Performing Participatory Citizenship - Politics and Power in Kerala's Kudumbashree Programme

Glyn Williams (1) , Binitha V Thampi (2) , D Narayana (3) , Sailaja Nandigama (4) , Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya (5)

1 Town and Regional Planning
2 IIT Madras - Indian Institute of Technology Madras
3 Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum
4 WUR - Wageningen University and Research [Wageningen]
5 Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

This paper examines the operation of Kudumbashree, the Poverty Eradication Mission for Kerala (India). Kudumbashree operates through female-only Neighbourhood Groups, which aim to contribute to their participants' economic uplift, and to integrate them with the activities and institutions of local governance. As such, Kudumbashree echoes poverty alleviation programmes elsewhere in the Global South designed to link poverty alleviation to 'active citizenship'. This paper evaluates the programme, arguing that although Kudumbashree has undoubtedly been successful in supporting women's public participation, questions remain over the autonomy of the 'invited spaces' it has created, and the underlying vision of poverty alleviation it embodies.

Mots clés: Social Sciences & Humanities

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Glyn Williams, Binitha V Thampi, D Narayana, Sailaja Nandigama, Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya. Performing Participatory Citizenship - Politics and Power in Kerala's Kudumbashree Programme. The Journal of Development Studies, 2011, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/00220388.2010.527949⟩. ⟨hal-00722234⟩