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