda as it gets ready for its extraordinary general meeting on September 29.

On its to-do list is forming a separate division called ‘Brand India.’ This unit will compete with India Brand Equity Foundation, a public-private partnership between commerce ministry and industry chamber CII. IBEF was behind the ‘India Everywhere’ campaign at Davos early this year and has been organising brand-building activities at other economic events thereafter.

“We have already got the mandate from our members and policy makers to work globally for a strong and credible brand India. In the meeting, we will discuss specific strategies to achieve this,” claims DS Rawat, secretary general, Assocham.

Apart from Brand India, creation of an Alternative Dispute Resolution Council, a Counterfeit Cell and a Social Development Cell will also be discussed in the meeting. According to Mr Rawat, another issue of prime importance is increasing the ceiling for number of patron members in the chamber. Initially, there was a ceiling of 50 patron members.

However, last year, when there was an exodus of some major steel players from CII, Assocham increased this ceiling to 75. “Given that we want to undertake some aggressive expansion exercise this year, we will consider de-limiting this ceiling to 100,” Mr Rawat said.

He claims that the chamber has already put 25 public sector undertakings and at least 10 multi-national companies on the waiting list.“The more concerted efforts there are for the development of the industry and the country, the better it is,” said a CII official.