How Kerala’s women-led community councils provide a safety net for millions

In the 1990s, UNICEF was piloting a program in the small socialist state of Kerala, in the southern part of India, along with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. It was a program aimed at getting food to people who needed it the most, primarily through finding women whose families were slipping through the cracks.

After a devolution of power at a state level in Kerala gave more authority to local village councils (also known as panchayats) the state government embarked on an ambitious mission to eradicate absolute poverty within 10 years. A crucial element of that plan was empowering women – who were often highly literate but consigned to staying at home – to earn an income and to have a bigger say in their panchayats. The UNICEF program was eventually phased out, but several of its key tenets set the foundation for the Kudumbashree, an organisation set up in 1998.

Hari Kishore, a civil servant who’s currently the Executive Director of the Kudumbashree, said that their estimates suggest roughly 50% of the families in Kerala are covered by the Kudumbashree program. “There are roughly 4.4 million members in Kerala,” said Kishore over email. “The organisation is always strengthening the network, providing training for members, working with local bodies and other departments to enable progress.”

Roughly 50% of the families in Kerala are covered by the Kudumbashree program

The Kudumbashree is built on neighbourhood groups – in each ward in a district, each group is composed of up to 20 women. The group meets once a week in a member of the group’s house, and members discuss what’s happening at their panchayat. Every member of the neighbourhood group contributes to a fund – usually around 10-50 rupees (£0.10-£0.50) which is linked to a local bank. When one member of the group needs money, they can petition to withdraw money from the shared fund. Kishore points out that repayment rates are high because people are investing directly back into their communities.

The Kudumbashree has only been around for just over two decades, but women around the state have felt the effects on their lives in multiple ways. “I joined the group with 20 other women, but the unit started working in 2001,” said Sheeja, who is in the Kanjikuzhy panchayat. “I’ve been operating the bank account, I’ve helped with the tailoring unit and a retail shop – we get material at a discounted price from the Kudumbashree, which we can sell at a profit to reinvest back into our joint fund.”

Each village group is part of an “area development society”. Every group has a representative who goes to monthly meetings, and all of the area development societies are affiliated to a community development society. There are 1,064 community development societies in the entire state.

There are three broad areas that the Kudumbashree organisation focuses on – social empowerment, economic empowerment and ‘women empowerment’. All three of these streams feed into each other. While the Kudumbashree was initially set up to alleviate the immediate circumstances for women in low income areas, it also ended up being a way to build community links and to provide employment for women even if they didn’t finish high school or have a university degree.

Centrally, Kudumbashree makes this possible by focusing on business opportunities for the women involved –  there are roughly 224,000 businesses of this kind. Villages organise all female construction teams – where women are given training in construction and site supervision techniques, which they can then put towards a certification.

The Department of Local Self Government, which was set up in the late 90s, provides most of the funding – in the first year (1997-1998), the budget was 10 million Indian rupees (£105,114). The actual financing of the microfinance schemes – such as small loans to set up businesses, or the wages for working in community kitchens – comes from the Department of Local Self Government, but is distributed via the panchayat.

“The other area that we focus on is livelihood – there are more than 3,000 women who have formed Joint Liability Groups for collective farming,” said Kishore. In some areas, women take on the responsibility of tending to lands around where they live (around 54,000 hectares of land across the state). Some of that food goes back into the communities through community kitchens, while other crops are sold at a profit.  Coconut trees, for example, are a huge source of income for Kerala – but there often aren’t enough people to pull down the coconuts. Women in neighbourhood groups teamed up to train each other on how to do so.

“Kudumbashree can help women achieve mobility and self-sustainability"

There are also partnerships with other elements of local government – the public transport system in Kochi, also known as Ernakallum, the biggest city in Kerala, is almost fully run by women from neighbourhood groups.

Since 1994, a series of reforms at local and state government made it possible for women to ascend to positions of political power in village councils, by encouraging a quota of female representatives (50% of seats). “Kudumbashree can help women achieve mobility and self-sustainability to some extent,” said R Parvathy Devi, who formerly worked in a local Kudumbashree office for four years.

“A lot of women studied up to plus two [the equivalent of 13th grade], and then they got married and had no life outside of the home. Now, they meet every Sunday, discuss politics and personal issues, and even officials in the panchayat need their help if they want to make changes in the village.”

Part of the reason that this scheme is possible in Kerala is because of the state level political infrastructure. Local governance often happens at a village level, and so the neighbourhood groups already fit into established systems of government.  “We have a tradition of community activities,” added Devi. “Panchayats have a history of decentralised planning and implementation.”

During this pandemic, these groups have been able to spring into action. Neighbourhood groups were able to mobilise resources to produce masks, hand sanitiser and meals in community kitchens. For many communities, you don’t even have to be a member of the Kudumbashree to reap the benefits. — Sanjana Varghese

(Photo credit: Ishrant Mishra/Unsplash)