A neoliberalisation of civil society? Self-help groups and the labouring class poor in rural South India

Abstract

This paper notes the prominence of self-help groups (SHGs) within current anti-poverty policy in India, and analyses the impacts of government- and NGO-backed SHGs in rural North Karnataka. It argues that self-help groups represent a partial neoliberalisation of civil society in that they address poverty through low-cost methods that do not challenge the existing distribution of power and resources between the dominant class and the labouring class poor. It finds that intra-group savings and loans and external loans/subsidies can provide marginal economic and political gains for members of the dominant class and those members of the labouring classes whose insecure employment patterns currently provide above poverty line consumption levels, but provide neither material nor political gains for the labouring class poor. Target-oriented SHG catalysts are inattentive to how the social relations of production reproduce poverty and tend to overlook class relations and socio-economic and political differentiation within and outside of groups, which are subject to interference by dominant class local politicians and landowners.

Keywords:

• poverty
• self help groups
• civil society
• Karnataka
• India

Notes

¹Based on a conversion rate of 40 rupees to one dollar, as are all subsequent figures.

²See Elliot (2003) for a discussion of the Lockean and Toquvillean antecedents of this liberal view of civil society.

³There is no space here to engage with the vast literature on civil society in India, which includes studies on social movements by (Shah 2002), subaltern studies (Guha 1983), and critiques of civil society (Chatterjee 2004). Significantly, Harriss (2007) argues that civil society organisations in urban India are dominated by the middle class and relatively distanced from the everyday concerns of the urban poor.

⁴The term is based on Bernstein's (2008) term ‘classes of labour’ (see below).

⁵From the 1970s to the 1990s, India put greater emphasis on lending directly mostly to individual males through government schemes such as the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IDRP). Critiques of the IRDP are common. See, for example, Lieten and Srivastava (1999).

⁶The World Bank has made a similar argument, though in somewhat weaker terms (World Bank 2000, 156–7).

⁷Such as (1) the type of labour relations at village level (see, for example, Kapadia (1995) – variables include forms of tied labour, annual contracts, and individual daily wage work versus group contract work (the latter almost invariably provides higher wages in North Karnataka), and (2) the impact that cropping patterns and the availability of non-agricultural work have on labour supply and demand and hence on the politics of wage negotiations.

⁸Scoones attributes this point to O'Laughlin (2004, 393), although she makes the point less explicitly.

⁹Although on a smaller scale than most of the examples referred to by Agarwal (1994b).

¹⁰The Karnataka State Farmers Association (KRRS) had a strong social base in one of this paper's fieldwork villages in the early 1990s. Scheduled caste men referred to it as an organisation of the rich and said that they had been told to attend rallies. Organisationally it was controlled by dominant caste (Panchamsali Lingayat) large farmers, although commercialised marginal surplus/deficit producers actively supported the organisation. In the other fieldwork village, the organisation had a markedly weaker presence primarily as its principal landowning caste (Other Backward Caste Marathas) was not the dominant caste in the district and regarded the KRRS as a Panchamsali Lingayat dominated organisation (see Pattenden 2005, 2006 for further details).

¹¹Interview with SH Patil, NABARD representative Dharwad District, 12 January 2007.

¹²Pseudonyms.

¹³This was in order to have a representative sample. Our analysis of SHGs is class- rather than caste-centred.

¹⁴Based upon visits to ten additional villages in the district.

¹⁵See the author's PhD thesis (2006).

¹⁶Village-level workers paid by the Department of Women and Child Development to run crèches and other services.

¹⁷With this figure (based on the India poverty line) a substantial number of issues remain outstanding – not least the appropriate level of calorie intake for those who depend on physical labour, and the costs of accessing basic healthcare or of responding to extraordinary household costs.

¹⁸Adjusted for inflation from Mahendra Dev and Ravi's (2008, 9) 2004–05 figure.

¹⁹Seven Raichur villages were visited in June-July 2007 and 2008, whilst one village was visited in Mandya district in June 2008. Surveys were conducted in all these villages either on a household or group basis.

²⁰The high cost of healthcare in the area (exacerbated by informal charges routinely levied by the main public hospital) was one of the main reasons the vulnerability line was set at $1 per capita per day. Health crises can complicate the line dividing net buyers and sellers of labour-power (for example, land may be mortgaged during a health crisis making a household net sellers of labour-power for the period of the health crisis, usually for some time afterwards, and possibly in the long-term if the land is not regained).

²¹Based on fieldwork data collected in 2002 and 2007.

²²Chant (2008); da Corta and Venkateshwarlu (1999). In 2001, 58.2 percent of Karnataka's agricultural workforce was female (Government of India 2001 cited in Garikapati 2009, 517).

²³Statement based on the detailed testimony of two key informants.

²⁴Reliance is India's largest private sector enterprise. Its major shareholder, Anil Ambani, is India's third richest man.

²⁵See also Kalpana (2005, 5402).

²⁶In contemporary Dharwad, the term devdasi usually approximates to sex worker.

²⁷These need to be offset against loss of earnings from waged labour due to the time invested in grazing the buffaloes.

²⁸Based on an average six-month long retention of a buffalo yielding an estimated 40 rupee profit per week once lost wages have been factored in.

²⁹See also Satish (2005, 1738).

³⁰Interviews with DWCD officials; minutes from District-Level CDPOs meeting, May 2007.

³¹Interviews with NGO directors.

³²Interview with deputy director, May 2007.

³³Interview with DP, March 2007.

³⁴This implies that social acceptance of domestic violence is widespread, as the Ministry of Women and Child Development (2006, 98) has indicated.

³⁵Interview, 7 March 2007.

³⁶Interview with CDPO, February 2007.

³⁷The ascription of the term ‘fixer’ to the individual in question is based on circumstantial evidence noted on 12 visits to the TP office between December 2006 and March 2007.

³⁸Interviews with assistant programme officer in December 2006, and in January and March 2007.

³⁹MLAs tend to be from dominant class households. The six district (ZP) councillors from Dharwad taluk were all from dominant class households at the time of fieldwork. The same was true of all sub-district (TP) councillors that we encountered during fieldwork.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Pattenden

The author would like to thank the editors of JPS, four anonymous referees for comments on an earlier draft, and Shravani for research assistance.