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Title: The Mararikulam Experiment:


1
The Mararikulam Experiment
  • An Alternative to Corporate Dominated
    Globalization

2
The Mararikulam Experiment
  • A Powerpoint Presentation
  • by
  • Richard W. Franke
  • Professor of Anthropology
  • Montclair State University

3
The Mararikulam Experiment
  • For detailed background information and for
    updates check regularly at the Mararikulam
    website
  • http//www.mararidevelopment.org

4
What Is the Mararikulam Experiment?
  • It is one of the most important recent attempts
    to create a practical alternative to corporate
    dominated globalization and to develop the tools
    to create a world based more on social justice
    than on "free trade" and profit.

5
What Is the Mararikulam Experiment?
  • The Mararikulam Experiment is based on idealism
    but it is designed to meet the practical
    realities of our present-day world.

6
What Is the Mararikulam Experiment?
  • It builds on decades of social justice struggles
    in India's Kerala State and carries them forward
    in Mahatma Gandhi's spirit of self-reliance and
    in the beliefs of all the activists and
    revolution-aries who have dreamed of and acted to
    make a better world.

7
What Is the Mararikulam Experiment?
  • The Mararikulam experiment consists of an
    integrated set of projects designed to make
    substantial reductions in poverty in the eight
    villages and two towns of the Aryad and
    Kanjikuzhy development blocks in the central
    coastal region of Kerala State, India, over the
    years of 2002 to 2005. The projects take the
    well-established approach of job creation through
    microcredit a Kerala variant of the Grameen
    Bank experiment in Bangladesh that has
    justifiably attracted international attention and
    acclaim.

8
Outline of This Presentation
  • In this powerpoint presentation we shall
  • 1. Describe the Mararikulam area
  • 2. Review the Kerala Model of
  • development
  • 3. Give a detailed picture of the plans and
    activities at Mararikulam
  • 4. Explain why Mararikulam is so important in
    our world today

9
1. The Mararikulam Area
10
Where Is Mararikulam?
  • Mararikulam is a state assembly constituency in
    central Kerala.
  • Kerala is a state on the southwest coast of
    India.

11
2. The Kerala Model
12
The Kerala Model
  • Kerala is already well known in development
    circles for the Kerala Model, a set of
    achievements in health, education, and material
    quality of life nearly equal to those of the rich
    industrial nations. The next slide shows some of
    Keralas achievements...

13
The Kerala Model
14
Where Is Mararikulam?
  • Mararikulam is part of Alappuzha District, one
    of the traditional bastions of Keralas activist
    leftwing culture.

15
Where Is Mararikulam?
  • The 8 villages of Mararikulam lie along both
    sides of Indias National Highway 47 on a narrow
    penninsula of low-lying sandy soils.

16
The Name Mararikulam
  • The word kulam means pond in Malayalam, the
    language of Kerala. Most Hindu temples have large
    ponds where people bathe, and wash clothes, cows,
    and elephants. The mar comes from mavan,
    meaning satan, while the ari derives from
    harikuga meaning to kill.

17
The Name Mararikulam
  • According to the story, Siva came upon a devil
    (a mavan) and killed (hari) him. Then he
    washed the blood off him-self in a pond (kulam)
    in the present day village of Mararikulam South.

18
The Name Mararikulam
  • Today an import-ant Hindu temple stands next to
    the Marari pond.

19
Mararikulams Ecology
  • Mararikulam covers 17,059 hectares or 170.59 sq
    km on which 272,000 people lived in 2001. 80 of
    the cultivated land is devoted to coconut trees
    and 10 for rice.

20
Mararikulams Ecology
  • Coconut trees grow well in the sandy soil and
    the thousands of small ponds provide water for
    the trees throughout the year.

21
Mararikulams Ecology
  • 10 of the population engages in fishing for a
    living while 45 manu-facture products from the
    coconut tree including coir, or coconut husk
    fiber.

22
Coir Mats
  • Door mats, ship ropes, and other coir products
    have been popular in the West for more than 200
    years. British businessmen made fortunes off
    Kerala coir mats and ropes.

