The ‘Kudumbashree Woman’ and the Kerala Model Woman: Women and Politics in Contemporary Kerala

Introduction

Long celebrated as a model of alternate development in southern India, Kerala society is often identified as one that accords greater worth to women, ¹ even though the exclusion of women from powerful positions in politics is unmistakable in the state’s historical record (Erwer, 2003; Jeffrey, 2003). ² Nevertheless, there is now a notable presence of women in local government, made possible through a women’s quota of 50 per cent ³ and a state-wide network, the Kudumbashree (literally, ‘prosperity of the family’; henceforth KS), a project under the state’s aegis comprising women’s self-help groups (SHGs). ⁴ KS women leaders seem to be able to enter the panchayats more readily and thus form an important section of lower level leaders of the state’s political parties. ⁵

Nevertheless, many left-leaning and other commentators seem to be concerned about KS women, as is evident in their responses to the form of protest undertaken in October 2012 by large numbers of KS women in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala’s capital city. Though under the leadership of the women’s front of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, the KS women changed the party’s ‘respectable’ style of agitation by introducing public singing and dancing. ⁶ Commentators sympathetic to the CPM chose to ignore this obvious element of ‘trouble’ by interpreting the agitation as an expression of ‘class feminism’ (by which they meant the reinstatement of the class question at the heart of feminism) and distinguishing between proper and improper feminisms (Biju & Kumar, 2013), but others condemned the transgression as ‘spicy’ (Jacob, 2012). Summarising their common concern, one could ask what the KS is doing to the Kerala Model Woman? The ‘Kerala Model Woman’ refers to Robin Jeffrey’s thesis (2003) that egalitarian developmentalist public politics and active female domestic agents emancipated from tradition together caused high social development in Kerala, a thesis that remains persuasive in many circles today despite strong critiques (Mukhopadhyay, 2007).

Taking up the question of women’s presence in Kerala politics, it is found that contemporary feminist literature indicates heightening struggles over gender questions, intersectional struggles, and the continuing marginality of women in politics despite their increased visibility (Devika & Thampi, 2012; Economic and Political Weekly, 2014). Are the above misgivings about the perversion of the Kerala Model Woman indicative of a major change in gendered spatial demarcations? Are KS women, visible now, finally overcoming political marginality? What are the implications of ‘responsibilised’ ⁷ women’s empowerment for women’s access to politics in Kerala?

In the following section, I offer a brief account of the transformation of women’s domestic and public roles in Kerala from the mid 20th century to the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The emergence of responsibilised welfare targeting women is an important event in the latter period. I then draw upon two spells of largely qualitative fieldwork to reflect on the effects of the KS on women’s presence in politics. The first spell, in 2006–2008, covered seven districts, ⁸ and the second, in 2013–2014, focused on two extremely disadvantaged sites in the state, ⁹ the aim being not a simple comparison, but the drawing of specific insights from the second spell that would extend or qualify the insights from the first. Moreover, since the KS has often been hailed as an accessible gateway to public life for the poorest women, it is worthwhile to examine its efficacy in precisely such contexts.

This paper shares the concerns of the feminist critiques of masculinist notions of citizenship, gender mainstreaming, self-help and ‘invited spaces’ and quotas for women in India and elsewhere (Batliwala & Dhanraj, 2004; Cornwall & Goetz, 2005;Hassim, 2010; Manicom, 2001; Mouffe, 1995; von Bulow, 1995). Though these critiques do apply to the KS in large measure (Devika & Thampi, 2007), in this paper I hope to add to the conversation by emphasising that (a) given that the targets of the KS are active subjects with specific histories and life experiences, ‘unintended consequences’ are likely; and (b) these produce different impacts in different places, and initial conditions are vital in determining what they may be.

