What Kerala’s Member-Owned Institutions Can Teach the World about Social Economics

Member-owned institutions (MOIs) meet the livelihood needs of people who are excluded from formal business systems. Cooperation, group economics, and the pooling of resources are all strategies that humans have historically turned to in the face of exclusion. However, the mainstream development sector often views such “alternatives” and “cooperatives” as Western inventions, which is a problematic narrative. A vast literature on the social economy shows the significant contribution of the Global South to the social and solidarity economy. In this study, we survey 1,214 members of MOIs in the state of Kerala, India. Kerala’s MOIs underline the value of citizen engagement and action to improve social provisioning and equity, making it a model for an inclusive economics of global importance.