René Véron

The "new" Kerala model: lessons for sustainable development.

Abstract The “Kerala model of development” has won wide international attention for its achievements in regard to social development and, to a certain extent, environmental sustainability. The “old” Kerala model, preoccupied with redistributive policies, failed, however, to induce economic development. As a result, attention is now being given to a “new” Kerala model. The new policy explicitly seeks reconciliation of social, productive and environmental objectives at the local level, and tries to develop synergies between civil society, local governmental bodies and the state government. The new Kerala model thus holds important lessons for participatory, community-based sustainable development in India and elsewhere.

Participation and Power: Poor People's Engagement with India's Employment Assurance Scheme

‘Participation’ has become an essential part of good developmental practice for Southern governments, NGOs and international agencies alike. In this article we reflect critically on this shift by investigating how a ‘participatory’ development programme — Indias Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) — intersects with poor peoples existing social networks. By placing the formalized process of participation in the EAS within the context of these varied and uneven village–level relationships, we raise a number of important issues for participatory development practice. We note the importance of local power brokers and the heterogeneity of ‘grassroots’ (dis)empowerment, and question ideas of power reversals used within the participatory development literature.

The everyday state and political society in Eastern India: structuring access to the employment assurance scheme

The positive roles that political parties might play in development have recently been downplayed in favour of accounts of the virtues of civil society and participatory development. This article challenges some assumptions inherent in this shift in emphasis. It considers how political society has mediated the agency of the rural poor in three locales in eastern India in respect of the national demand-driven Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS). In Debra block (Midnapore, West Bengal), where the scheme worked best in terms of employment creation and participation, the dominant political party, in collusion with lower-level government officials, subdued popular demand in anticipation of limited state capacity. In Old Malda block (Malda district, West Bengal), rent-seeking councillors withheld information about the EAS from the poor. In Bidupur block (Vaishali district, Bihar) a key politician ensured that the EAS was converted into a scheme for the production of durable assets that mostly benefited the non-poor. These findings suggest that participatory development in a country like India, where civil society is poorly developed, needs to be considered in relation to particular constructions of political society and the local ‘everyday’ state.

Enhancing pro-poor governance in Eastern India: participation, politics and action research

This paper uses the experience of a recent programme of action research in Eastern India to reflect on the use of participatory ideals within governance reform. In a situation where there are profound difficulties in local governance, it assesses the potential for participatory forms of stakeholder engagement to begin a process of reform. It criticizes views of reform put forward by both the World Bank and Robert Chambers, and argues instead that critical self-reflection and the construction of alliances among a variety of reform-minded actors are important first steps in building political capabilities to challenge structural blockages to pro-poor governance.

Ponds, Power and Institutions: The Everyday Governance of Accessing Urban Water Bodies in a Small Bengali City

While researchers in the growing field of urban political ecology have given significant attention to the fragmented hydroscape that characterizes access to drinking water in the global South, so far the (re)production of other urban waters and its related power relations have been underexplored. This article seeks to contribute to filling this gap by exploring the everyday negotiations over access to urban water bodies, in particular ponds. These are understood as a composite resource that is simultaneously water, land and public space. This analysis draws on a case study from a small city in West Bengal, India, and is based primarily on data from open interviews with different actors with a stake in urban ponds. The article demonstrates that in a context of ambiguity of the statutory governance regime and fragmented control, the (re)production of the pondscape is embedded within complex relationships of power whereby social marginalization can be offset at least momentarily by local institutions such as neighbourhood clubs and political parties.

Micro-insurance through corporate–NGO partnerships in West Bengal: opportunities and constraints

This Practical Note examines the nascent micro-insurance sector in West Bengal, paying particular attention to the corporate–NGO partnership model for micro-insurance distribution, which has been enabled by Indias unique regulatory framework. We challenge the popular construction of this model as a ‘win–win’ for all parties by analysing conflicting understandings of micro-insurance schemes and their purposes by insurance companies, NGOs, and poor villagers. The article also considers the role of the specific political context of West Bengal in constricting corporate–NGO micro-insurance.

