Institutionalization of People Centred Social Innovation in Kudumbashree, Kerala, India

Kerala State Poverty Eradication Mission, better known as Kudumbashree is initiated by the Government of Kerala both to de-root absolute poverty from the state and to increase the level of participation of women in economic... [ view full abstract ]

Kerala State Poverty Eradication Mission, better known as Kudumbashree is initiated by the Government of Kerala both to de-root absolute poverty from the state and to increase the level of participation of women in economic and political life. It is founded on the dynamics of three critical components that together form its specific kind of social innovation targeting poverty eradication and political empowerment among women. The three components are micro-credit; entrepreneurship and empowerment (social, economic and political). We argue that Kudumbashree is an example of People Centred Development based upon recognition of and solidarity with the women not as isolated individuals and entrepreneurs but in the ‘totalities’ of their communities and everyday life. A key feature is “participation”, which is a much neglected criteria in policy making within the inter related areas of social entrepreneurship, social enterprise and social innovation. The paper will use an institutional and social origin approach (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991; Salamon & Anheier, 1998; Mair and Marti, 2009) to social capital and solidarity economy. Empirical evidence is based upon in-depth interviews with leaders of Kudumbashree (April 2013 and November 2014) that will be followed by field visits including on site observations and group sessions with women in several places and situations of affiliation with the program. We will address Kudumbashree through a perspective not so unlike Wilson (1997) who claims that “communities that successfully build or rebuild productive social capital will be those best positioned for prosperity and adaptability in the coming century” (Wilson, 1997: 756). However social capital in a non-institutional view tends to become a social technology that empowerment oriented experts can use to address marginalities of communities. Thus Somers (2008) claims that social capital has become a resource to be fed to marginalized communities: after years of privatization and structural adjustment to neoliberal standards marginalized people are left with nothing but their own networks now served to them as a resource: “Let them eat social capital” (Somers, 2008). Thus the paper aims to put a constructive critique to the notions of social capital and provide a nuanced understanding of the same by exploring varied aspects of solidarity economy that Kudumbashree has been able to promote both at the level of local communities and the state level of Kerala. The social capital foundations of collectives of Kudumbashree, clubbed with the economic activities aimed at improving the conditions of the members drawing from a solidarity economy perspective within the broader rubric of people centric approach provides a strong argument for what we would like to put as People Centred Social Innovation (PCSI). We finally argue that the three intrinsic pillars of PCSI as elaborated in the chapter as (i) willingness to engage in large scale combinations (relational), (ii) emphasis on process dimension and (iii) epistemic openness (Hulgard and Shajahan, 2013) can be used to examine the possibility of a dynamic combination of (social) value orientations of Social Innovation and an approach putting the people at the centre of development discourses.

Keywords: People Centred Social Innovation, Institutional analysis, Participation, Social Capital