Asia

The Sangham Strategy: Lessons for a Cooperative Mode of Production

An essay that reports on the work and struggle of Indian landless Dalit women farmers in organizing a network of credit and marketing cooperatives into an egalitarian political body of production.

Dalit women farmers in the district of Medak, Andhra Pradesh, India formed a mutual aid credit cooperative (MACC) in the early 1990s with the support of a development NGO, the Deccan Development Society (DDS). In India, mutual aid credit cooperatives come out of a new wave of reform that emerged within the Indian cooperative movement as transnational financial institutions began to gain control of microfinance banking. read more »