The Rise of the Kudumbashree Woman

The state of Kerala was formed at a moment when pre-modern patriarchies had faded and patriarchal formations, which naturalised gender in and through the various social/community reform movements, had triumphed. The decline of the pre-modern caste order meant that women of most social groups experienced individuation to some degree. Nevertheless, hegemonic modern domestic ideologies in social/community reformisms and the state worked as powerful countervailing factors (Devika, 2007). The individuating effects of the massive expansion of women’s access to higher education in the mid 20th century were counterbalanced by sacrificial domestic ideologies. ¹⁰ It was largely lower caste women workers who moved from less gendered working lives into highly gendered domestic lives (Lindberg, 2001), and domestic ideologies and restrictive notions of feminine respectability now thrived among the literate poor women (den Uyl, 1995). Women were largely excluded from political power even when they formed majorities in trade union membership and participated actively in militant working-class action (Devika & Thampi, 2012; Lindberg, 2001). These developments ran parallel to decreasing fertility, the two-child norm and a decline in joint families, changing the nature of the domestic labour of childcare (Devika, 2008). The gradual decay of agriculture and traditional industries in this period affected women workers the worst (Arun, 1999; Lindberg, 2001); women’s land ownership declined and even the vestiges of matriliny ended (Arun, 1999). High dowry demands came to characterise marriage negotiations of an increasing number of communities (Kodoth & Eapen, 2005). However, all this unfolded at a period when there was substantial state investment in health and education and access was secured for the poor through militant public action (Jeffrey, 2003).

Late 20th-century politico-economic conditions were considerably altered, but the idea that women needed ‘balance’ between individuation and domestic orientation stayed hegemonic. Research on Kerala’s ‘remittance economy’ (Planning Commission, 2008; Raman, 2010) shows that skilled labour has been, since the late 20th century, Kerala’s major ‘export’. The making of globally marketable human power requires closer disciplining of the ‘raw material’, the child, and the female caregiver’s affective labour of managing emotions (Weeks, 2007) is necessary for this. Additionally, the general fall in public-service provisioning in health and education in the post-liberalisation years (Oommen, 2010), the rise in the number of female-headed households (Lini, 2013, p. 9) and the dismal prospects of employment and income for women in Kerala (Christabell, 2012, pp. 92–93, 96) indicate that the material aspects of women’s domestic burdens have also risen in comparison to the pre-migration, pre-liberalisation period. It is possible that the rising cost of education and seeking of jobs for men indirectly pushed up dowry rates even in poor communities (Devika, 2013).

Decline of state welfare was accompanied by responsibilised welfare that targeted women, cutting for them a path on which to move between the domestic sphere and the market sphere. Women’s domestic duty seems to have been extended to include the larger measure of household provisioning in and through programmes such as the Urban Basic Services Programme (UBSP) and, later, the KS. Women were now regarded as economic agents with access to credit, but the KS emphasised income generation, not wage labour, and did not violate dominant norms of gender segregation. However, a new and higher level of balance between individuation and domesticity now seemed possible, and it is little wonder that studies of KS women reveal them as upbeat despite poor economic returns (Eapen & Thomas, 2005). These developments signalled the emergence of a new ‘regime of empowerment’ that displaced the older one, which had been central to Kerala’s many social-development achievements and understood ‘empowerment’ as the claiming of welfare entitlements as ‘people’s rights’, militant mass mobilisation and a constant challenge to bureaucratic power. Its major instrumental form had been the national developmentalist state; its institutional forms, the political parties and trade unions in formal politics. In contrast, the 1990s’ new regime of empowerment interpreted ‘empowerment’ as flexibility within the existing social hierarchy and self-help. Its instrumental form was local government, viewed as representing local community interests, and its institutional form the SHG. Civil society, understood as descriptive, non-critical and state centric, and feminised, was taken to be at its core. Most importantly, this ‘regime of empowerment’ consecrated the below-poverty-line woman as its principal subject.

Women in this regime could access ‘invited spaces’ of governmentalised welfare (including the KS), where they could, potentially, learn the ropes of local government. The risk, obviously, was that these women would be trapped at the lowest level of the highly gender-iniquitous development bureaucracy as underpaid voluntary workers. But given that familiarity with bureaucratic procedures and norms was by now inevitable for elected members in the local government and that the women’s quota (of 33 per cent initially, and now 50 per cent) had to be fulfilled, KS women leaders found themselves in great demand, actively wooed and organised by political parties, especially the CPM, through women’s wings (Centre for Development Studies, 2008).

