Abstract:
This paper takes advantage of the possibility of a critical perspective
afforded by the feminist perspective in analyzing the interactions between
political and civil societies in the shaping of specific developmental
interventions by the state, to examine the People’s Planning Campaign
(PPC) in Keralam. Implemented in the mid-90s, this was hailed as an
important experiment in mainstreaming gender concerns in development.
The objectives of this paper go beyond reporting on the degree of success/
failure of the effort at mainstreaming gender concerns in the PPC, though
it draws upon many such reports. It will raise a few questions essentially
historical in nature: given the fact that political society in Keralam has
never displayed any acute concern for gender justice, and that this was a
marginal issue even within civil society here, under what conditions did
it come to be acknowledged as a key element in a political experiment as
momentous as the PPC? Gender justice has been addressed in people’s
planning (at least in some locations, to some extent) in some specific
ways, excluding other ways– what determines this selection process?
In the first section of this paper I trace the emergence of civil and
political societies in 20th century Keralam, with special attention to the
ways in which they have been gendered, and simultaneously worked as
gendering spaces. This account may help us to understand how gender
justice came to be both ‘in’ and ‘out’, at one and the same time, in the
momentous political experiment of the PPC. In the second section, several
points of agreement between numerous reports on gender and governance
in the PPC are taken up and discussed in the wider historical context.
These reports generally point out, for instance, that that the active
involvement of social movements like the KSSP in democratic
decentralization has not effected a significant change in the general
attitude of misogyny prevalent in political society. The conclusion
considers the implications of some of two significant developments —
the entry of women into local governance, and the wide reach attained
by the women SHGs — for the future of gender politics in Kerala.
