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Inspired by the potential of Information and Communication Technologies, henceforth ICTs, for socio-economic development, and supported by a university based technology and business incubator, Rural Production Company, henceforth RPC, was set up in 2007 employing an ICT-mediated distributed production model. This paper reveals how RPC, initially an exploratory project whose key innovation was its Internet kiosk-facilitated model of crafts production and local empowerment, morphed into a social enterprise catering to global demands. The context of innovation provided by the Incubator led to a transformation of an ICT4D (ICT for Development) project into a business venture through the practice of formal and informal questioning at every stage of its implementation. This paper focuses on the iterative method adopted while highlighting the role of the incubator in the overall design and development process of the enterprise. This paper is a reflexive mapping of the organization’s evolution from the original research agenda of outsourcing production cum rural employment, to one that privileges local networks both as a conscious business strategy and as an arena for collaborative change for human development.

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In this article, we foreground the potential for a space for collective deliberation and political subjectivities building among women leaders in local governance. We interrogate the Gramamukhya portal, which was initiated in 2011 and continued until 2015, as a democratic space to politicise the invited spaces of governance. Revisiting the question of women’s engagement in panchayati raj institutions in Kerala, we suggest that the practice of citizenship can become politically effective for women in governance if they use a platform that facilitates critical engagement from within and without the invited spaces of participation. This reflection becomes all the more significant given the contemporary political context of Kerala, where the women’s question is caught between developmentalist intentions of the state and right-wing political mobilisations at the grass-roots level.

Anand Pandian, A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times. Duke University Press, 2019, 168pp., ₹2,115, ISBN: 978-1-4780-0375-5 (paperback). ISBN:978-1-4780-0311-3 (cloth).