Cooperatives and Social Innovation

This book discusses social innovations by cooperatives from the Asia and Pacific region. Social innovations emerge when the state and market in developing countries find it difficult to solve problems such as poverty, hunger, ill health, poor education systems, inadequate drinking water and poor sanitation. These countries also face barriers to economic growth such as climate change, poor governance, unequal opportunities and social exclusion. This volume therefore addresses the following questions. What are the distinctive features of social innovations by cooperatives? How social innovations bring in changes in the process and outcome of development? 

After presenting theories of social innovation and a critical review of cooperatives and social innovation, the book presents 15 chapters on social innovations by cooperatives in the Asia Pacific region. These social innovations are related to health insurance, community based tourism, disaster response, climate smart agriculture, use of social media for youth empowerment, training for the emergence of second-line leaders in cooperatives,  social inclusion through innovative finance, profitable marketing of organic produce to strengthen economic status of small farmers, digital auction and value addition for  income security of farmer members, collaboration between cooperative members and workers for the mutual benefit, worker cooperatives, women leadership and participation, building union-cooperative partnership in finance and  rating of cooperatives to promote transparency and accountability. A chapter on innovative services of cooperatives during the time of Covid19 is also included.

This volume will be quite significant for co-operators, researchers, teachers, practitioners and policy-makers at the global level. The theme is relevant for international development community and national cooperatives with concern for their communities, which is the seventh cooperative principleof International Cooperative Alliance and the Sustainable Development Goal of the UN.

“Social innovation has been of late widely discussed by scholars; but most of the literature has addressed the nonprofits or the third sector at large. This book is a unique collection of theoretical papers written specifically for this purpose as well as cases of social innovations by cooperatives to solve problems at the local and higher levels from the region presented in the ICA-Asia Pacific research conference on ‘Cooperatives: The key solution for social innovation’ .  A wide range of social innovations in the areas of finance, health, agriculture, climate change, consumer, marketing and worker welfare, empowerment of women and youth are covered. I believe this volume will be an important addition to the literature on cooperatives in the Asia Pacific region.”

-                      Prof. Akira Kurimoto, Chairperson of the ICA Asia Pacific Research Committee and Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan.

 

“This book on ‘Cooperatives and Social Innovation’ is the first of its kind. The book discusses the new concept of social innovation and brings out the social innovation practices in cooperatives. The volume consists of papers that have undertaken an in-depth analysis of cooperatives particularly in the area of social innovation. The book covers interesting areas on social innovations in cooperatives relating to finance, grading of cooperatives, social media to promote cooperative movement, tourism, producer, consumer, climate smart agriculture, health insurance and women leadership. The book will be of great value at the global as well as national level cooperatives. NCUI recognizes and appreciates the efforts put in by the editors Professors Rajasekhar, Manjula and ParanJothi.”

-          Dr. Chandra Pal Singh Yadav, President, National Cooperative Unionof India (NCUI); Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), Government of India.

 

“Scholarly studies on the subject of Cooperatives are a few as compared to those on Economics, Commerce and Management. I am extremely happy to note that Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru, and Agricultural Cooperative Staff Training Institute (ACSTI), Thiruvananthapuram, have jointly worked to bring out the book “Cooperatives and Social Innovation” through a Springer publication. I am confident that this book will contribute to more innovations by Cooperatives in the field and will help the members of Cooperatives functioning in different sectors of the economy. It is hoped that both the Institutes will continue to work together for enriching the literature on Cooperatives and thereby guide policy formulators in making cooperatives as member-centric institutions.”

-          Kadakampally Surendran, Minister for Co-operation Tourism & Devaswoms, Government of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, India

Dr. D. Rajasekhar is HAG Professor in Economics at the Centre for Decentralisation and Development (CDD), Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru. He obtained Ph.D. and M.Phil from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (through Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum). He was Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Oxford, Melbourne, Hitotsubashi, Sussex and at the Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen. He worked extensively on decentralisation, social protection and microfinance, and served in policy bodies constituted by the government. He has published 26 books/ monographs and 86 articles in national and international journals and as chapters. His recent paper (co-authored) on ‘Motivating Knowledge Agents: Can Incentive Pay Overcome Social Distance?’ is published in The Economic Journal. His paper on ‘Collusion, Co-option and Capture: Social Accountability and Social Audits in Karnataka, India’ published in Oxford Development Studies was awarded the Sanjaya Lall Prize for its contribution to the development studies. He is currently collaborating with researchers from the London School of Economics, and the universities of Bristol, Melbourne, Tsuda and Hitotsubashi in research relating to decentralisation and poverty reduction, delivery of public services and social protection. His recent books are "Decentralised Governance, Development Programmes and Elite Capture" (Springer: 2018) and "Decentralization, Cooperatives and Rural Development".

Dr. R. Manjula holds a PhD in economics and is working as Assistant Professor at CDD, ISEC, Bengaluru. She was an Academic Visitor at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford, UK. She has co-authored books and research papers (in national and international journals and as chapters). ‘Motivating Knowledge Agents: Can Incentive Pay Overcome Social Distance?’ is the recent co-authored paper published in The Economic Journal. Her other co-authored paper on ‘Collusion, Co-option and Capture: Social Accountability and Social Audits in Karnataka, India’ published in Oxford Development Studies was awarded the Sanjaya Lall Prize for its contribution to the development studies. She has worked on several of the centre’s research projects, covering themes of decentralisation, child labour, social security, health insurance, public works programme and public service delivery, and collaborating with researchers from UK (London School of Economics, the Universities of Bristol, King’s college) and scholars from various universities at Japan (Hiroshima, Tsuda, Hitotsubashi and Kobe University).

Dr.T. Paranjothi is the Director, the Agricultural Cooperative Staff Training Institute in Kerala (India), Trivandrum, and Vice Chairman of International Cooperative Alliance, Research Committee, Asia Pacific Region. He obtained his Post Graduate degree inCooperation, M.Phil in Applied Economics from JNU, New Delhi (Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum) and obtained his Ph.D. from University of Calicut. He has 38 years of experience in Teaching and Research in Cooperation. He taught and held important positions in a number of Universities and institutes such as Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur, National Council for Cooperative Training, New Delhi and Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Cooperative Management, Pune.