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

Participation and Power: Poor People’s

Engagement with India’s Employment

Assurance Scheme

Glyn Williams, Rene Veron, Stuart Corbridge and

Manoj Srivastava

ABSTRACT

‘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— India’s Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) —

intersects with poor people’s 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.

INTRODUCTION

In the academic literature, and in public statements of the World Bank, thebilateral agencies and many Southern governments, people’s participationhas become a mandatory part of what is now taken to be good develop-mental practice. This shift to ‘participation’ has various antecedents, fromthe radical conscientization of Paulo Friere to Gandhian ideals of self-rule,but in its recent institutional form it has drawn particularly on the work ofRobert Chambers and Michael Cernea, among others.1 Within Chambers’work, participatory development emerged from innovations in researchmethods used to mobilize local knowledges in the conduct of developmentprogrammes (to see the development of these methods, see PLA Notes).Later developments emphasized the change from ‘finding out’ to handing

1. Paul Francis (2001) notes that Michael Cernea and Lawrence Salmen have been important

in influencing the World Bank’s approach to participatory development: their alternative

conceptions of the term are somewhat less ‘radical’ than Chambers’ own.

Development and Change 34(1): 163–192 (2003). # Institute of Social Studies 2003. Publishedby Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

over control: participatory rural appraisal (PRA) aims not to extract localknowledge for analysis elsewhere, but to mobilize indigenous capacitiesfor the self-management of development projects (Chambers, 1994a, 1994b,1994c).

The wider effect of these shifts has been to transform the role partici-pation is supposed to play within development projects and programmes.Rather than being a mere research technique, it is supposed to becomea means of empowerment in itself. This in turn implies changes in therelationships between powerful ‘uppers’ (development practitioners andother important outsiders) and local ‘lowers’ (the beneficiaries/subjects ofdevelopment programmes), and it is here that more expansive claims forparticipatory development as a new paradigm emerge.2 In seeking to change‘whose reality counts’ (Chambers, 1997), those supporting participatorydevelopment argue both that the worldviews of the ‘lowers’ should dominate,and also that participation has the potential to change power relationshipsdramatically within development practice.

This participatory paradigm has not been without its critics. Bill Cookeand Uma Kothari (2001) note two important sets of reservations about par-ticipatory development, relating to the technical/methodological problemsof participation (quite often focused on improving PRA techniques), andthe constraining effects of participatory discourses and practices. In terms ofthe former, participatory methods are criticized for producing homogenous‘local’ viewpoints where none previously existed; of privileging certain voiceswhilst suppressing others; and of being insufficiently sensitive to the formsof knowledge they produce (Cooke and Kothari, 2001; Mayoux, 1995; Mosse,1994; see also contributors to Guijt and Shah, 1998). In terms of the latter,David Mosse (2001) argues that the ‘local knowledge’ produced throughparticipatory techniques is not unproblematically ‘authentic’, but necessarilyreflects and is mediated by project–community and intra-community powerrelations. He further notes that ‘participation’ as a discourse has import-ant power effects: for development agencies it is an important legitimizingstrategy, and thus becomes central to the presentation of project activities toaudiences of powerful outsiders. Uma Kothari (2001) argues that partici-patory methods discursively construct their ‘clients’ in particular — and

2. Jan Neverden Pieterse provides a useful critical commentary on the relevance and reality

of paradigm shifts within development (Pieterse, 1998). Robert Chambers has, however,

been explicit in making such expansive claims for a ‘radical’ (or populist) version of

participatory development. His agenda promises a significant move away from hier-

archical ‘top down’ development projects and institutions, towards more fluid and open

power structures that will be prompted by a series of personal, professional and institu-

tional changes. Personal change is linked to changes in behaviour and attitude, pro-

fessional change to the take-up of PRA methods, and institutional change with a culture of

sharing/partnerships (Chambers, 1997: 220): of these three, personal change is particularly

stressed within Chambers’ work.

164 Glyn Williams, Rene Veron, Stuart Corbridge and Manoj Srivastava

often problematic — ways, placing responsibility for the outcomes ofdevelopment projects squarely on the shoulders of their beneficiaries.

These criticisms provide a valuable corrective to celebratory accountsof participatory development, and they raise important questions about theuse made of so-called ‘local knowledges’ within mainstream developmentpractice. As such they move the analysis of participatory practices ‘outwardsand upwards’, away from the minutiae of PRA techniques and towards anexamination of the institutional power of discourses of participation. This isa vitally important task, and elsewhere in our research we address relateddebates in detail.3 Within this article, however, we investigate participatorydevelopment from a somewhat different perspective, focusing on the relation-ships between participatory processes and empowerment at the micro-scale.Here we shift the analysis ‘outwards and downwards’: we locate the formalizedacts of ‘people’s participation’ in an employment generation programmewithin the existing social networks of the communities taking part in thatprogramme. By beginning our discussion ‘outside’ the development pro-gramme, we ask some questions that are not always considered in accountsof ‘participation’. How relevant was this project to the livelihoods of poorerhouseholds? How and why did particular groups of people participate? Whydid others choose not to participate? What real opportunities for change didthe ‘participatory’ elements of the programme promote? How did (non-)participation in the project affect existing social networks, particularly thoseof the poor?

