Prelims

Half Title Page

Community Participation and Civic Engagement in the Digital Era

Endorsements

Putting the hype about e-governance into perspective, Mudit Singh does not only point to the socially structured, unevenly realized access to digital tools of citizen participation but also the continued importance of substantial decentralization and financial devolution.

– René Véron, Full Professor of Social Geography, the Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

It's rare to find a book that so adeptly links important social policy, theories of democratic participatory governance and sophisticated network analysis. Dr Singh has managed to do all three; drawing on years of deep involvement in the field, this book is a gem that is sure to be a go-to resource for everyone working in this field.

– James Moody, Robert O. Keohane Professor of Sociology at Duke University, USA

Title Page

Community Participation and Civic Engagement in the Digital Era

Localizing Sustainable Development

By

Mudit Kumar Singh

Duke University, USA; Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Copyright © 2022 Mudit Kumar Singh.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80262-292-8 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80262-291-1 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80262-293-5 (Epub)

List of Figures and Tables

List of Abbreviations

CNA

Community Need Assessment

CBA

Community-Based Assessment

CP

Community Participation

CSO

Civil Society Organization

GEN

General Castes

GP

Gram Panchayat

GS

Gram Sabha

HDR

Human Development Report

HH

House Hold

MNREGA

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

OBC

Other Backward Castes

PRA

Participatory Rural Appraisal

PRI

Panchayati Raj Institution

RRA

Rapid Rural Appraisal

SC

Schedule Castes

SNA

Social Network Analysis

TNA

Training Needs Assessment

WB

World Bank

About the Author

Mudit Kumar Singh is a 2017–2018 batch Fulbright alumnus and currently affiliated to the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (Postdoctoral Fellow), and Duke University (Visiting Research Fellow). ¹

Dr Singh has been carrying out research, advocacy and teaching for the past 12 years in India. He has worked with a variety of communities including people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS in Rajasthan, the flood-prone community in Bihar, female and youth from villages of Himachal Pradesh and the stone-breaker community in Uttar Pradesh. He has been part of the policymaking process at the ground level in building urban health and employment generation policy in India.

He completed his Master's in Business Administration in Rural Development in 2009 from Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, University of Allahabad. After working for about five years with civil society organizations, he joined his PhD in 2014 and visited Duke Network Analysis Center, Duke University, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur during his doctoral training.

He has published in high-quality international journals and presented to a variety of audiences including government, police, researchers, and health and legal practitioners.

His recent studies apply a mixed-method approach to explore linkages between social capital, social networks and public participation in the context of local governance and public policy. Currently, he engages with a variety of stakeholders – trade unions, government, civil society organizations and workers at the Just Transition Research Centre, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology that can help in devising a community-centric policy to shift away from fossil fuel to renewable energy in India. ²

Abstract

Since World War II, nations across the globe have devised many institutions from local to global level to achieve the best possible governance of resources to meet development goals. This book is primarily based on my field studies of Indian villages and slums over the past twelve years in India. But it has gone further to include cases from other parts of the globe to present a comprehensive picture of community participation at local levels.

On the one hand, scholars argued for the engagement of local people for the success of development projects. On the other hand, some scholars stressed on the building of democratic institutions that may involve the public through direct and indirect means. The Word Bank and the United Nations also considered the importance and need of such local institutional building for the success of development projects. Thus, local democratic institutions are highly crucial for developing countries like India, where the majority of the population still lives in villages. Since independence, various states of India started building democratic institutions called panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) run by the elected members and bureaucrats.

Acknowledging the various forms of participation, and factors that are discussed by scholars around the globe, I present a conceptual model that more or less explains community participation at local levels. From the field work, the study has used two important indicators – attendance and ability of attendees to speak in the meetings as a measure of their participation and active participation, respectively. I discuss the socioeconomic factors – income, age, landholding, embedded social capital in the social networks (whom they are friends with and seek help), education, gender etc. and power that transcend through these socioeconomic classes that eventually shape up individuals' decisions to participate in local governance and in development interventions through external agencies.

Based on my experience in India, I also discuss the community-centric institutional arrangement that can potentially help marginalized sections of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. The analysis in the book suggests that with high social capital, elites and brokers are vocal in the open meetings regulated by village panchayats. At the same time, social capital also works as a support system for weaker sections. This way, I highlight the good of social capital working for the individuals, whereas social capital potentially working against the collective efforts for the rural poor. Further, the research finds that the creation of new villages facilitated by the state administration might help to achieve the attendance level of villagers but active participation level does not improve. Narratives from the community suggest that villagers demand for further decentralization, especially of financial powers at the village level itself. According to them, this may genuinely empower the village council members that may result in the revival of village committees to meet the objective of power transfer to villagers. The community reflections echo the scholarly shift towards treating participation as an end in case of local governance instead of a means to achieve certain intervention objectives. Unless the financial decentralization happens at local committees, the development intervention by any agency (Government or CSOs) will keep getting biased outcomes often working against the marginalized sections.

Acknowledgements

I express my sincere gratitude to Prof (Retired) A. K. Sharma, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kanpur, and Prof (Retired) S. K. Pant, Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute Allahabad (now Prayagraj), Uttar Pradesh, India, for their continuous moral and professional support in supervising my doctoral thesis. I extend my thanks to Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral scholarship that supported my visit to Duke University where Prof James Moody and the team at Duke Network Analysis Center, Social Science Research Institute, gave their extraordinary support and quality inputs in my thesis work.

My sincere thanks to all the non-profit organizations in India who gave me an opportunity to learn and work with the community living in diverse socioeconomic and geographical contexts in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh. My heartfelt regards to Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad for facilitating my PhD. in difficult circumstances and that to Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research Mumbai for adding quality to my analysis through its Visiting Scholar Program.

Lastly, I thank Prof. Pradip Swarnakar, Founder, Just Transition Research Centre, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur who provided me with a conducive atmosphere to finish the book.