Building Pathways to Women's Empowerment: Three decades of India's Annapurna Pariwar

This book showcases the work of Annapurna Pariwar, an NGO comprising six organizations, over the past 30 years and its impact on changing the lives of low-income working women with small businesses in the slums of Mumbai and Pune in the Indian state of Maharashtra. This group of six organizations together forms a social enterprise, established at a time of major changes in the Indian economy in the form of globalization and urbanization. The NGO set out to address issues of livelihood and poverty alleviation in slums. Adopting a path that was sustainable and did not depend upon grants, the journey is a fascinating account of learnings in organizational evolution and its impact on the lives of poor women.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part has three chapters charting the journey of Annapurna Pariwar based on interviews with Medha Tai, the founder of Annapurna Pariwar. These chapters discuss milestones, organizational evolution, and challenges, especially demonetization and COVID-19. The lifecycle of the organization and of the women in the case studies are juxtaposed within the framework of financial, physical, sociocultural, and political spaces. The second part of the book contains analyses from well-known authors and academics who contextualize the relevance of Annapurna Pariwar’s work and future against microfinance, microinsurance, plus services, social entrepreneurship, digitization, and urban landscapes. The book thus contributes not only to the practice-field; it has several academic contributions as well for researchers studying social phenomena such as social entrepreneurship, microfinance, cooperatives, women empowerment, and women entrepreneurship. While doing so, it addresses SDGs such as SDG3, SDG5, SDG8, and SDG11. The book is for a wide audience, comprising social entrepreneurs in the field of social development, microfinance, and microinsurance. It is of relevance to business schools and educational institutions which offer courses on social entrepreneurship and development studies.

Joy Deshmukh Ranadive is an economist by training and a social scientist by practice. She comes with over three decades of experience in the area of social development. She is an advisor and consultant to NGOs and corporates on issues of sustainability, CSR, gender, and social programs. Dr. Joy retired as Global Head of CSR, Tata Consultancy Services. She has earlier been Director, Indian School of Microfinance for Women in Ahmedabad and Country Director, International Centre for Research on Women, which is head quartered in Washington. A doctorate in Economics and a gold medalist at the MA level from the University of Mumbai, Dr. Joy has several books and papers to her credit in the areas of gender, development, microfinance, human rights, and CSR.

Samapti Guha is Professor, Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, School of Management and Labour Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. She is a Development Economist and earned her PhD in Economics from Jadavpur University in 2004. After completing her PhD, she worked at the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi, and the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), Gujarat. In 2006, she was selected as a Sir Ratan Tata Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, for her post-doctoral study.   In 2007, she joined TISS and launched a new MA program in Social Entrepreneurship, successfully running the center for the past three years. She co-established the Social Incubation Centre at the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, supported by the UGC, in 2011. She has mentored more than 50 social start-ups. Her areas of research include microfinance, women entrepreneurship, micro enterprises, social entrepreneurship, financial inclusion, and development economics.