Assessing Participatory Development

Rhetoric Versus Reality

William P. Lineberry

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429713873
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Sous-sujet: Politica

This book was shaped by ten years of International Fund for Agricultural Development's experience on innovative approaches to people's participation in development. Its critical assessment of the participatory approach explains how it works, its benefits and the pitfalls it harbours for the unwary.

Chapter 1
Participatory Development: The IFAD Experience

Mohiuddin Alamgir

IFAD: Aims and Purpose

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) completed its eleventh year of operations in 1988. IFAD has a specific mandate: to increase food production, reduce undernutrition and alleviate rural poverty in developing countries. Its explicit target groups are the smallholder farmers, the landless, rural women, artisanal fishermen, nomadic herdsmen and agro-pastoralists. The challenge facing the Fund is not only to reach these vast, neglected millions but to help to escort them into the development mainstream of their societies.

During its first decade, IFAD has focused on simpler, people-oriented projects which rely on the targeted beneficiaries' own resources and initiative. It has sought the active participation of these people in the preparation, design, implementation and evaluation of projects. The Fund has engaged local groups of the poor and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with location-specific knowledge of conditions and needs. It has built on existing grassroots organizations and/or it has tried to create such organizations around project benefits and objectives.

IFAD has proceeded on the assumption that poverty alleviation is an economic proposition, not just a welfare responsibility. The rural poor are currently operating on a much lower level than their production potential, given the available technology and the possibilities of generating new technologies suited to their needs. To close this gap between the actual and the potential requires not only quantitative improvements in the traditional factors of production - land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship - but also attention to qualitative factors, of which education is the most important. It is through education, training and human resource development that the poor become aware of their social entitlements and economic opportunities. Access to these, in turn, depends on their political and social power. This is a power only the poor themselves can develop through grassroots mobilization and participation. In this sense, people's participation becomes both a means and an end of the poverty alleviation process.

Understanding Rural Poverty and Articulating Anti-Poverty Strategy

To state these facts does nothing to brush aside the difficulties and complexities involved in a participatory approach. It is easy to say that participatory development embracing the poor is fundamental to effective poverty alleviation, but the rhetoric of grassroots mobilization is too often not matched by action.

During its first decade IFAD conducted in-depth poverty analyses through Special Programming and other field missions in order to fill the existing lacunae in its knowledge about the poor - who they are and where they are located. This is a necessary first step to designing participatory interventions. The next step was to develop an understanding of the processes which generate and perpetuate poverty.

The processes are many and intertwined. They include the dualistic process of colonial legacy whereby a minority of the society and the economy thrives at the cost of the majority part. They include the so-called "adjustment" process currently being undertaken in some places to benefit a macro-economic balance at the cost of hardship to a majority of rural poor during the period of transition, which can indeed be prolonged.

Another process links high population growth and inheritance laws with the sub-division and fragmentation of land which, in turn, increases pressure on marginalized land, progressively deteriorating the environment and reducing its carrying capacity and accentuating poverty in the process.

There are also cultural, ethnic and gender related processes which contribute to the impoverishment of tribal people, ethnic minorities and rural women. These groups, in particular, have emerged as the worst victims of the political and civil strife which have in recent years plagued so many regions of the world, dislocating people from their roots and turning many groups into permanent destitutes. The vulnerability of the rural disadvantaged populations has been sustained by various forms of exploitative intermediation and policy biases, be they feudal or semi-feudal exploitation rooted in land and water relations or the pricing, marketing and exchange rate policies set by governments.

The analyses of the often interlinked poverty processes have provided a useful basis for the gradual evolution of a strategic framework of support to IFAD's target groups. Certain fundamentals - benefit targeting, structural reforms, support services and people's participation apply in each case.

Above all, emphasis must be placed on the building of grassroots-based institutions and on people's participation in project development from the design stage onwards. It is this bottom-up approach that can ensure that projects are cost effective, sustainable and, as practicality dictates, replicable. This is very demanding, and there must be a continuous search for effective instrumentalities to promote participation.

Advantages of the Participatory Approach

IFAD has found that the rural poor, when given the chance, are eager to participate in projects designed to benefit them. It has found that farmers' acceptance of, and commitment to, project objectives are also crucial elements for successful project implementation and sustainability. A development process which involves people provides a basis not only for improvement in their material well-being but also for progress in their social and cultural life. The participatory approach offers a number of clear advantages.

First, a major strength of participatory development lies in the innate wisdom and knowledge of the rural poor concerning the environment with which they are intimately familiar. When matched to careful external assistance, this indigenous intelligence can result in projects which are manageable in scope, do not rely unduly on imported technology, have low recurrent cost expenses and which beneficiaries themselves can voluntarily maintain after the project has been completed. IFAD has found that much that is "innovative" in rural development stems from the traditions and practices of the poor themselves, who have experience in the demands of survival in a harsh environment. Typical is the Fund's Special Programme for Soil and Water Conservation and Agroforestry in the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso. It draws upon traditional water conservation practices in the area and seeks to strengthen them through participatory research, construction and maintenance.

