A Consultation on Community Driven Nonviolent Economy

 DRAFT JCH Revision: November 12, 2021

A Consultation on Community Driven Nonviolent Economy

Producer Collectives take lessons from SHG Movement

In the past few decades, the Self-Help Group Movement backed by the Government and Non-government-led poverty reduction programs existed across the developing countries. In India, the SHG Movement was financed by the Banking Sector under its priority lending, which was claimed as one of their successful initiatives. The nation-wide drive for financial inclusion of the economically backward classes has however, been received differently in the various regions of the country. Ironically, the most positive result has been the high degree of women’s empowerment, and not the desired goal of financial inclusion.

The SHG Movement has tried to address the twin agendas of economic development in poor families as a part of poverty reduction strategy, and the empowerment of women through leadership development. Now, it is well recognised the world over that marginalized communities need many other services other than credit to increase their incomes for this alone is not sufficient to reduce poverty. In India, many organizational innovations happened in the field of micro-finance. Among membership based microfinance models, co-operatives and SHG Federations became significant models. These models helped the marginalized exercise control over decisions and organizational resources, and they owned and managed organizations to gain benefit for themselves.

These models were by and large driven by donor-sponsored projects, government sponsored livelihood missions and programs, relief and rehabilitation centred programs that had been rolled out after major disasters. Most of the project driven SHG initiatives were short-lived and there were no sustainable institutions of SHGs that continued beyond projects, except a few, which were designed and implemented by NGOs.  

In the recent decade, taking clues from some of the successful aspects of the SHG Movement, farmers’ collectives in the form of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) evolved and were nurtured by both Government and Non-Government Organisations working in the farm sector. The FPOs are found to be a viable institutional option to safeguard the best interest of the farmers. The Government of India launched an ambitious program to promote “10,000 FPOs” under its Central Sector Scheme. The Cluster Based Business Organisations are spearheading this mission across the country. Mushrooming numbers of FPOs across the country has been a sign of enthusiastic participation of farmers. Going beyond finance, the producer collectives work on a wide-range of agri-business solutions including improving production efficiency of farms, reducing the transaction costs, efficient value chain interventions, augmenting the social capital that had been built in the producer collectives.

The success of SHG Movement was possible due to several networking and advocacy platforms that had been created at the regional, national, and global levels. These networks facilitated the growth of the SHG Movement by way of advocating for pro-poor policy frameworks, rating and grading of SHG federations, channelizing resources and so on. Unlike the SHG Movement, the producer collectives do not have such a regional or national network nor a clear vision for transforming the producer collectives into a nation-wide Movement.

Unleashing the potential of Producer Collectives

The Indian farming system known for its cooperative and collective community approaches in the form of the exchange of seeds, application of manure, commonly-used farm equipment, manual labour and other resources meant for production. All these exchanges happened informally without any institutional arrangements. For instance, betel vine cultivation in Tamil Nadu is an example of collective farming, where the small farmers and landless labourers joined together and took-up cultivation collectively by pooling their resources and sharing the income. The artisans and handloom weavers united under Sarvodaya Sangams used to exchange their products and services and sell them under a common brand through retail khadi stores. Farmers joining together to repair and maintain the age-old system of irrigation tanks in southern India has been a practice for centuries. Cooperative Movement took its roots from all such indigenous collective community experiences. Producer Collectives, which have become popular today, are the institutionalised forms of informal systems that have existed in our society. There are hundreds of such informal practices and formal institutions based on the principles of mutuality and cooperation.

For instance, even before the rolling out of legal-framework for exclusive producer companies in 2014, CCD did an experiment in 2000 itself by promoting a member-owned community enterprise called “Gram Mooligai Company Limited”. GMCL was the first cooperative of medicinal plants and products as a public limited company set up in the country. It was owned by the rural community of medicinal plant collectors and cultivators because they were its shareholders. CCD along with Ekta Parishad and Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) went on to promote a Confederation of Community-based Enterprises (CEFI) to provide space for community enterprises across the country that exchanged their expertise, shared resources, gained collective strength in the marketing of the produce. Aharam was a second Consortium of Producer Organisations that was promoted by CCD in 2005 to provide an organised enterprise platform for the Producer Organisations. This was working on traditional crops to exchange their produces, collectively market their products and to gain scale advantage.

While these producer collectives and community enterprises were backed by the institutional safeguards through suitable laws and regulations, they also had adopted principles of commerce with moral standing, and ethical standards that included care and concern for fellow human beings and the natural eco-system. They showed the importance of responsible production and consumption as twin goals for mitigating the escalating crisis of climate change. It necessitates economic intermediation, trade and commerce imbibed with reference to Gandhian values of local self-governance and local resource use. JC Kumarappa, known as Gandhi’s economist, postulated the theory of economy based on permanence from the mostly rural Indian context drawing on the spirit of cooperation, service and solidarity that prevails in what he called the ‘natural economy’. He insisted on economic value creation without leading to economy of violence. Building an economy of nonviolence necessitates reversal of priorities such as moving from external dependence to internal self-reliance, macro to micro planning, centralisation to decentralisation.

Producer Collectives as Vehicles of Nonviolent Economy

CCD has been working with the small and marginal farm producers, medicinal plant gatherers and local healers for over three decades in the southern agro-climatic region of Tamil Nadu. It has established Kalasam Livelihood Academy to assimilate and disseminate the accumulated knowledge and experience gained from dealing with the resilient farming practices of smallholder farms, low external input sustainable agricultural production, sustainable collection and conservation of medicinal plant resources and bio-diversity. Catching up with the rapidly growing FPO sector in the recent years, CCD has evolved, designed and implemented a farmer-led community enterprise model among rainfed farmers in southern Tamil Nadu.       

CCD joins with the Jai Jagat, a global campaign spearheaded by Ekta Parishad, an Indian Social Movement that has worked for three decades on land, water, and forest rights. Sharing the common goals of promoting sustainable and responsible production and consumption, and showing the judicious use of rapidly depleting natural resources, while eliminating predatory practices in trade and commerce, CCD aligns with the Jai Jagat Movement for promoting a nonviolent economy based on local action for global change.

There are many successful community enterprise models across south India that could be showcased during the Jai Jagat 2022 campaign in southern India. Subsequently, these initiatives can be replicated in the northern Indian Context.   

Consultation on Success stories of Nonviolent Economy from Grassroots

The 2022 Jai Jagat Campaign is scheduling consultations and field visits in southern India in the period of January and April 2022 with national and international solidarity groups. In preparation for these consultations and exposure visits of nonviolent economy at the grassroots, a meeting of development management experts and practitioners has been scheduled on December 4 & 5, 2021 at CESCI-Madurai. This will act as a reference group in showcasing successful and community driven nonviolent economic initiatives, and determine the lessons learned, identifying their scaling-up potential, the ways and means for horizontal networking and its reinforcement. This consultation is organised at Madurai and facilitated by CCD along with the Jai Jagat campaign group in southern India.