Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The flesh and bone of collective action
Collective action as a strategy seeks nonmarket solutions the problems faced by individual or society. In this sense, how far collective action is an appropriate strategy for poverty reduction is an important question, especially in an era when the state tends to leave the welfare concerns to non-state actors. What are the views from poor people themselves? Do the poor people in their quest to sheild themselves from poverty, resort to self-protection methods compared to communitarian methods? This famous Scott-Popkin controversy seeks real-world solutions.
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In organisations where the workers are paid according to the amount of work done, they can acheive rational collective outcomes by acting rationally in individual manner. Workers work more to earn more and this will result in more output for the organisation. Another examole of this can be Milk Cooperatives.
Ritesh Rautela (28036)
As shown by Miller and Hammond (1994), every society has to struggle with the problem of 'constraining the king'. Is it fair to say that acts of collective protest such as those at Nandigram, Narmada Bachao Andolan etc, are inevitable in a democracy and are an extra-constitutional means of dealing with the problem of 'constraining the king'?
P.Hemant Kumar (28067)
"Self-protection methods" are the only sustainable ways to remove poverty. Eradicating poverty, in a true sense, would mean state play a role of a facilitator. Poverty is like AIDS. The poor need to have a mechanism to fight it. External forces (like state) can only play a limited role to do away with the bug in the long run. Moreover, in a country like India, where state machinery is "bureaucracy at its worst", its better that state leaves the tag of being a welfare state. There are a number of examples where collective actions, whether working along or against the state, have shown positive results.
Neelmani Gupta (28021)
Collective actions in any democracy in most of the cases are not rational and people who are engaged in the protest are povoked by exteral means. while protesting for any cause, group has to be informed of implications of protest so that innocent people who usually become sacrificial goats can be avoided. collective struggles, can be avoided by the state by addresing the needs of the people before taking any decision which involves people sentiments or livelihood cisis
The market is in itself a strong force to decide the result of an collective action, but we should not forget that the market norms and the rules are often decided by a section of the population. The collective action gives a better bargaining power to poor people. It will have a deep impact on the market forces if the collective action is well guided by a visionary leadership. Some of the best examples of such change are communist revolutions in Russia, China and Cuba. Some of the native examples are success of milk unions like Amul. The collective action can change the rule of the game by giving the poor strong voice. We should not forget that if the world follows market laws effectively it will benefit the poor. The problem is created when the market is ruled by a powerful class which does not give chance to poor to be benefited. Thus a non-market solution can be solution for problem of market if it gives a equal playing field to the poor. This can be done with the help of collective action.
Vinay Kumar Mishra(28050)
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