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.
