CENTRE FOR WOMEN’S STUDIES, JNU
Invites you to a Seminar on
Women’s Self-Help Groups and Counterinsurgency in Rural West Bengal
by
Dr. Lipika Kamra
(DPhil from the University of Oxford)
Abstract: This paper deals with state-directed collective enterprises for women in rural India known as self-help groups or SHGs. SHGs have become one of the key mechanisms for the state to disburse ‘development’ to women in rural India. This ‘development’ usually takes the form of providing loans, and training sessions for agricultural and non-agricultural livelihood options. I focus, in particular, on how SHGs become a means for the Indian state to win the hearts and minds of civilians within the context of counterinsurgency against the Maoists in the forests of eastern India.
In my fieldsites in West Midnapore district, to counter popular support for Maoist rebels, state officials announced special development programs since 2011. One among those, is a subsidised loan program for existing women’s SHGs to set up small enterprises. SHG women, even those who had earlier aligned with the Maoists, shifted allegiances, participated enthusiastically in the new loan programs, and wanted to build sustained relations with actors who represented the state. Despite having rebelled against the state earlier, they now actively sought it out. However, I discovered that this shift in attitude towards the state did not mean that the state necessarily won back its legitimacy. For SHG women, participation in the new loan programme was not only a means to gain access to public goods, but was also an opportunity to step out of their households, carve a space for themselves in the local public sphere, and make claims on officials to support new livelihood options. For these women, among whom I conducted my fieldwork, the state mediated their socio-economic aspirations and enabled them to challenge existing gender norms in village society. I argue, therefore, that SHGs in the context of counterinsurgency have, paradoxically, become spaces for women to imagine new forms of selfhood.
Bio: Dr. Lipika Kamra holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford. Her research interests crisscross political anthropology, gender studies, development studies, and South Asian history and politics. She is currently writing a book, based on her doctoral research, on the politics of counterinsurgency and development in the margins of modern India
Date: 22nd August 2017, Tuesday. Time: 2.00 to 4.00 PM
Venue: Committee Room No. 402, Fourth Floor, SSS-I