23
Coir Mats
  • Today college football team mats are pro-duced
    in Mar-arikulam for the US mar-ket. Of the
    2834 retail price, about 1 goes to the
    workers pro-ducing the coir and weav-ing the mat.

24
Making Coir Mats
  • From coconut husk to coir mat is a long and
    tedious process documented with photos on the
    Mararikulam web site. After the fiber has been
    twisted into yarn, wound, dyed, and beamed (set
    for the loom), weaving becomes the final process.
  • To view a photo essay on coir manufacture, go
    to
  • http//chss.montclair.edu/anthro/coir.htm

25
Mararikulams Ecology
  • The fish catch depends on the chakara, a word
    with two meanings
  • 1. A mud reef about 5 miles out to sea where the
    fish gather at a certain time of yearand

26
Mararikulams Ecology
  • 2. The chakara is also a time of year for
    great fish, shrimp, and mussel catches and the
    only time poor fishing households have enough
    surplus for celebrations.

27
The Chakara and Chemmeen
  • The great chakara shrimp catch along the
    Mararikulam coast provides the backdrop for one
    of the greatest Malayalam novels, Chemmeen
    (Shrimp), by Thakazhi S. Pillai.

28
The Chakara and Chemmeen
  • The young Muslim shrimp trader Pareekutti, falls
    in love with the voluptuous Karuthamma, a Hindu
    fishing caste girl with whom he has played on the
    beach since childhood.

29
The Chakara and Chemmeen
  • The ardent lovers are denied their dreams by a
    web of caste and gender oppression enforced by
    the beliefs of the fishing community in the need
    for female chastity and caste purity.

30
The Chakara and Chemmeen
  • Going out in small boats on the dangerous waters
    off Mararikulam, they believe that only when
    traditions are obeyed to the last detail can they
    hope for a good chakara.

31
The Chakara and Chemmeen
  • The novels spectacular final scene recalls both
    Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest as
    the chakara sea becomes the final arbiter of
    sexual passion.

32
Mararikulams Ecology
  • Karappuram
  • land and people by
  • P. V. Aniyan, Prof. C. V. Natarajan, and K. R.
    Bhageeradhan,
  • and
  • Integrated Coastal Zone Management Action Plan
    of Mararikulam by
  • Srikumar Chattopadhyay
  • Detailed de-scriptions of the local ecology can
    be found in two papers on the Mararikulam web
    site
  • http//www.mararidevelopment.org

33
3. The Mararikulam Experiment
  • Details of the Project

34
What Is The Mararikulam Experiment?
  • The two key words in the Mararikulam Experiment
    are
  • Integrated
  • Microcredit

35
What Is Integrated Development?
  • The Mararikulam Experiment is called
    integrated development because the projects
    cover all areas of life, not just job creation,
    irrigation, health, or some other aspect.

36
What Is Integrated Development?
  • In Mararikulam, this means...

37
What Is Integrated Development?
  • Job creation through microcredit
  • Use of local resources (also called backward
    linkages)
  • Selling to local markets (also called forward
    linkages
  • Improving health
  • Improving nutrition
  • Environmental Improvements...

38
What Is Integrated Development?
  • Technological innovation
  • Democratic activism and participation
  • Equality and fairness (not just profits and
    growth) . . . and
  • Womens empowerment

39
What Is Integrated Development?
  • Lets look at each of these components of the
    Mararikulam Experiment

40
Microcredit
  • Mircrocredit originated with the now famous
    grameen bank (grameen means village in
    Bengali), invented in 1976 by a Bangladesh
    economics professor named Muhammed Yunus.
  • Microcredit refers to the practice of lending
    small amounts usually less than 50 to
    low-income households that would not otherwise
    qualify for credit because they have no
    collateral.

41
The Grameen Bank
  • With private lender interest rates at 200, the
    Grameen Bank loans at 25 attracted poor
    households with the hope of avoiding permanent
    debt and of using borrowed funds to make their
    lives better.
  • The Grameen Bank lends small amounts mostly to
    women who form borrower groups of 5 individuals.
    No member of the group can get a 2nd loan until
    all 5 have repaid their first loan.