We address these and other questions here through the grassroots operationof the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS), an employment provisionprogramme which emerged in the 1990s as a major plank in the Indiangovernment’s attempts to alleviate poverty.4 Taking as our principal focusone of five field sites investigated by the research team (see Figure 1),5 webegin by describing key elements of poor people’s livelihoods, their socialnetworks, and the key intermediaries that they use to access outside sourcesof power. We then turn to the formalized acts of ‘people’s participation’ thatare important within the EAS. The EAS incorporated in its design a numberof innovations intended to enhance people’s ownership of, and involvement

3. In particular, the reinterpretation of a ‘participatory’ development programme as it passes

through different layers of the state is addressed in Srivastava et al. (forthcoming, 2003).

Kumar and Corbridge (2002), and Mosse (2001) provide other important insights into the

institutional politics of participatory work.

4. For details, see the discussion in Echeverri-Gent (1995, xv–xviii).

5. The project on which this paper is based (Rural Poverty, the Developmental State and

Spaces of Empowerment in Bihar and West Bengal, ESRC grant number R000237761)

examined poor people’s interaction with local government across a range of state

functions. The field research was carried out in parallel in five Districts of West Bengal

and (erstwhile) Bihar: Midnapore (WB), Malda (WB), Vaishali (Bihar), Bhojpur (Bihar)

and Ranchi (southern Bihar — now Jharkhand) in 1999–2000.

Poor People’s Engagement with India’s EAS 165

in, employment projects: here, we examine the actual opportunities it pro-vided for participation, and the ways in which these challenged or reinforcedpower relations within the villages.

The article focuses on Debra Block in Midnapore District, West Bengal,because the EAS as an experiment in participatory development was mostsuccessful here in terms that matter to the rural poor: attendance at thescheme’s public meetings was high, and many local labourers had beenprovided with work through the programme. It is also, as noted below, afield site that has social and institutional contexts supportive of par-ticipatory activities more generally, including well-entrenched elected local

BANGLADESH

BHUTANN E P A L

C H I N A

0 km 200

ORISSA

CHATTISGARH

WEST BENGAL

JHARKHAND

B I H A R

UTTARPRADESH

ASSAM

SIKKIM

Bay of Bengal

Gang es

RanchiRanchi

MaldaMalda

BhojpurBhojpur

VaishaliVaishali

MidnaporeMidnapore

International

State

District

BOUNDARIES

Figure 1. Location of the Districts Surveyed


government, and a relatively stable and harmonious mix of communities.6

The EAS in Midnapore did not represent idealized participatory practice,but as a location with these relatively favourable characteristics, any short-comings observed there are likely to speak to fundamental difficulties thatwill mark the uptake of ‘participatory development’ elsewhere. In particular,we are concerned with the claims made for participation as an empoweringprocess for the poor. First, however, we look at the social composition of theMidnapore fieldsite, to highlight both the local dimensions of poverty thatthe EAS is intended to challenge, and the heterogeneity of the ‘community’within which the scheme operates.

INSIDE ‘THE COMMUNITY’: SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DIVISIONS

The Midnapore locality comprised three hamlets some 8 km distant by non-metalled road from the nearest small market centre on the Kolkata–Kharagpur rail line. The hamlets were within relatively easy reach of thelocal government office, which was around 4 km away, again by road. Thelocality had a social mix of Bengali Hindus and adivasi (tribal) groups: 45per cent General Caste, 6 per cent Scheduled Caste, 49 per cent ScheduleTribe (Santal and Bhumij). The Hindus had generally lived in the area forseveral generations, while the tribal households were descended frommigrant labourers from the forest belt of Western Midnapore who settledhere some fifty years ago. The locality was reasonably prosperous, thanks tothe spread of micro-irrigation through surface and submersible dieselpumps, and flower cultivation for the Kolkata market had recently becomean important cash crop for some farmers. Politically, the Block had longbeen dominated by the Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPI(M)), butthe Trinamul Congress and BJP emerged as serious contenders in the area inthe panchayat (local council) elections of 1998.

Within this relatively harmonious7 and agriculturally dynamic area, therewere sharp differences in socio-economic status. As indicated in Table 1, the

6. Bihar’s panchayats (local councils) had been suspended at the time of our field research,

and so the EAS was being implemented through the civil service. Although this did not

preclude forms of people’s participation, one would assume a priori that representative

local government would provide a more favourable context for the implementation of the

programme. Malda, our other locality in West Bengal, suffered from both greater social

dislocation — illegal migration from Bangladesh being perceived as a particular problem

in the area — and, as described elsewhere, local political dynamics that steered politicians

away from participatory practice despite the presence of panchayat rule (Veron et al.,

forthcoming, 2003).

7. We use this term guardedly: incidents of lawlessness and open conflict were rare during the

research period, and caste and other divisions were not openly politicized (cf. Williams, 2001).

Our locality contrasted sharply with the neighbouring block, Keshpur, which experienced

intense and violent political competition in the run-up to the 2000 State Assembly elections.


