Monday, January 9, 2012
Collective Action for the Poor and Rich
"Collective Action" most of the times seems to strike the cord among the poor people. The very reason for this phenomena may be that the poor are not economically sound enough to pool in enough resources for a particular activity. If they are made aware of a potential income source which can be tapped then obviously the people will come forward together, which would not only benefit them but the entire community. Moreover one can also say that collective action is simply not for the poor. Everyone can reap the benefits out of it. With time people have begun to understand the positive aspects of collective efforts and nowadays this is also visible in almost every sector starting from the ground level to big organizations.
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23 comments:
Looking at collective action as a tool in the hands of the poor to mitigate their situation is to have a very narrow, economic-based view of collective action. The fact is that collective action can be used whenever a number of people face a similar situation and are willing to cooperate to deal with it. Mass Movements against the perpetrators of crimes such as the Jessica murder case or the Uphaar fire tragedy are examples of collective action that transcends class or any such artificial divisions.
Collective action requires a ground like existing informal relations, social interactions, ties of mutual aid etc. among the potential participants for its success. I think such a ground is often there in the case of poor people but they are generally not able to sense the opportunities. Rich people on the other hand are able to sense the opportunities better but they are constrained by the limited existing ground for successful collective action. I feel it is comparatively difficult to have a collective action among the richer people if the benefits are not very clear.
Raj kamal goldi (32033)
Collective action involves payoff over a longer time span. The poor are more focussed on meeting their pressing needs and have a smaller time span while evaluating outcomes of their actions. In a stratified society poor people have very limited social interaction, informal and formal co-operation. They lack resources but most of the times rather than polling their resources to achieve their welfare, they seek patronage from elites of society. The poor and elite divide themselves in cliques with an aim to further their self-interests. Collective action though desirable for changing status of the poor becomes hard to come by.
Avinash Kumar(32059)
Poor people often face scarcity of resources & lack of power to control it. So they have two distinct mechanism for coping with it, either they seek patronage or cooperate. Extent to which self-interest of the group members (actual as well as perception of it) served by collective action and power structure that governs and manages the group influences the collective action. It is not only scarcity but self-interests and power-relations make ground for collective action. Therefore if these factors are taken care of then not only poor but also big organizations use collective action to reap its.
Mahesh Dharap
P32019
Drawing a fence between rich and poor with regards benefits of collective action may not hold true. Whenever there is a scarcity of any kind of resources or people feel that they can gain more from collective action, they would not hesitate from opting it. Be it the poor farmers of Gujarat coming together as a cooperative society or big MNCs forming cartels to make maximum use of the resources available to them.
Raja Panchal
32086
Collective action is not a tool for poor people only all the sections of society use it.The cooperates use it for their benifit, politicians use it when they feel it will be useful for them even the middle class public use it depending on the situation .The collective action by poor may result from scarcity of resources other sections have other factors and all of them utilize it for their benifit
Collective action does not come with any defined category either poor or rich. The case with poor is that they lack sensitivity towards their rights and requires impetus from some external agency to reap benefits of collective action.The collective action with poor people is linked to their survival at most times,but with rich people it is not their immediate requirement and usually done to increase their profits or to stay in the market.
Anurag srivastava
32056
I would like to cite an instance to validate that its not only for poor. 'Sangh Krishi' in Kerala is meant for marginalised farmers and landless labourers to come together lease land and cultivate on it. During our fieldwork we came across a non-poor family which was cultivating solely on the leased land meant for collective farming.
The chances of collective actions happening at non-poor level remain low because of selfish interests dominating in that case but still there are players who do reap benefits out of collective actions meant for poor.
SUNNU SETU
P32042
Collective action is more likely to strike the cord with the poor. It becomes a tool for the economically deprived section to neutralize the forces of marginalization that threaten their survival.The state policies also push them to go for collective action. These are concerned more with meeting the targets and not with quality of service. The government may intervene in agricultural market to keep food prices low which impacts the poor farmers more. The rich are more concerned with their individual economic status. They go for collective action only if it brings additional profits.
Mayank Gaur
p32021
Collective action should not be marginalized by branding it on the basis of economic resources. Although it has been constantly used by the poor, its scope for the rich remains intact. Collective action is for everyone who feels that they share a common goal and unifying their energies can lead to better results.
Arpit Bansal
32009
As far as my perception goes it is hard to put collective action in a catagorie but the underlying fact is that if the advantages of the collective action are clear to group wether it is rich or poor everyone will reap benefits,the village in which i did my fieldwork ,there were 14 SHG's each consisting of women from BPL families though they shared common ground as everyone belonged to the BPL family within 2-3 months of formation 12 out of 14 SHG's broke up, though there were various reasons for this collapse but one prominent reason was that the long term vision ,direction was not clear which led to the breaking up of the SHG's so we can't generalize the statement that "Collective Action" most of the times seems to strike the cord among the poor people.
Collective action is commonly understood as the efforts taken by the poor are to initiate any developmental activity out of individual scarcity and the motivation for such actions are that the benefits would be reaped by all by pooling in the common resources. Similarly the advantages of the collective action can be gained by the rich and powerful people and organizations. They too come together to avoid completion among themselves and stop deceiving and defrauding. Also they use their zone of influence in their respective sectors to use the resources for everybody’s benefit.
Raunak Shashikant Rao (32036)
Most of the collective actions we hear of are the ones taken by poor people for their own developmental goals but it would not be wise to limit collective action only to poor people. Collective action involves people working and interacting together to make such things happen which individually could not take place or could not be as impactful as needed. Activities carried out by the members of Rotary Club can be an example of collective action by business and professional leaders, and not poor, to provide community services to eradicate polio, support education and job trainings etc.
Aditi(32052)
Saying that collective action find a cord with poor is true to some extent only.Rich also come together if they see that collectively they can be benefitted more.Among poor resources are pretty less,hence it becomes esssential for them to pool the resources and start a collective action.One major drawback is that this collective action is extremely vulnerabl as this can be broken by using money,muscle power.
The collective action taken by poor people generate only limited benefits. For example, during fieldwork in Bikaner, lack of resources with people forced the SHGs to reap benefits just at the individual level and not at the community level. At the same time, big organizations are also taking benefits out of collective action for entire community. For example, big organizations are raising their voices against climate change and collectively taking measures to prevent it. "Kyoto Protocol" is a similar example at the country level.
Himanshu Pilania
(32070)
When it comes to the poor, collective action is prominent enough because of the practical needs it's going to fetch for them which are mostly economic. When it comes to the rich it depends on the incentive that's available for them by being part of the collective action. In case of S.H.Gs in Andhra Pradesh where I did my field work the importance given by poor families for S.H.Gs is high compared to that of the rich households as incentive for these rich households is less by being part of S.H.Gs.
-Ankith Reddy (32054)
Different people when come together for collective action, look for different benefit. As rightly said by author and many of my mates, motivation for poor to start collective action would be to reduce transaction cost and gain economic benefit. On the other hand, rich may become part of collective to gain political muscle. In my fieldwork in Kerala, it was observed that many women who were part of Kudumbashree NHGs have gone on to become ward members.
Dhruv mittal
32064
Looking from the big organisations view ,we can see that many organisations form a cartel among themself in order to gain bargaining power against state/government.This not only eliminates external threats but also give them monetary benifits which can be shared among all.But all collective actions are not for good,as in the above case the organisations might be abusing their collective power.In case of poor we see collective action as a survival startergy but in case of rich we see collective action more to create monopoly in the markets.Ofcourse there are some exceptions.
Manas Mittal(P32020)
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