Certainly, the KS woman was not automatically open to feminist mobilisation. Worse, given women’s century-long exclusion from power in public politics, KS women leaders were at risk of being captured individually by local party structures, and collectively by political parties, none of whom showed sustained interest in gender equality (Devika & Thampi, 2012; Erwer, 2003).

Enter the Subject of Aanukoolyam

The spell of fieldwork ¹¹ in 2006–2008 with KS leaders at village panchayat level seemed to confirm the above fears. If working-class women were ‘effeminised’ in the mid 20th century, it appeared now that the lower-middle-class woman, ¹² who carried out domestic and affective labour at home, was being interpellated into socially oriented hyper- femininity.

Three kinds of political authority competed to utilise the services of KS leaders—political parties, the panchayat, and the KS mission itself. It was apparent that most of our interviewees were closely affiliated to particular political parties, out of commitment or necessity, and that even when they were impartial in welfare distribution they used their connection with the poor to build ground support in and for their respective parties. They felt that it was risky to antagonise local political leaders and the panchayat but, crucially, they believed that the KS was ‘under’ the panchayat and hence had to take orders from elected representatives. ¹³ The second authority, the panchayat, seemed to be reproducing exploitative domestic power relations in community space, and even denying women’s political citizenship. Interviewees’ perception of the Women’s Component Plan, a mandatory component of the panchayat’s plan in Kerala, was that it was a dole, and not their collective right as citizens. Besides, KS women were often caught between different bureaucracies, some sympathetic, some not. A feared figure was the ‘charge officer’, a local-level official assigned to assist the Chairperson of the Community Development Society (henceforth, CDS CP) in accounts keeping, report writing and other such routine tasks, the CDS being the village-level federation of KS groups. Most CDS CPs we interviewed had no clear idea of this officer’s responsibilities and he/she was treated as a higher authority. The KS mission’s district-level office was widely perceived to be far more friendly, flexible and gender sensitive. Most district coordinators interviewed were critical of the panchayats’ and local politicians’ use of KS women and of the domestic patriarchy that prevented them from accessing training and other microenterprise opportunities. But this more ‘humanised’ bureaucracy (as perceived by our interviewees) could not always resist the temptation to deploy KS women in tasks that could potentially disempower them in the community, such as data collection bordering on surveillance. Nor could their disdain of the KS leaders’ political ambitions be missed. As for anti-patriarchal politics, most CDS CPs interviewed felt that it was necessary to intervene only in cases in which the patriarchal moral economy was violated. It was also striking that they seemed to perceive themselves primarily as members of the lower tiers of the development bureaucracy and not as local leaders. So their most frequently voiced complaint was about honoraria and the denial of bureaucratic status to their authority.

However, there were already signs of ‘unintended consequences’ in the rank and file of the KS. Its leaders were critical of those they referred to as ‘aanukoolyam seekers’, or seekers of welfare handouts. Aanukoolyam seekers observed market discipline in repayments, which was relatively easy given the low interest rates, but apparently dodged ‘governance labour’ or the many subsidiary tasks that SHG members are expected to perform, such as dissemination of information, attendance at government functions and labour related to preparing the venue, etc.; health-related work; care of destitutes and other social service promoted by the panchayat; and the keeping of records and accounts. Such work was either unpaid or very poorly paid, but panchayats often claimed that the rank and file were obliged to perform it, being welfare beneficiaries. Despite the KS leaders’ best efforts, the rank and file demanded more benefits instead of quietly participating. KS leaders felt that they were dealing with people who resembled ungovernable consumers, in contrast to older-generation party supporters who were unfailingly loyal even when the party could not meet their demands immediately. The rank and file apparently indulged in ‘unhealthy’ financial practices, migrating between credit networks. Their leaders clearly felt that these women were not moving from domesticity to income generation along the disciplined path of responsibilised welfare. They certainly did not appear to meekly accept the semi-pedagogic, semi-bureaucratic authority of the CDS CP; instead, it appeared that their sheer proximity to the leaders within the panchayat’s space made it possible for the KS rank and file to threaten the CDS CP with exile back into individual domesticity by using gossip and slander. The KS leaders’ grip on their constituencies seemed very shaky.