42
The Grameen Bank
  • The Grameen Bank strategy led to 90 payback
    rates and made microcredit into one of the
    buzzwords of international development. By 1999,
    56 countries had microcredit programs aimed at 24
    million poor households.
  • But international emphasis on payback rates may
    have covered over serious defects in the Grameen
    Banks great potential as a vehicle for
    em-powerment of poor women and their ability to
    lift their households out of poverty.

43
The Grameen Bank
  • Anthropologist Aminur Rahman found that women in
    one Bangla-desh village were subject to the
    control of a male bank bureaucracy. Loans were
    often used to repay previous loans. The high
    payback rates were concealing...

44
The Grameen Bank
  • verbal and physical abuse by husbands,
    brothers, and bank officials 70 of loans were
    used for purposes other than what appeared on the
    bank sheets and households were not emerging out
    of poverty.
  • Contrary to the group repayment setup, the
    borrowers faced the larger society and economy
    effectively as individuals powerless to do much
    with their microloans except to spend on what
    their male household members dictated.

45
Microcredit at Mararikulam
  • The Mararikulam Experiment takes into
    consideration the failures of the Bangladesh
    Grameen Bank and has a strategy to correct them.
  • By 2001 Mararikulam had 1,350 womens
    neighborhood groups NHGs each with 10 to 40
    members. Each NHG meets every Sunday afternoon to
    discuss matters of local neighborhood importance,
    and to collect thrift.

46
Microcredit at Mararikulam
  • The meetings have high participation rates and
    involvement. They reflect the activism and civic
    interest common in Kerala.

47
Microcredit at Mararikulam
  • These NHGs were formed as part of the Kerala
    Peoples Campaign for Decentralized and
    Democratic Development that ran from 1996 to 2001.

48
Microcredit at Mararikulam
  • In a survey of 101 NHG households, 77 reported
    incomes of less than Rs 1,200 per month, or,
    about 0.82 per day.
  • This makes them officially part of the World
    Banks poorest of the poor.
  • Data for 798 of these groups show that in 2001
    the women saved 5.4 million rupees, or about
    6.94 per person per year in thrift
    accounts. The survey also found that 75 used
    loans from the microcredit funds for medical
    emergencies

49
Microcredit at Mararikulam
  • To reduce health costs and free up funds for
    investment in jobs, the project includes a health
    component aimed at the most common health
    problems that are impacting the loan-generating
    capacity of the microcredit groups.
  • A follow-up survey in June of 2002 found for
    1,132 NHGs thrift deposits of nearly Rs 15
    million and per person deposits of Rs 630 or
    13.40. Linked to local cooperative banks, the
    NHGs had lent out Rs 26.7 million of which 69
    had been fully repaid.

50
Microcredit at Mararikulam
  • In other words, the microcredit at Mararikulam
    was starting to cycle rupees through the local
    economy just what is needed to stimulate local
    economic growth.
  • But this still leaves the problem of job
    creation unsolved...

51
Microcredit at Mararikulam
  • Each NHG is slated to become a local
    cooper-ative production unit, a business owned by
    the NHG members them-selves. 16 units have
    already started making soap. We shall illustrate
    the features of the experiment with the soap
    cooperatives.
  • Here is where the microcredit innovations at
    Mararikulam come in.
  • Instead of a male dominated bank bureaucracy,
    the women NHGs themselves manage the loans.

52
Maari Soap
  • Using their collected thrift and funds from the
    peoples campaign, 160 women now manufacture soap
    in their neighborhoods.

53
Maari Soap
  • Soap is 90 coconut oil which sapon-ifies,
    when mixed with so-dium hydroxide, also known as
    caustic soda. Scent and coloring agents require
    only small amounts of chemicals.

54
Maari Soap
  • In 1 hour a mold of 20 bars can be made. At peak
    production, each unit of 10 women will produce
    600 bars per day...

55
Maari Soap
  • ...leading to a profit of 1,500 rupees per
    person per month on average, that is, about 1.06
    per day, more than doubling their current income
    of 0.82 per day or less.

