Policy and Political Economy in Rural Andhra Pradesh

272 Pages·2013·5.71 MB·English

The Limits of Self Help: Policy and Political Economy

in Rural Andhra Pradesh

A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Faculty of Humanities

2012

Samantha Kathleen Watson

School of Social Sciences
Contents

List of tables, figures, and maps 3
List of acronyms 4
List of appendixes 6
Abstract 7
Declaration 8
Copyright Statement 8
Acknowledgements 9

1 Introduction 10
1.1 The self-help rural development model 10
1.2 Convergence with broader trans-national themes 15
1.3 The agrarian context 18
1.4 Theorising the agrarian context 22
1.5 The structure of the thesis 28

2 Methodology 31
2.1 Recent trends in analysis of self-help interventions: The “experimental mindset” 32
2.2 Decoupling statistical analysis from systemic closure & successionist theory of cause 38
2.3 The scope for integrating context and contingency 43
2.4 The grounds for methodologically coherent mixed methods research 50
2.5 Conclusions 56

3 Data Sources & Analytical Methods 63
3.1 Primary data: The fieldwork sites 63
3.2 Secondary data 75
3.3 Operationalising key concepts and categories 86
3.4 Conclusions 94

4 Collectives, co-operatives, associations: State advocacy of self-help in historical 97
perspective
4.1 The rural cooperative ideal in early Independence India 98
4.2 Co-operatives, compromise, & competing state projects 103
4.3 The abandonment of the rural cooperative ideal 108
4.4 Consolidation of historic trends: From targeting exploitation to targeting “the poor” 111
4.5 Conclusions 116

5 Self-help as a gendered intervention 120
5.1 Women as a category of / for development 120
5.2 Strategic modifications to DWCRA in Andhra: Thrift, joint liability, and peer discipline 126
5.3 Appropriation of the “women’s movement” 133
5.4 Depoliticising dissent: Designating the legitimate sphere of women’s activism 138
5.5 Conclusions 141

6 The scope for self-help via self-employment 144
6.1 Distinguishing social structures, institutions, and actions 144
6.2 Realisable & unrealisable livelihoods in conditions of widespread landlessness 146
6.3 Self-help through self-employment 152
6.4 Lay explanations of labour forms: Continuing appeals to Kulavruthi 161
6.5 Kuluvrathi and meaning-making 167
6.6 Complex interdependencies in the viability of rural non-agricultural livelihoods 173
6.7 Conclusions 178

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7 Challenging / channelling gender institutions 181
7.1 Institutions, social practices, and change 181
7.2 The scope for the SHG programme to operate as a norm circle 183
7.3 Rival institutions and resistance 192
7.4 Challenging / channelling gender institutions within and beyond the household 195
7.5 Reproducing intra-household dependencies 200
7.6 The appetite for group-based co-operation 204
7.7 Conclusions 208

8 Conclusions 211
8.1 Revisiting the mechanisms of social change 211
8.2 New spaces for accumulation and differentiation 213
8.3 Individualising responsibility for needs meeting 216
8.4 Pacifying discontent, discounting emancipation 219

Bibliography 222

Appendixes 237

2
List of tables, figures, & maps

Tables
3.1 Village Y caste composition 67
3.2 Village M caste composition 69
3.3 Entropy balance procedure: key characteristics before & after adjustment 83
3.5 Olsen’s (1996) operationalisation of class in rural A.P 87
3.6 Da Corta & Venkateshwarlu (1997) operationalisation of class in rural A.P 88
3.7 This study’s operationalisation of class in rural A.P (2011) 88
3.8 Application of class categories to the secondary data 89
6.1 Size of household landholding (owned) distributed by household caste 148
6.2 Prevalence of labour activities by size of household landholding 152
6.3 Sample statistics for model presented in table 6.4 174
6.4 Multi-level logistic analysis: Individual odds of undertaking petty business activities 175
7.1 Sample statistics: SHG membership and SHG leadership 186
7.2 Probabilities of self-help group membership 187
7.3 Probabilities of self-help group leadership 191
Figures
1.1 The village co-operative as a unit of development: 1936 – 2012 13
2.1 Basic ingredients of successful social change 41
2.2 The transformational model of social structure and agency 52
3.1 Map of the fieldwork area 64
3.2 Intra-group heterogeneity for the studies participating SHG’s 72
3.3 Household labour class fragmentation(% of households) 89
6.1 Primary labour activity by gender and caste (%) 147
6.2 Household (adjusted) monthly expenditure by class 149
6.3a Ten most prominent industry sectors as a share of all petty business activity (women) 155
6.3b Ten most prominent industry sectors as a share of all petty business activity (men) 155
6.3c Ten most prominent industry sectors as a share of all non-agricultural casual wage 156
labour (women)
6.3d Ten most prominent industry sectors as a share of all non-agricultural casual wage 156
labour (men)
6.4 Awoman supervises her household’s cows 158

