Modernity with Democracy?: Gender and Governance in the People's Planning Campaign, Keralam

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. 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? [CDS Working Paper 368, February 2005]