Of parks and politics: the production of socio-nature in a Gujarati town

ABSTRACT Urban parks in India are often discussed as positive environmental projects, and their creation appears as unproblematic in public discourse. This paper presents the creation of a municipal park in a small city in Gujarat, India. Using insights from history and architecture, we stress the importance of reading parks as political and to some extent ideological projects in the larger context of city-making. The political ecology and history of the particular park studied here allow us to problematise the socio-ecological project of urban “beautification” via park creation. The municipal park, established in the centre of a small urban agglomeration after displacing a slum settlement from the site, is – as we argue – an integral part of a local geography of power. As such it expresses several registers of values upheld by local elites and brings into focus highly conflictive social relations. The case study contributes to further developing a situated urban political ecological approach that starts theorising cities from the South. It moreover offers a critical perspective on the understudied urban nature of small towns.

Brainstorming, Modified Logframes and the Conversion of Research Hypotheses into Field Questions: Reflections from Team-based Fieldwork in Eastern India

This paper considers some practical problems associated with organising large-scale comparative field research in eastern India. The focus of the paper is on the use of brainstorming and “modified logframes” as two means by which hypotheses about the working of the local state from the point of view of the rural poor could be turned into concrete field questions. The paper is less concerned with ethical and positional issues relating to team-based research in “the tropics” (on this, see Williams et al., 2003a) than with the equally important if apparently more prosaic issues relating to the flawed but necessary search for objectivity and rigour in comparative field studies.

Re-framing Democracy and Agency in India: Politics of Middlemen and Political Society

Introduction Some of the most pressing debates in development studies have concerned the relative merits of states and markets, or the means by which markets might be regulated by a range of public institutions from the local to the global scale. These debates have taken shape, most famously, in the contrasting cases of sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, and they have an obvious and continuing relevance in countries as diverse as Brazil, Nigeria, India and China. Yet if debate on these issues continues to be fierce, there appears to be general agreement that ‘strong states’ or ‘free markets’ need to be kept in check by vibrant civil societies. Indeed, it is a common proposition in development studies that this hazy zone of ‘freedom’ between the family and the state is a source of unparalleled strength for ordinary men and women, and a source of development itself and even economic growth. Robert Putman has made this claim as strongly as anyone. His suggestion that economic growth is promoted by a prior build-up of social capital – of peoples engagements with a dense network of civic associations – has become a staple of World Bank thinking since the mid-1990s. Even where the causal propositions of Putnam are refused, it is clear that the virtues of civil society are widely admired. Arturo Escobar looks to civil society as a breeding ground for oppositional movements and experiments. It functions for him, and perhaps also for Ashis Nandy in India, as a potential zone of resistance to the dehumanizing claims of developmentalism.

Seeing the State: Technologies of rule and the war on poverty

Introduction In his now-famous account of the making and unmaking of the Third World, Arturo Escobar argues not only that an era of developmentalism was inaugurated by President Truman in his Point Four speech of 29 January 1949, but also that the aid programmes which followed were justified by ‘the discovery of mass poverty’ in the less economically accomplished countries (Escobar 1995: 21). In making these claims Escobar directs us to the production of poverty as part of a wider (geo)political discourse, and this is a central theme of this chapter. The production of poverty as a failing, or as an incomplete set of capabilities, is linked to the production of persons who can be labelled as poor, and who can either be reproached for being the bearers of certain pathologies – the illiterate man who has to be educated, the overly fecund woman whose body has to be disciplined – and/or acclaimed as people who deserve the help of others. Whether or not members of rural society are unaware of their poverty before they are labelled as such by outsiders, as Lakshman Yapa maintains was the case for him, growing up in Sri Lanka, is something we consider later. But it is clearly the case that the production of poverty by various government and other agencies creates many of the spaces within which ‘poorer people’ are bound to see ‘the state’.