A participatory approach also facilitates the organization of training, particularly for rural women who have rarely benefited from training schemes. Thus, in the Production Credit for Rural Women Project in Nepal, IFAD seeks to channel training, the transfer and diffusion of technology and the efficient delivery of essential inputs, credit and project services through the establishment of self-reliant women's groups.

Participation also can help resolve individual conflicts through intra-group negotiation, while strengthening the voice of the group itself vis-à-vis other organizations. A good example is the On Farm Water Management Project in Pakistan (discussed below) where illegal interference with water supplies has virtually ceased since farmer associations were organized to manage the water courses. A key element of the Small Farmer Development Project in Nepal has been the organization mainly around production activities of the disadvantaged rural poor into small, homogeneous groups of ten to fifteen members. The development, through these groups, of a spirit of self-reliance and community cohesion has provided a source of countervailing power to a people with little more to bargain with, previously, than their own labour.

By awakening community consciousness, participatory development also contributes to the protection of individual rights and strengthens the self-confidence of vulnerable groups such as poor women and landless labourers. Credit schemes providing group guarantees for loans have proved especially useful in this respect. Finally, however measured, socio-economic development itself cannot realistically be sustained without regard to the active involvement of the large mass of small producers and workers in rural areas and without offering a minimum share of output to these groups.

Overcoming Constraints to Participation

If participation has its undoubted advantages, there are a number of constraints working against it as well. For example, participation cannot be promoted without reference to prevailing political parameters. Internal constraints on voluntary self-help organizations can arise from the inadequacy of local leadership or the limited role allowed the poor in decision-making. External constraints arise from unequal access to productive assets such as land, water, credit, etc.; from inadequate government policies or financial support; from the political and ideological orientation of ruling elites and their relationship with both local and international elites; and from the essential isolation and alienation of the poor themselves.

It is to overcome such obstacles that a growing number of donors align themselves with NGOs and their special access to the poor established by years of work among them. It is also why IFAD, in its policy dialogue with governments, presses for the decentralization of rural support and service institutions nearer to the grassroots level, particularly of education and training programmes which enhance participatory capacities. Programmes of agrarian reform also have proved to be key elements in opening the door to a participatory approach.

The aim is to encourage the formation of organizations providing concrete economic, social or cultural benefits, thereby deepening the roots of community self-reliance. Often, the opportunity to participate actively in the identification, design, implementation and evaluation of IFAD-financed projects helps to serve this purpose. The lesson seems to be that passive forms of participation - ritual forms of participation imposed from the top down - invariably fail. Where democratic give-and-take is present and where there is a sense of belonging and of having a say in decisions, participation stands a good chance of success whether self-generated or externally induced.

Even a self-ignited process of participation will die a natural death, however, unless inducements are provided on a sustained basis to make the effort worthwhile. For example, IFAD's efforts to promote group credit in Tunisia were limited because the external agent, the lending bank, failed to pursue loan recovery vigourously enough to discourage default. This is why a supportive set of external policies and institutions is a key factor in participatory approaches. On the other hand, no amount of external support will avail unless a strong element of spontaneity and consensus-building is present among the poor. Genuine participation enables the poor to tackle the poverty process from the inside. External assistance can only facilitate the effectiveness of their own efforts.

Some Operational Considerations

Development assistance agencies taking the participatory approach would do well to keep several important considerations in mind. For one thing, participation of people is the other name of empowerment of people, a concept with which many are still ill at ease. This can be a delicate matter for an external agent. For another, there is always the danger that participaton induced from the outside will only lead the poor from one form of dependency to another. This is hardly the goal of self-reliant development.

Care is always required in using external resources both to initiate and to strengthen local participatory capacities. The situation is analogous to that in the training of effective group animators or organizers used to build up grassroots organizations. They must encourage participation without pre-empting the group's responsibility for decision-making. They must work themselves out of a job, just as development practitioners must do in the long run.

Even in their isolation, the rural poor are seldom without basic forms of organization. Where village councils exist, or women's clubs, or associations of smallholders and the landless, or cooperatives, such groups can be used as entry points for project participation. While these locally-initiated organizations of the poor are essential building blocks for people's participation, they need, however, to reach beyond the confines of project objectives in at least three ways:

First, physically, by building horizontal and vertical linkages with other similarly oriented organizations so as to increase their combined knowledge and bargaining power. Second, over time, by conceiving the animating project itself as but one phase in a rolling programme pointed at eventual self-reliance. Third, in terms of gender, by systematically incorporating rural women into grassroots initiatives. Rural women have demanding, multiple, vital roles as housewives, mothers, food producers and providers. To leave them out of participation in decision-making and in the fruits of development is to miss the point of what effective participation is about. These are lessons thoroughly learned by IFAD in its ten years of operations.