56
Maari Soap
  • But how can planners be sure 16 NHGs can sell
    600 bars of soap daily in the local market?
  • Here is where the integrated comes inand
    combines with the leftist heritage of the area.

57
Maari Soap
  • The production units make soap 5 days a week and
    on Saturday they go house to house in their
    neighborhoods to sell the bars made during the
    week.
  • 1. The Maari Soap is of a quality equal to other
    brands
  • 2. It is 10 to 30 cheaper because no packaging
    or advertising are neededand most importantly...

58
Maari Soap
  • The multiplier effect refers to the fact that a
    rupee circulating through the local economy
    multiplies its value because each use generates
    income for someoneas contrasted with a big
    company where the sale sends the money to another
    possibly faraway location.
  • The Mararikulam NHGs are politically conscious
    of the importance of using the soap made by their
    neighbors to raise the incomes and also to
    generate economic development through the
    multiplier effect.

59
Maari Soap
  • But the Kerala activist tradition is to create
    big public events that solidify the political
    education generated by peoples movements.

60
So, on May 11 2002, 30,000 NHG members
congregated at the soccer field of St. Michaels
College...

61
  • Where they took the Maari Soap pledge as a
    public act of resistance to corporate-dominated
    globalization and an affirmation of the
    self-reliance concept of Mahatma Gandhi.

62
  • Led by feminist novelist Sara Joseph, they
    pledged...to use only Maari soap
  • and to create a new model of sustainable
    development.

63
The full text of their pledge is available in
both English and Malayalam at http//www.mararidev
elopment.org
64
The energy generated by this high-profile event
was felt all across Kerala. Representatives from
the International Labour Organization (ILO) were
so impressed that they
  • agreed to fund part of the project if the
    organiz-ers would write a study the ILO could use
    to inspire others.

65
The Mararikulam Project Design
  • But even if the soap enterprises are wildly
    successful, how will the other tens of thousands
    of households get out of poverty?
  • Along with the soap, other NHGs are set to
    manufacture
  • umbrellas
  • school notebooks
  • school supply kits
  • and...

66
The Mararikulam Project Design
  • Ready-to-cook...
  • vegetables
  • fish
  • shrimp
  • mussels
  • These items will be sold
  • locally
  • regionally
  • and maybe internationally

67
How Will It Work?
  • Hundreds of NHGs will be organized as small
    cooperatives, owned by their members.
  • The NHG cooperatives in turn will jointly own a
    large central cooperative that will purchase raw
    materials in bulk and insure quality and outside
    marketing.
  • Each of the 8 villages will have 2 common
    facility centers where raw materials can be
    stored and where quality control can be managed.
  • The NHGs will collect inputs and market
    non-local products through these centers.

68
How Will It Work?
  • The common facilities centers will utilize
    environmentally advanced features such as
    rainwater harvesting and low-impact construction
    techniques.
  • Rainwater harvesting was invented during the
    peoples campaign and uses roof runoff to big
    tanks where water is held. This is important in
    Mararikulam where the water table is high, but
    saltwater intrusion is common.

69
How Will It Work?
  • Beach improvement and fishing zone management
    projects are underway pond renovation and
    cleaning of local canals will be supplemented by
    the use of town garbage as fertilizer after
    treatment with a worm process that causes rapid
    decay of waste into usable fertilizer.
  • The increased demand for coconut oil (for the
    soap), vegetables, and fish, will stimulate
    pro-duction, employment (multipliers), and
    envir-onmental renovation to insure a steady
    supply of inputs for the new enterprises.

70
How Will It Work?
  • The large central cooperative will hire
    professional managers and technical staff as
    needed to insure that the products can compete in
    regional and overseas markets. But the products
    will be sold as fair trade, intended to appeal
    to idealistic customers outside Mararikulam.
  • Where Pareekutti once loved Karuthamma the
    shrimp catch will increase. The womens
    coopera-tives will prepare and pack it along
    with the increased fish catch to raise their
    families out of poverty.

71
How Will It Work?
  • The startup capital will be raised from
  • the NHG thrift funds
  • local funds from the peoples campaign
  • individual household members
  • Like the soap locally, outside consumers of
    vegetable chips, curry sauces, and packaged fish,
    shrimp, and mussels will be asked to become loyal
    to brands that promote a better world, not just a
    cheap product.

