Community Development Journal Advance Access published online on June 16, 2009
Community Development Journal, doi:10.1093/cdj/bsp029
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Raising citizenship rights for women through microcredit programmes: an analysis of MASUM, Maharashtra, India
Address for correspondence: Anurekha Chari-Wagh, Department of Sociology, University of Pune, India, email: anu_wagh{at}rediffmail.com
The microcredit programme initiated in the 1980s is celebrated by the Indian state and international development institutions as an ‘ideal’ poverty alleviation programme for women. It is based on the principle of activating self-help among women and is considered as being empowering. The period 1980–1990 defined a minimalist neo-liberal role of the state that allowed for the free working of the market and a belief that it will solve problems of poverty. Many have argued that the microcredit programme was influenced by this philosophy (Joseph, 2007; Swaminathan, 2007). In addition, that microcredit does not always have a positive impact on poverty alleviation because the official programme does not have the capacity to displace patriarchal structures that bind women (Goetz and Sengupta, 1996). By focusing only on ‘economic’ issues it fails to address the way deprivation of nutrition and health, increasing violence and insecurity are affecting women as economic actors. Without addressing these questions it is not possible for women to get empowered. In this paper I examine the inter-linkages between citizenship, gender and development by evaluating the design of a microcredit programme for women presented by a feminist rural women's organization called Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal (MASUM) in Maharashtra.