6.5a total outstanding formal debt (IRs) (agricultural labour class households) 160
6.5b total outstanding formal indebt (IRs) (agricultural labour class households) 161
6.6 Vadde residents undertaking stone work in village M 165
6.7 A Vadde couple work at stone-cutting at a site 2 miles from village M 166
7.1 Variations in village rates of SHG access and membership for Andhra Pradesh 184
7.2 Probability of SHG membership by household landholding and caste 188
7.3 Probability of SHG membership by household landholding and women’s labour status 189
7.4 Gender and authority for household decision making in rural Andhra Pradesh 202
8.1 The transformational model of the connection between social structure and agency 212
8.2 Basic ingredients of successful social change 213

3
List of acronyms

(AP)NREGS (Andhra Pradesh) National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
AIWC All India Women’s Conference
APERL Andhra Pradesh Economic Reform Loan
APERP Andhra Pradesh Economic Restructuring Programme
AWG Autonomous Women’s Groups
AWTC association of women’s thrift co-operatives
BJP Bharatiya Janata Party
BPL below poverty line
CARC Congress Agrarian Reforms Committee
CCA Child Care Activities
CDS Co-operative Development Society (Sahavikasa)
CPI Communist Party of India
CPI(M) Communist Party of India (Marxist)
CPI(ML) Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
CSWI Committee on the Status of Women in India
DFID Department for International Development (UK)
DPIP District Poverty Initiatives Project
DWCRA Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (programme)
GDP gross domestic product
GKI Ganga Kalyan Yojana (community irrigation scheme)
GoAP Government of Andhra Pradesh
GoI Government of India
HITEC city Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy City
ICSSR Indian Council of Social Science Research
IFI International Financial Institutions
IKP Indira Kranthi Patham
INC Indian Nationalist Congress
IR Indian rupee
IRDP Integrated Rural Development Programme
MMS Mahila Mandal Samakhyas
MOSPI Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
MWS Million Wells Scheme
NABARD National Apex Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development
NCSEWWIS National Commission on Self Employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector
NDC National Development Council
NGO non-governmental organisation
NIE New Institutional Economics
NLRM National Rural Livelihood Mission (programme)
NPP National Perspective Plan for Women
NREGA National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
NSS National Sample Survey (all-India)
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NSSO National Sample Survey Organisation
NTR Chief Minister, N. T. Rama Rao
PCP petty commodity production
POW Progressive Organisation for Women
RBI Reserve Bank of India
RCT randomised controlled trial
RPRP Rural Poverty Reduction Project
SAP structural Adjustment Programme
SAPAP South Asia Poverty Alleviation Programme
SEWA Self Employed Women’s Association of India
SGSY Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana
(Golden Jubilee Rural Self Employment Programme)
SHG self-help group
STRA Supply of Toolkits in Rural Areas
TDP Telugu Dessam Party
TRYSEM Training of Rural Youth for Self-Employment
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
VO village organisation
WB World Bank
WTC Women’s Thrift Cooperative
YLP Young Live's Project (survey)