However, these welfare seekers cannot to be dismissed as a greedy horde. In a context in which responsibilised welfare was thrust on them, they seemed indeed to indicate a new mode for the poor to gain vital consumption resources from the state. Though the KS was originally planned as a state-centric civil society, its rank and file now seem to function as a ‘civil–political society’, composed overwhelmingly of women. The new welfarism of the 1990s did not usher the poor into civil society, and nor did it foster the political–society formation pointed to by Partha Chatterjee (2004); instead, a hybrid, the civil–political society, seems to be taking shape. The civil–political society also gathers in the space in which the legal and bureaucratic apparatus of development interacts with populations, as in Chatterjee’s description of political society. But if the groups that manoeuvre in political society are often illegal entities that advance demands through projecting on to particular populations the moral attributes of a community, civil–political society is composed of legal entities with which the state can negotiate directly. SHGs operate within a framework of clearly laid rules; they are formally shaped and controlled by government agencies. However, it was clear from our interviews that the CDS CPs were forced by the rank and file to engage in paralegal negotiations quite similar to negotiators of Chatterjean political society. Nevertheless, this hybrid grouping was hardly amenable to collective action because it was difficult to project the moral attributes of a community on the SHG women, who resembled more a group of individual rational agents. This is no coincidence because the liberal logic of SHGs treats collective interest as the sum of individual preferences. Hence its reliability as a political constituency is decidedly low. ¹⁴ And the poorest were often left out, as in Chatterjean political society (John & Deshpande, 2008; Williams, Thampi, Narayana, Nandigama, & Bhattacharyya, 2011).

In short, the 2006–2008 fieldwork produced a mixed picture. KS woman leaders seemed to confirm feminist critiques of self-help-centred ‘women’s empowerment’ (Batliwala & Dhanraj, 2004). However, there were undeniable ‘unintended consequences’. Even critiques preceding demands for women’s full citizenship ¹⁵ were absent. Nevertheless, by 2008, the KS itself seemed to be entering a new phase with the adoption of a new by-law that clarified several key aspects of the KS–panchayat relation, as well as the relation between the three tiers at village level.

New Possibilities?

The adoption of the new by-law in 2008 was unpredicted, but made possible by the conjunction of external, contingent factors, such as a strong femocrat leading the programme, the CPM’s attempt to consolidate the ‘base’ built through its absorption of CDS CPs, and the tussle between the departments of local self-government and rural development.

It is important to note that many elements of the by-law were not new as, for example, the CDS’s relative autonomy from the panchayat and restrictions on above poverty line (APL) members (Kadiyala, 2004). ¹⁶ What was new was the importance granted to internal elections, which enabled a reinterpretation of the KS’s position in relation to the panchayat as a ‘partnership’ rather than a ‘sub-system’, and the potential for the exercise of agency by KS leaders vis-à-vis all the three authorities mentioned earlier. The assertion of the CDS’s autonomy vis-à-vis the panchayat comes to the fore, as does the possibility of the KS federation, elected by women, to serve as a vehicle for articulating women’s interests. Stressing the formation of evaluation committees and the CDS action plan, the by-law establishes the CDS as the agency enabling community participation in the determination of local development needs and demands. The by-law also specifies the designation of the Charge Officer as ‘member secretary’ to the CDS, placing this officer unquestionably below the CDS CP. The provision to appoint an accountant in each CDS may reduce the power of rural development officials over KS leaders. Through internal elections, the new by-law prevents direct appointment of the CDS CP by the local political party controlling the panchayat. The KS leaders potentially gain the valuable experience of election campaigning. Also, the by-law allows entry to all women beyond the below poverty line/APL divide (subject to certain restrictions regarding availability of welfare grants and subsidies, etc.) and this increases the KS’s potential as a platform for ‘women’, and not merely for female recipients of targeted welfare. Simultaneously, the provision for appropriate proportional reservation for underprivileged women in all general and governing bodies could complicate the category of ‘women’. Thus it potentially moves, on the one hand, away from the reduction of ‘women’ to ‘below poverty line women’ in Kerala’s gender mainstreaming, and on the other, to acknowledging the inequalities within the category of ‘women’. This could counter the deeply individualising effects of the SHG’s liberal structure, wherein each woman represents her family’s interests and not the collective interests of women.

