Development Discourse and Selling Soap in Madhya Pradesh, India

Abstract

Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) presents Project Shakti as aimed at empowering poor, rural women as well as providing an innovative mechanism for the distribution of HUL goods to villagers in relatively remote areas. In addressing the current Corporate Social Responsibility debate of whether there can be consistency between corporate interests and those of the poor, this article describes the functioning of Project Shakti and asks whether it does fulfill its purpose of empowering poor, rural women. On the basis of 15 case studies of dealers and former dealers in the state of Madhya Pradesh, it is concluded that the project does not empower poor, rural women and suffers from many of the same failings as many microfinance projects focused on women. It is argued that the current neoliberal development discourse allows for a cohesive presentation of the project and that the nature of the discourse enables several different paradigms of microfinance and development to coexist within it. The identified disjunc...