Much of education as it is commonly practiced in India is competitive and test driven. Students are encouraged to learn what will come on exams – no more, no less. Learning for its own sake, or sharing one’s knowledge with others in the class, has no place in such a system.
Activity-based learning, on the other hand, lends itself naturally and easily to cooperative learning. Group work is a common feature of ABL, with different children taking on the tasks which are appropriate to their individual levels. If the project is to make chapattis, for example, there is no shame in being the one who kneads the dough or rolls the rotis or cooks them or cleans up afterwards. Every task is necessary if everyone wants to eat!

Positive interdependence is critical to the success of the cooperative group, because the interconnectedness helps students learn to give and take--to realize that in the group, as well as in life, everyone can do something, but no one can do everything. When cooperation is successful, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Cooperative learning has enormous lessons to teach us about life. Nowhere but in school are people expected to do everything alone. Nowhere but in school is being the only one to get the right answer of any value. In real life, we depend upon a host of others for things as varied as getting our mail to finding water in the tap, for the clothes that we wear to the books that we read.  In real life, we want everyone we meet to know the right answer: the doctor, the policewoman, the electrician, the judge, the driver. The world only works when we work together.