However, as was pointed out to us by KS officials, it took a long while for the by-law’s provisions to be evenly implemented state-wide. Also, the inclusion of APL women cannot be expected to lead to significant shifts in membership and activism precisely because of contemporary Kerala’s social divides, the chief characteristic of which is the separation of spaces for the better-off and the poor, a key to heightening inequality. ¹⁷ Some aspects, especially the appointment of an accountant, have been implemented evenly throughout because of the insistence of higher authorities. Finally, I wish to strongly emphasise that the by- law offers not opportunities but possibilities—which may or may not materialise into opportunities depending on specific socio-political ‘initial conditions’.

Below, I reflect on the impact of this institutional change in the KS on two physically comparable but extremely disadvantaged sites, an urban slum and a fishing hamlet in the southern district of Thiruvananthapuram. By choosing two disadvantaged sites my aim, obviously not to reach generalisable conclusions, is limited to a brief examination of the specific configurations of circumstances that allow for some, but not all, possibilities to develop. Some elements of the new by-law are not relevant for these sites—for example, the provision to add APL women—and some have evenly positive effects, primarily the appointment of the accountant. However, other elements seem to have definitely made an impact on one site, but not on the other.

Conclusions

In a striking commonality between Kulamnagar and Adimalathura, concern was voiced by the men and elders about the KS women being too assertive and even arrogant and disobedient. This was despite the open acknowledgement of their work for the community and the collective gains it brought. In other words, the KS woman’s achievements were not disputed, but not always approved. However, if KS women in Kulamnagar were perceived to be arrogant because of their political and bureaucratic connections, in Adimalathura the women’s lessening economic dependence on the men in the family and their growing clout in the parish were thought to be fuelling their arrogance. It is clear that women’s gains differ considerably at the two sites, and yet, irrespective of their dimensions, they produce anxiety in male authorities. Though the scene is one of struggle, KS leaders persevere at local governance despite the increasing domestic burdens, both material and immaterial, and the hostility. In other words, the state’s eagerness to set up women as agents of welfare seems to have produced ambivalent effects in the field of gender politics, leading to the present struggle. Nevertheless, the success of KS leaders depends substantially on the nature of their constituencies—and hence institutional change at higher levels, by itself, can mean little. The two case studies make evident the difference between the civil–political society and the vernacular civil society as support bases for women leaders.

What then does this mean for feminism in Kerala? It is true that the essentially liberal SHG has become the standard form of organising women in Kerala and the civil–political society is not necessarily amenable to feminist goals in an immediate sense. Nevertheless, the importance of initial conditions is evident. The KS, dispersed over very diverse sites, is necessarily heterogeneous in its effects, and feminists need to pay attention to the micro-dynamics of specific sites. Other research and popular struggle indicate that KS women are open to other forms of organising, formal and informal (Neethi, 2014; New Indian Express, 2012). That ‘Kudumbashree’ need not always signify neoconservatism was revealed when interviewees remarked quite subversively that for them the KS did not refer to actual families in Kerala but to a ‘future family, a very large one, of all women and their children, the only one that can be truly auspicious’. There can be little doubt that feminists are interested in non-patriarchal imaginings of community. There can also be little doubt that the KS is constituted of women who enjoy ‘an official, public recognition of the agency of women workers in national life’ and therefore hold the potential to form what Rajeswari Sunder Rajan has called a ‘voluntary community’ (Rajan, 2000, p. 75).

On the one hand, Kerala’s mainstream left, invested in an ‘underprivileged’ unmarked by gender, religion or community, treats the collective noun ‘women’ largely as a proxy for this group. On the other hand, the socially and economically right-wing caste–community organisations and political parties seek to control ‘their’ women through microcredit networks. Given this, it is up to the feminists to espouse a ‘voluntary community’ of women and engage with KS women democratically. This is not easy; it requires a deep critique of gender-training models that implicitly or otherwise set up an unequal pedagogical relation between feminist activists and KS women. Feminist self-reflexivity and questions about the adequacy of familiar forms of feminist mobilisation would be crucial here.