72
How Will It Work?
  • In November 2002 construction began on the first
    common facilities center for soap in the village
    of Mararikulam South. The village donated the
    land and a building central government funds
    will construct the other buildings.
  • Infrastructure has been developed by
  • ILO funds
  • UNDP funds
  • Indian government funds
  • local government funds

73
4. Mararikulam
  • The International Significance

74
Mararikulam The International Significance
  • Why should all this development activity at
    Mararikulam be of interest to those of us who do
    not live there?
  • Let us go back to the 4th slide in this
    presentation...

75
What Is the Mararikulam Experiment?
It is one of the most important recent
attempts to create a practical alternative to
corporate dominated globalization and to develop
the tools to create a world based more on social
justice than on "free trade" and profit.
76
What Is Globalization?
  • Globalization refers in general to the
    increasingly close ties among all peoples and
    cultures, brought about by the rapid advances in
    technology, especially travel and communications.

77
What Is Globalization?
  • Globalization could mean increasing ties of
    friendship, solidarity, cooperation, mutual
    assistance, good will, exchange, and peace among
    all the peoples of the world.

78
What Is Globalization?
  • But globalization at present is mostly of a
    different type. It can best be called corporate
    dominated globalization.

79
  • What Is Corporate Dominated Globalization?

80
What Is Corporate Dominated Globalization?
  • It means free trade, the unrestricted (or
    nearly unrestricted) flow of investment capital
    and unrestricted marketswhich all sound either
    good or at least neutral until we consider two
    important facts...
  • 1. Labor working people does not and can
    never have the same mobility as capital
  • ...and...
  • 2. The starting point for free trade is a
    world of massive inequality.

81
What Is Corporate Dominated Globalization?
  • Cornell University sociologist Philip McMichael
    has analyzed the historical development of
    corporate dominated globalization.

82
What Is Corporate Dominated Globalization?
  • He traces its origins to the 1970s when US and
    European banks filled with petro-dollars from the
    sudden rise in oil prices.
  • The banks engaged in an avalanche of unregulated
    lending to third world governments whose often
    corrupt leaders accepted loans they could not
    ever repay.

83
What Is Corporate Dominated Globalization?
  • As these notes came due in the 1980s, the World
    Bank, and especially the IMF (International
    Monetary Fund) took on the role of enforcers,
    demanding what came to be called Structural
    Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in order for countries
    to get new loans to pay back the old ones.

84
What Is Corporate Dominated Globalization?
  • University of Massachusetts economist Arthur
    MacEwan argues that SAPs are designed quite
    explicitly to bring a recession.

85
What Is Corporate Dominated Globalization?
  • And Joseph Stiglitz claims the IMF demands
    austerity, and contraction, ie recessions
    just when most countries need expansionary or
    growth oriented policies. While developing
    countries are harmed by IMF policies, first world
    corporations benefit.

86
Heres Why
  • Structural Adjustment Programs typically
    require
  • reduced government spending, even for education
    and health
  • wage freezes or cuts
  • privatizing of public enterprises
  • liberalizing of import-export controls, that is,
    free trade
  • opening the economy to foreign investment

87
SAPs and Instability
  • SAPs often lead to riots and deaths as people
    resist the attacks on their standard of living
    that result from SAPs. In the year 2000 for
    example major anti-SAP riots took place in..
  • Argentina
  • Bolivia
  • Brazil
  • Colombia
  • Costa Rica
  • Ecuador
  • Honduras
  • Kenya
  • Malawi
  • Nigeria
  • Paraguay
  • South Africa
  • Zambia

88
SAPs and Instability
  • In Zimbabwe, particularly hard hit by a series
    of SAPs, people have changed the meaning from
    Stru-tural Adjustment Program to Suffering for
    African People.
  • Unrest leads to destruction of re-sources,
    government repression, increased military and
    police spending (never on the SAP list of
    cutbacks) and reduction of democratic rights.

