"Learning for Empowerment of the Working Poor in Karnataka: MAYA's Learning Model"

In India, it has increasingly been recognised that programmes and policies which either aimed at absorbing the informal labour force through employment generation or specific poverty alleviation have not had the desired impact. Today, more than 90 percent of the Indian labour force operates in the informal economy, out of which a significant share of the workforce belongs to the working poor. Working conditions are extremely hazardous, and hardly ever minimal labour standards are met. The majority of the workers has no access to basic entitlements such as training, financial resources or social security. Such a situation, A. Sen points out, impedes not only people's freedom to make choices on their lives but also hamper their personal development. 

One has also realised that India's development strategy, while being welfare-oriented and emphasising autonomy and self-reliance of people through political, social and economic participation, has brought out a situation where state led interventions rather had a disempowering than an empowering effect on the beneficiaries, on the working poor in particular. It is argued that the system as such has turned people and whole communities into passive receivers of welfare services - if such services were accessible at all. A dichotomy has emerged where the government has been the planner and distributor of services, assuming to know what the needs of the poor are, while at the same time communities and people have no formal structure available for articulation of their needs and requirements. Though the need for people's participation in the setting of the political agenda and defining development policies has been discussed in many conferences and workshops, people's representation in formulating the same is still far away from being realised. There is no public space available where people's needs and requirements can be articulated. This is valid not only for political but also for employment and livelihood related interventions.

We argue here that interventions can only be effective and provide an enabling environment for democracy and economic wellbeing, if people become active participants within the system and if their needs and requirements are reflected in the policies designed with them (not for them). It is in this context that institutions have been formed by MAYA, a Karnataka based NGO, which reflect the needs and requirements of the working poor at a local level: the worker's collectives. The workers' collectives, non-hierarchical and highly democratic institutions have emerged from women's sanghas (associations) and local savings and credit cooperatives and provide not only a formal and representative democratic platform for the workers, where they can raise questions related to their political entitlements and worker's rights but also give space for continuous learning and reflection on the persons' life and work situation or the collectives' performance. Mechanisms which are put in place for regular skills assessment ensure that each member keeps reflecting on his/her own personal and professional development. The focus is on self-directed learning. Similarly, such a learning process has an impact on the collectives' functioning and therefore on their capacities to offer services as professional institutions to the markets. Feedback systems within the collectives ensure the institutional capacity to adjust flexibly to the market needs.

The organisation MAYA has been chosen as a case study, given its unique and pioneering approach for poverty alleviation on large scale through a bottom up approach. MAYA facilitates local governance and self-directed learning. The pilot project, which focuses on particular sectors - construction, homebased work, domestic work, sericulture and lacquerware - will be the empirical basis of the study. Using an action research methodology, which has the advantage of analyzing and contributing to the process of change within the communities, the dissertation focuses on the relationship between human institutions, the necessity of continuous learning and empowerment of the poor, worker's collectives in particular, which are part of the working areas of MAYA. It is claimed here that empowerment within communities and of individuals can be ensured, if both institutional aspects and a process of continuous learning within a community and at the individual level is institutionalised. Therefore enabling individual and institutional capabilities for people to make true choices- thus they are empowered.

Keywords: Informal Sector Employment, Workers' collective, Training, Gender and Empowerment