5
List of appendixes

1. Fieldwork participant information form in English and Telugu 237
2. Fieldwork informed consent form in English and Telugu 243
3. Fieldwork group member face-sheet in English and Telugu 245
4. Fieldwork semi-structured interview framework in English and Telugu 247
5. Fieldwork research assistant contract pro forma 263
6. External validation of the NSS sample weights 265
7. Propensity score derived YLP weights: Detailed entropy balance results 268

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The University of Manchester
Samantha Kathleen Watson
Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities

The Limits of Self Help: Policy and Political Economy in Rural Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Abstract: This thesis analyses the scope for the “self-help” model of rural development to
succeed in its broadly stated aims of enabling rural women to advance their social status and
enhance their own and / or their family’s livelihoods. The thesis is organised around two key sites
of investigation. The first questions the potential for “self-help” to operate within existing social
relations - expressed in access to land, other assets and resources (including credit), and in
different forms, conditions, and relations of labour. The second questions its potential to
intervene in, and potentially overturn, these relations. These questions are embedded in a wider
analysis of the ways in which individual and collective attempts to advance living conditions (or at
least defend them from deterioration) are defined by historically (re)produced social relations.

Analysis is centred on the South Indian State of Andhra Pradesh, where the “self-help” policy
approach, now widely replicated as a model for central and federal interventions, is most
established. This is a mixed-methods study. It draws on statistical analysis of large-scale secondary
survey data, analysis of primary fieldwork, and of government policy documents and other
relevant documentation. The thesis engages directly with the philosophical issues this raises, to
develop a foundation for the logically consistent assimilation of statistical and “qualitative”
methods into mixed methods research. Fieldwork centred on two villages in southern Chittoor
district and relied primarily on repeated in-depth interviews with members of four self help
groups and, where applicable, their husbands (30 respondents in total). Local officials and
programme staff and bank managers were also interviewed. In addition, multi-level logit
regression analysis was conducted with two large-scale, complex secondary data sets; the All India
National Survey Sample (round 61; schedule 10; 2004/05) and the Young Lives Project Survey
(round two; 2005/2006). An innovative weighting procedure was applied to adjust for the latter’s
non-random sampling procedure.

The findings demonstrate the tensions invoked by state policy emphasising agential action in the
absence of due regard for the structural relations within which actions not only take place, but in
which the conditions for their possibility and articulation are generated, institutionalised, and
reproduced. This situation is exacerbated by unfolding ecological crisis in the fieldwork village
sites, problematising the land-based solutions traditionally advocated by the Indian Left. The
thesis concludes that Andhra’s self-help programmes can perform a non-trivial ameliorative role
in the short-term, but this is undermined by a wider tendency to reproduce and potentially
exacerbate ongoing processes of rural differentiation.

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Declaration

No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application
for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning

Copyright statement

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certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of
Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes.
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iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual
property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis,
for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may
not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property
and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written
permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions.
iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and

commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or
Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see:
http://www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/policies/intellectual-property.pdf),in any
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Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library /aboutus/regulations) and in
the University’s policy on presentation of Theses.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the help of a great many people. The advice, encouragement,
critique, and inspiration provided by my supervisors, Wendy Olsen and John O’Neill, have been of
immeasurable value. Thanks, too, are due to Mark Elliot for his guidance and advice at key
moments. Thanks to Daniel Neff for making his census data of the study region (as well as his
friends there) available to me. I’m grateful too, to Professor Uma Veenam, and everyone at Sri
Padmavati Mahila Visvavidyalayam.

To villagers who collaborated in the study, many of whom showed enormous generosity in
opening their homes and lives to me, . This study would not have been possible
without your sharing your experiences, and your insights into those experiences, with me.

Particular thanks for the tireless work of Usha, my assistant, translator, interpreter, and friend,
whose orderly life my stay temporarily upended. I’m grateful, too, to officials and bank managers
at both Mandal headquarters who shared their experiences and insights with me. Thanks to Rani
and Sadiq, and to their wonderful daughter Poppy, who made me so welcome during my stay in
town.

Thanks to friends everywhere for their sustained enthusiasm, to my parents, Andrea and Gibson,
for their support and encouragement, and to Niall, for his unwavering confidence.

This research was funded by an Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) PhD Studentship

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