89
SAPs Injustice
  • The well docu-mented suffering in Africa and
    elsewhere is the basis of the protests against
    the World Bank and the IMF that have taken place
    around the world.

90
SAPs Injustice
  • Lets look for a moment at the period now called
    the lost decade when, from 1978 to 1992, more
    than 70 developing countries were subjected to
    566 SAPs...
  • Per capita incomes in Africa dropped by 12.5
  • In Latin America by 9.1
  • The number of under-weight African children
    increased from 22 million to 38 million
  • In Ghana infant mortality increased by 20

91
SAPs Injustice
  • In Zambia infant mortality went from 76 to 113
  • In Brazil, 60,000 extra child deaths occurred
  • Worldwide 500,000 extra child deaths took place
    not counting war related deaths.
  • Meanwhile during this period, third world
    nations transferred 178 billion to first world
    commercial banks.
  • Then came the great economic boom of the
    1990s19922000

92
The 1990s Boom
  • In the 1990s boom about 10 trillion dollars was
    added each year to the international economy
    for a total of 100 trillion dollars the
    greatest economic expansion in the history of the
    world. But...
  • More than 80 countries had per capita in-comes
    lower than at the start of the decade
  • 55 countries saw per capita incomes DECLINE
    during this expansion
  • 89 countries had lower rates of growth than in
    the period 1960 1980 and...

93
The 1990s Boom
  • Rates of improvement in life expectancy, infant
    mortality, and literacy, all slowed while
  • In 13 countries life expectancy actually
    declined and
  • In the 2nd poorest income quintile female
    mortality increased...
  • In fact, much of the phenomenal growth of the
    1990s was paper increases in stock values that
    disappear-ed almost overnight in the Enron and
    other corporate scandals or, was growth in
    China, a country that ignores many SAP rules.

94
Which is Why...
  • a decade of unprecedented economic
    growthadding over 10 trillion a year to the
    global economy has left the number of people
    living in poverty nearly unchanged at more than 1
    billion.
  • Christopher Flavin, President, Worldwatch
    Institute.

95
  • The 2003 World Bank Development Report asks,
    How can productive work and a good quality of
    life be provided for the 2.53 billion people now
    living on less than 2 a dayand the 3 billion
    people likely to be added to developing countries
    by 2050in an environmentally and socially
    sustainable way?

96
World Bank ...or ...
  • You can read the report yourself, or you can
    take my word for it that the bank does not
    propose democratic, worker owned cooperatives,
    meaningful equality, or fair trade networks as
    part of their solution. They do call for a
    reduction in poverty and inequality at all
    levels, but give no workable plan for achieving
    it.

97
  • Indeed, the Banks policies over the decades
    have always been consis-tent with the needs of
    the worlds bil-lionaires, not the worlds poor
    for whom the bank always has calls to action that
    are never heeded.

98
...Mararikulam?
  • Microcredit combined with womens empowerment,
    combined with worker owned businesses, combined
    with local production using local raw materials
    for sale to local markets, combined with
    environmental rejuvenation, combined with genuine
    social equality combined with product quality
    combined with...

99
...Mararikulam?
  • ...regular, high levels of democratic
    partici-pation and community involvement,
    combined with improvements in public health and
    health care delivery, combined with better
    nutrition, combined with ade-quate technical
    capacities of hired profes-sional management
    where needed but always under the democratic
    control of the cooperative members the
    workers...

100
  • Doesnt the Mararikulam Experiment qualify as a
    major component of the new world order the
    worlds visionaries and activists are starting to
    create.

101
  • Like those who came before them in earlier times,
    they have a slogan for the moment...

102
(No Transcript)
103
  • We wont be intimidated is a call to
    conscience and to courage to protest the
    injustices of corporate dominated globalization
  • but another sticker could add...

104
  • We will be creative and democratic we will
    build a world of justice, peace, environmental
    sustainability, and progress

105
  • We will do it from the bottom up from our own
    consciousness and our local communities and
    Mararikulam will be one of the many experiments
    to inspire and inform us.

106
  • To stay informed about the Mararikulam
    Experiment, go to
  • http//www.mararidevelopment.org
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