Building Upon Grassroots Innovations: Agticulating Social And Ethical Capital

The healthy growth of democracy depends upon the emergence of decentralized, dispersed, polycentric spurs of social, ecological and economic entrepreneurship. Networking among these seemingly disparate cross currents some times gives enough momentum to the civil society initiatives to transform the social and cultural values of the society. There is always networking taking place among stronger economic and cultural forces, not withstanding the nature of state. But some times, this transformation also takes place through subtle networking among the grassroots deviants, innovators, and other marginal but creative forces in society. Gerlach and Palmer (1981) called these forces as SPIN (segmented, polycentric, integrated networks) while I tend to view these SPLICES that need attention today since these have the potential to take the society by surprise when their real power manifests, if it does. It is true that due to loose coordination, may times these forces remain on the margin and thus their potential does not get realized for a long time. I want to take the case of HoneyBee network that has helped provide a sort of loose platform to converge creative, but uncoordinated individuals across not only Indian states having varying cultural, language and social ethos but also in 75 other countries around the world. What it is trying to do in a rather quiet manner may transform the way the resources in which poor people are rich are used in future. These resources are their knowledge, innovations and sustainable practices. I first argue that classical concept of social capital does not distinguish between the trust in society created for social good versus social ‘bad’. For instance, the trust among members of mafia and other socially undesirable networks does not constitute social capital. I am also trying to distinguish that part of social trust which is guided by higher ethical values which may not have become social norms as yet. This is being distinguished as ethical capital. Finally, I conclude that Honey Bee Network has tried to articulate the social and ethical capital of the society at the grassroots.