Women Power At Kudumbashree Restaurant: From Restaurant Owners To Powering Up Social Movement In Kerala

It has been twenty years and counting since the women running the show at the Kudumbashree Restaurant in its namesake Kudumbashree region from Kerala have been building a better world with one of the largest collectives globally.

Kudumbashree Restaurant marks twenty five years on 17 May, 2023 and it has now proven itself to be one of the largest women’s collectives in the world with members contributing their services in a variety of streams. These voluntary services include a range of options including farming, catering, running hotels, matrimonial services, waste collection, installing street lights, multiple usage sanitary napkins, organic farming activities and agricultural businesses, etc. All these efforts are put to challenge the construct of dowry and carry out mayday rescue operations in the time of floods.

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According to a report by the Indian Express, “this collective runs more than 49,200 micro enterprises and 31,589 individual units and 17,611 group enterprises. It is the most commonly appearing occurrence every half a kilometre in the state, and you are meant to come by one or the other of the initiatives of the Kudumbashree in the region’s landscape.

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Right adjacent to an unfenced house where the Sunday congregation of Kudumbashree is held in the neighbourhood, there is a mud filled puddle which is almost as large as a pond left behind by the after shower of summer. Here a scattered group of women of varying age-groups draped in synthetic ethnic sarees make their way tip-toeing across the pool. This is filled with incidents of faltering and splashing water as well as laughter. The laughter, giggles and the infectious chitter-chatter fill the room as all the women hurriedly assemble under its room in Kottayam district’s Eranjal soon after which the Kudumbashree meeting commences. This group of seemingly average women have been adding light to the lives of the neighbourhood one bulb at a time.