One point deserves special emphasis. Simply stated, it is to "learn from the poor". This involves building on traditional practices and indigenous technologies as much as building on local organizations. Farmers are much more in tune with the subtleties of their environment and their food security needs more than outsiders. They are drawn to participatory approaches more on the basis of what they know than what someone tells them. IFAD-initiated soil and water conservation programmes in Niger, Thailand, Bhutan and Burkina Faso are designed to be implemented with direct people's participation, relying exclusively on the traditional technology with which the beneficiaries are familiar.

Some Hard Questions

As experience of participatory development accumulates, more research of an anthropological nature is required to examine cases of failure and to build stronger guidelines and modalities for success. Despite a growing volume of experience, a number of hard questions remain to be answered if the participatory approach is to prove a consistent success.

For example, is genuine participation possible in the face of inequalities? Can landless poor rural women without any assets participate side-by-side with smallholders owning a hectare or more of land or with other farmers raising cash crops for export? That wealthier farmers can coopt development benefits in their own favour is no surprise to those experienced in rural development. That exploitative intermediaries strengthen their position vis-á-vis the poor as a result of development interventions is far from uncommon. Where do considerations of equity figure in the participatory approach?

In his examination of farmer participation in a water management project in Sri Lanka, Norman Uphoff of Cornell University in the U.S.A, has noted¹ that, "To have held elections of leaders at the outset would have given prominence and power to the rural elite and discouraged the emergence of local leadership that was oriented toward equity, productivity and participation ... When it came to selecting more formal leadership, this was done by consensus, and after the group had discussed the criteria for selection (not election)".

IFAD's experience has stressed the importance of congenial or homogeneous group formation - small groups of the rural poor sharing similar problems and aspirations, such as poor women's credit clubs which offer group guarantees instead of land or physical assets for collateral, or water users associations which manage and maintain small-scale irrigation schemes for mutual benefit. The idea is to utilize neighbourliness, friendship and peer pressure as building stones. But what of larger, less homogeneous groups which, for one or another reason, don't work?

And what of the political framework in which participation goes forward? Is democracy more conducive to participation than a one-party political system or more guided forms of rule?

Although in theory the link between governments and grassroots organizations should be strong from either point of view, the linkage is in practice weak or non-existent. Even under full-fledged democracies, the access of the poor to public services and programmes is limited, in part because of the standardized nature of these services. The weak political and organizational power of the poor also constrains their ability to hold the interfacing bureaucracy accountable to their needs. The question, therefore, remains how participatory development can progress in the face of rigid bureaucracies or centralized power.

While pressing for decentralization of services nearer to the grassroots level, IFAD has found that diversification or a multiplicity of channels serving rural needs also aids the participatory framework - be they governmental, semi-private, private or cooperative. While homogeneity is a good starting point for group organization. diversity and pluralism provide options through which the poor can press their needs and gain consideration.

A third hard question relates to the above consideration. To what extent and under what conditions is a free market conducive to participatory development? In theory free markets provide a range of choices, but in many societies they are associated by the poor with exploitative intermediation and coercive economic power. The issue is important because of the recent debate on market efficiencies and privatization in the development context. IFAD, again, has found that there is no essential antagonism between a participatory approach and individual enterprise. On the contrary, the former often abets the latter - as in group guaranteed credit projects - which lead to flourishing micro-enterprises. But the Fund's experience also indicates that in many rural settings free market mechanisms need to be balanced by other, public, semi-public or cooperative outlets, if only because of the limited nature of the market, generally. In the Rural Incentives Programme in Guinea-Bissau, for example, IFAD has sought to ensure the equitable access of smallholders to producer and incentive goods under the structural adjustment programme by organizing smallholder associations for input supply and marketing activities as competitive alternatives to existing commercial channels.

Again, however, the question remains whether even the organized poor, when thrown into a free market situation, can be expected to survive. And what would their failure mean to participatory values and the attainment of collective self-reliance?

A Review of Project Experience

A final question relates to international development institutions. With their global reach and macro concerns, can they play an effective role in building participation at the grassroots level? IFAD's experience suggests that the means are at hand to transform the growing concern for poverty alleviation into effective participatory programmes. Much of the Fund's experienc...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Tables
• Foreword
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE Participatory Development: The IFAD Experience
• CHAPTER TWO The Fate of Smallholders and Other Rural Poor in Africa During the Structural Adjustment Transition
• CHAPTER THREE The Economics of Investment in Rural Development: Private and Social Accounting Experiences from Latin America
• CHAPTER FOUR Letting the Worm Turn: A Comment on Innovative Poverty Alleviation
• CHAPTER FIVE Rural Women in Ghana: Their Workloads, Access and Organizations
• CHAPTER SIX The Enterprise Concept: A Comment on Innovations in Participatory Approaches to Development
• About the Authors