Participatory development has been taken up enthusiastically by donors and governments alike. But their interpretation of participation as applied to development projects is some way from its origins in radical politics. Is it possible to achieve genuine participation through an emphasis on consensus and technical targets while ignoring patterns of local power and domination?

Increasingly, donors and governments promote participatory decision-making as a way to distribute project benefits equitably in the communities involved. Participation has become an unproven development practice. However, research from the School of Oriental and African Studies in the UK argues that ‘participation’ loses its meaning when applied to time-bound and results-oriented development projects.

The research considers two participatory watershed development projects in rural India administered by the Kurnool District Watershed Office (KWO). The emphasis of the projects was on achieving equity by decentralising decision-making through local watershed committees. The project sites were selected by KWO at least partly on the basis of the unity of the villages.

The research found that:

KWO chooses to go against politics by avoiding conflicts that could delay the project. In practice, avoiding conflict means adjusting to local power structures (and thus politics) to secure unanimity or consensus, however superficial.

• All decisions about the project were to be made by local watershed committees made up of local residents and independent of the existing structures of village government, the panchayat. In practice, those who control the panchayat also control the watershed committees.
• KWO assumes that public meetings can be used to resolve differences, and mistakes the absence of dissent for consensus.
• Once time-bound projects are viewed as technical rather than political it is convenient to divide ‘participation’ into sections to be listed and checked as with other physical and financial targets.
• Local KWO officials are under deadline pressures, and are also insecure in their jobs and in their dealings with the local elite. As a result, they frequently ignore undemocratic and corrupt practices by this elite.

KWO’s model of participation is based on a liberal idea of individual freedom whereby every person can make rational decisions in a neutral environment. However, it disregards the liberal idea of resolving individual differences through negotiation and compromises as this is seen as conflictual. Ignoring such ‘conflictual’ local politics in favour of technical processes and consensus-building means that existing patterns of domination and exclusion are left in place, and genuine participation is not achieved. Drawing on this, the report makes two key recommendations:

• Policy makers need to address the question of how participatory projects can be designed in a way that combines genuine collective decision-making with effective execution of the project.
• Conflict, disagreement and differences in power need to be tackled directly in such projects and not sidelined in an attempt to create an artificial consensus.

The experience of the projects in Kurnool shows the limitations of the current orthodoxy in development policy which sees participation as a technical rather than a political process. There is a need to return to the original idea of participation, as a political issue of empowerment, contesting domination and broadening and deepening democracy.

Source(s):
‘The Negation of Politics in Participatory Development Projects, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh’, Vasudha Chhotray, Development and Change 35 (2), 2004 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 11 April 2005

Further Information:
Vasudha Chhotray
Research Fellow
Institute for Political & Economic Governance
Williamson Building, University of Manchester
Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL
UK

Tel: 0161 275 0796
Fax: 0161 275 0793
Contact the contributor: Vasudha.Chhotray@manchester.ac.uk

Institute for Political & Economic Governance, University of Manchester, UK

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'Mainstreaming participation in global conservation'

'Deepening democracy through hearing farmers voices'

'Working together: a ‘best practice’ in rural water supply and sanitation in Africa'

'Watershed development in India – a tool for the rich or for the poor?'

'The logic of decentralisation: Mobilising cash, commitment and communities'