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Participation is a dominant concept governing institutional planning, globally. But literature review reveals that the outcome of participation has been variable in various settings leading to a belief that there exists a gap between what is written about participation and what happens, in reality. The study adopts a case study approach and focusses on a case of community forest management and planning from the state of West Bengal, India. This state has been the cradle of a number of decentralization initiatives. Following the tenets of behavioural geography, the study tries to understand the behaviour of the stakeholders in participation in the planning process, the factors affecting it, and the nature of engagement process. The study concludes that the level of local participation not only on the willingness of the formal institutions convening participation but also on the understanding of the community of the socio-economic and political processes affecting them, accessibility to resources like information, education, government training programmes, etc.

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The notion of ‘participation’ and its association with the concept of planning and governance has increasingly become important both in rural and urban governance. However the impact of the participation has been different in different settings. The present study is an attempt to examine the participatory processes in planning within an already existing participatory programme in India, namely the Joint Forest Management (JFM) Programme, empowering forest communities within rural forest dwelling units with management functions, through a participative approach. In recent times, within the framework of JFM, Microplan has to be prepared for each village, under the National Afforestation Programme of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. The study aims to address the nature and extent of participation and the factors which have affected the outcome of participatory processes in a representative case site, within broader context of participatory governance.

Participation is a dominant concept governing institutional planning, globally. But literature review reveals that the outcome of participation has been variable in various settings leading to a belief that there exists a gap between what is written about participation and what happens, in reality. The study adopts a case study approach and focusses on a case of community forest management and planning from the state of West Bengal, India. This state has been the cradle of a number of decentralization initiatives. Following the tenets of behavioural geography, the study tries to understand the behaviour of the stakeholders in participation in the planning process, the factors affecting it, and the nature of engagement process. The study concludes that the level of local participation not only on the willingness of the formal institutions convening participation but also on the understanding of the community of the socio-economic and political processes affecting them, accessibility to resources like information, education, government training programmes, etc.