Volume 94: State-Society Synergy: Government and Social Capital in Development

Social Capital as a Product of Class Mobilization and State Intervention: Industrial Workers in Kerala, India
Patrick Heller, Columbia University

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ABSTRACT:
This paper argues that state intervention and class mobilization in the state of Kerala, India, have produced two forms of social capital. Kerala’s high level of social development and successful redistrbutive reforms are a direct result of mu tually reinforcing interactions between a programmatic labor movement and a democratic state. This synergy between state and labor has also created the institutional forms and political processes required for negotiating the class compromises through whic h redistribution and growth can be reconciled. These dynamics are explored through a close examination of both the organized factory sector and the unorganized (informal) sector.