The Negation of Politics in Participatory Development Projects, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Based on a case study of two watershed development projects in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh in India, this article argues that participatory development projects are legitimized by using formalistic compliance criteria, while removing politics as a context. It shows how key aspects of the liberal political framework have not been fully harmonized with communitarian theories; the result is an interpretation of participation as a set of practices that are far removed from politics. As a development practice, participation can turn into the itemizing of participatory objectives, which are then to be fulfilled in the same way as physical and financial targets. The practitioners see their role as merely 'technocratic' and the projects they implement as 'apolitical'. The author argues that, central to these claims, is a limited definition of 'politics' as a one dimensional domain comprising contest and irreconcilable conflict, from which the participatory projects, based on socalled consensus, publicly expressed, are to be shielded. The article concludes that participatory projects accommodate and reflect existing relations of domination and control much more than their outward orientation would suggest.Development and Change 35(2): 327-352 (2004).

The promise of common pool resource theory and the reality of commons projects

“…In these cases there is likely to be very little to connect the decisionmaking norms of actors with commons projects (Li 2002;Saunders et al 2010). One way that some commons projects have been seen to be successful has been by co-opting local elites, but this strategy compromises key CPR institutional design principles and commons project goals of participation and widespread distribution of benefits (Chhotray 2004;Mansuri and Rao 2004;SpringateBaginsky and Blaikie 2007).…”

“…This should not be a surprising finding given the way that translocal actors (e.g. NGOs, State) have been known to co-opt traditional institutional arrangements to forward 'external' conservation agendas (Chhotray 2004;Campbell and Shackleton 2001;Saunders 2011). Co-option should be distinguished from providing project support, although this may not be straightforward and overdependence on technical expertise may slide into the political realm of control.…”

Post‐sustainable development

“…Here the language is one of a wider sense of emancipation or empowerment rather than a more narrow focus on an immediate implementation of a project (Chhotray, 2004). Within these broad headings are a plethora of different techniques and methods favoured by individuals and organisations, but all share the same sense of a valuation of the local (Mohan and Stokke, 2000).…”

Farmers' Participation in Knowledge Circulation and the Promotion of Agroecological Methods in South India

“…These heterogeneities may cause interests and knowledge of some community members to diverge from those of others. This divergence, and its interplay with extant expert-farmer hierarchies that continue to situate project administrators as legitimate interpreters of community conditions, may cause the needs and knowledge of locally dominant individuals and subgroups to be interpreted and projected as those of the entire community (Mosse 1995;Chhotray 2004).…”