Self-help Goups in India: Liberalist Interventions and the Fantasy of Change- A Žižekian Critique

Abstract

We discuss the liberalist project in organizing the poor into self-help groups in India by mobilizing concepts from the works of Slavoj Žižek. We indicate liberalist co-option by discussing the history and evolution of the self-help groups along with the politics associated thereby. We argue that the self-help groups promote a number of liberalist 'fantasies', and serve as 'lichettes', whereby the freedom to act in ways that can change the existing situation on part of the organizing of the people is constrained, even as a false sense of the same is created. Such a liberalist effort represents Third Way “post politics” which puts forth ‘new’ issues for the very sustenance of the ‘old’ systems it claims to reject. Yet, we find that the self-help groups originally possessed potential for radical change, and suggest them as being characterized by a “dynamic tension” between emancipatory and exploitative forces, with the dominance of the latter. Building on Žižekian concepts, we discuss ways in which self-help groups can effect true change, countervailing the liberalist forces. We end the paper by outlining an agenda for future research about self-help groups that can build upon this critical discussion.