Dynamics of Social Capital among Resource Poor Rural Women

Social capital is an important dimension for rural development which helps in transforming people into active citizens by adopting a bottom-up approach, influencing the ability of individuals and groups to cooperate in taking advantages of emerging opportunities. Social capital, if built among the resource poor women, can jointly take up economic activities to improve their livelihood. This study was carried out to explore the dynamics of social capital among the resource poor schedule caste and schedule tribe rural women through mushroom cultivation as an agro-based enterprise using locally available agricultural wastes. An Ex-post Facto Cause to Effect design was used to analyse the impact of social capital. The number of people with low social capital decreased from 31 to 20% and those in medium and high social capital categories increased from 45 to 47.5% and 24 to 32.5%, respectively. These variables help the self help group members to expose to new situations and thereby facilitate them to attempt collective action. Correlation analysis revealed that all the domains of social capital were significant. The variables such as education, cosmopoliteness and mass media usage were significantly (p<0.01) related with the social capital. The process aspects of building the social capital in the form of timely and suitable interventions have in fact yielded the results as expected. Constant encouragement for collective action, introduction of new remunerative enterprises and exposure activities would build social capital in rural areas and enhance trust on extension agencies to promote new ventures in rural areas.

Key words: Extension interventions; Social capital; Sustainable rural livelihood.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4038/tar.v22i3.3696

Tropical Agricultural Research 22(3) (2011) 230-238