“Rooting for you”: a gender based grassroots perspective of social innovation in India.

Innovation studies has consistently been reiterating the idea of how innovation in technology has been an ultimate form of solution to social problems. Especially in the west, there is a conception that ‘innovation is always good’ which enables them to other themselves from the rest of the world interpreting innovation as progressive and modern. In face of such pre-conceptualised ideas about innovation, a new form of innovation was popularised which was called as social innovation. Although there has not been one exact definition given to it, social innovation is generally understood as activities that produces newer or remedial answers to pre-existing issues that can be societal, cultural, economical or environmental. The gender aspect in either of these fields have always been either ignored and/or understudied, especially in terms of qualitative data. The hierarchal structures that pre-exists in the world seeps into the social innovation as well. Most innovative activities are perceived to be masculine and thus is ascribed to a higher valuer than the ones that is that is linked to female or femininities. Especially in developing world, with a large number of informal sector present, the data that exists is either too ambiguous to obtain and/or very distorted. The grassroots movement in south have been either knowingly or unknowingly participated in the social innovation process. There have been evidences of how grassroots movement not only have facilitated the mobilisation and organisation for women’s rights to be claimed but also have tried to make space in various social and political arenas. Some of the most successful ones include the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and Action for Welfare and Awakening in Rural Environment (AWARE) in India. As Anil Gupta (professor at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad) puts it, “When women do something it is often referred to as traditional knowledge or practice, not necessarily as an innovation.” While women’s contribution to social innovation is seldom depicted as an innate skill, the genders that are not on the binary spectrum are not even studied about. In India, the Transgender welfare board, established in April 2008, was one such case wherein the trans-community was provided with welfare schemes including income assistance, housing, education, employment etc. In many cases these grassroots movements in form of NGOs, cooperatives and solidarity cooperations have done more than their share. There have been large evidences in India and Bangladesh regarding the training they provide to women to not only innovate with things present in the surrounding but also to unionise, organise and seek for aid if there is a necessity. With this study, I intend to do a case study of a grassroots organisation in Bangalore, India to understand the social impact that they have created and how the perception of social innovation can changed and questioned.