Paper short abstract:

This paper would attempt to examine the success of the Kudumbashree farm collectives in Kerala, India in creating secure livelihoods for landless women and new accumulation patterns at the local level, furthering the scope and potential of solidarity economies rooted in counter-hegemonic politics.

Paper long abstract:

The peasantry in the global south has been subjected to an expropriation of their lands and livelihoods as an invariable consequence of global capitalist accumulation. The small and marginal farmers in countries like India, whose land holdings constitute the majority of all holdings, have been pushed into impoverishment and deprivation, accentuated by the adoption of the neoliberal growth model. The state of Kerala in India has faced deepening agrarian distress due to its linkages with the global economy and the ever-widening land inequality in the state. The precarity and misery have led to the rise of an alternative model of cooperation and solidarity from the grassroots in Kerala in the form of farm collectives. Through joint pooling of resources, labour and skills, the Kudumbashree, the state’s poverty eradication mission, has formed thousands of women’s collectives across the state. Kerala’s decentralized governance structure has been the fulcrum of this vast network of 65,000 collectives spread across the state. Through cooperation in production at the grassroots, technological advantage of economies of scale are being availed by the small and marginal farmers, at the same time, surplus labour scattered within individual farm households is being proactively engaged in capital formation and agro-processing activities. This study would attempt to examine the success of the collectives in establishing viable livelihoods and enhancing the socioeconomic position of women. The study would also engage with ideas that would further the scope and the potential of solidarity economies, strongly rooted in counter-hegemonic politics.