The short-term co-operative credit structure, usually shortened to STCC, is the three-tier arrangement through which co-operative credit reaches rural India.
At the base sit Primary Agricultural Credit Societies, in villages. Above them, at district level, sit district central co-operative banks. At the top of each state sits a state co-operative bank. NABARD refinances the structure from behind.
The Ministry of Cooperation describes a PACS as "the final link" between rural borrowers and the higher financing agencies, "namely the Scheduled Commercial Banks, and the RBI/NABARD". The computerisation project makes the same chain explicit, linking societies "with NABARD through State Cooperative Banks (StCBs) and District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs)".
Why the tier matters to a depositor
Because deposit insurance stops partway down. DICGC cover of ₹5,00,000 per depositor reaches state, central and primary co-operative banks. The DICGC states flatly that "Primary cooperative societies are not insured by the DICGC."
So the top two tiers of the STCC are insured and the bottom tier, as a society, is not. Two institutions in the same structure, taking money in the same way, can therefore offer completely different protection. If an agent collects daily deposits for a village society, establishing which tier that society sits in, and whether it separately holds a banking licence, is the first question worth asking.
Urban co-operative banks sit outside this structure entirely. They are urban, RBI-licensed, and not part of the rural three-tier chain, even though they are the institutions most visibly running pigmy collection.