Scheduled Caste and Tribes made up the bulk of the poorest households inthe locality, and they had significantly lower literacy rates than casteHindus. In our study we used a particularly severe definition of poverty, buteven on this restricted measure 45 per cent of households were classified aseither poor or destitute.8 The richest households of the locality enjoyedsecure incomes from salaried jobs or pensions, from small businesses(primarily shops) and from their land. Only seven households owned overfive acres of land, and although their holdings were modest in absoluteterms they were significant employers within the locality due to the intensityof paddy production. It is important to note that given our strict definitionof poverty a significant minority (18 per cent) of our ‘non-poor’ householdswere reliant on unskilled labour as their main income source, and thisincluded several General Caste households. Thus, although the richest house-holds in the locality were all General Caste, there was not a neat correspond-ence between income-poverty, caste/ethnicity and occupation.

In contrast to the other Districts of our study, many poorer households inthe Midnapore locality, especially Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes,

Table1. Literacy and Poverty Level by Caste/Community

Scheduled Tribe Scheduled Caste General Caste

Number of

householdsa

Literacy

rate (%)b

Number of

householdsa

Literacy

rate (%)b

Number of

householdsa

Literacy

rate (%)b

Non-poor 52 (2) 60 (37) 3 (0) 43 (33) 132 (5) 87 (78)Poor 83 (7) 54 (39) 14 (2) 61 (50) 12 (2) 62 (61)Destitute 28 (2) 34 (19) 5 (1) 76 (67) 3 (3) 50 (33)Total/average 163 52 (35) 22 61 (50) 147 85 (76)

Notes:a. Numbers in parentheses indicate number of female-headed householdsb. Literacy rates are calculated for all persons over the age of 6. Figures in parentheses give thefemale literacy rate.

Source: Initial census survey, Midnapore.

8. Our poverty line was a qualitative one, based around income relative to a reference point

of a household with unskilled labour as its only source of income, full employment and a

favourable ratio of earners to ‘dependants’. Households falling significantly below this

reference point, particularly those with highly insecure incomes and showing other signs of

distress (food scarcity, dilapidated housing), were classified as destitute. Given the low

wages earned through unskilled labour throughout the five Districts of our study, this was

a particularly strict definition of (income) poverty, and a number of our ‘non-poor’

households would undoubtedly fall below the World Bank’s ‘$1 a day’ poverty line (World

Bank, 2000: 17). Within our study, we used this narrow definition primarily as a ‘quick

and dirty’ means to focus subsequent interview-based work on poorer households, and we

specifically do not assume that income and assets are the only important dimensions of

poverty.


had received small plots of land from the government land redistributionthat occurred locally in the mid-1970s (Table 2), giving these householdssome degree of security.9 Even with these micro-scale land holdings, the vastmajority of the poor were partly dependent upon agricultural work, wherelabourers faced lean seasons in mid-April to mid-June, and mid-Septemberto mid-November. Responses to this seasonal scarcity invariably involvedreducing consumption,10 but beyond this they varied between differentcommunities of the poor. Scheduled Caste males and females underwenttemporary migration to find work, and they took loans from landlords/employers at high interest rates to cover shortfalls in income. Adivasi house-holds also migrated for unskilled work, and tribal women often participatedin home-based crafts (weaving rush mats) and gathering of wild foods.11

In one hamlet there were also General Caste labourers: their householdssurvived by making use of their savings and opportunities for part-time locallabour, and they were generally unwilling to migrate or take loans fromemployers. In all cases, the lack of employment was deemed to be a major

Table 2. Landholding and Main Income Source of Non-poor, Poor andDestitute households

Land Ownershipa Other Income Sources of Householdb

Number of

households

Land

ownership

Mean holding

size (acres)

Unskilled

labour

Petty

business

White-collar/

salaried

Non-poor 187 90% 1.63 30% 19% 19%Poor 109 82% 0.33 91% 7% 1%Destitute 36 53% 0.27 92% 6% 0%

Notes:a. Land ownership was high largely because of government land redistribution: 84% of destitutelandowners and 75% of poor landowners had received small plots of assigned land.b. Unskilled labourers were primarily agricultural workers (a variety of forms of contract, butpredominantly paid at a daily rate). Petty businesses included rickshaw pullers, paddy processorsand local shop-owners. White-collar employment is predominantly government jobs and pensions,but includes other salaried jobs or businesses of equivalent security.

Source: Initial household census, Midnapore.

9. In group interviews, poorer villagers evaluated the different income-earning opportunities

open to them. Cultivating their own land was deemed most desirable as it offered

flexibility and independence: these respondents viewed white-collar jobs as completely

unattainable.

10. All poorer households reduced their food intake and variety significantly: most were

subsisting on a minimal diet of rice, chillies and salt for these months, supplemented in

some cases by gathered foods such as snails or leaf vegetables. Where households faced

particular hardship, this would also involve eating only once per day.

11. Many of the wild foods gathered by adivasis are associated with social taboos for other

ethnic groups: for a fuller discussion of the use of such common property resources and

their physical and social costs, see Beck (1994: Ch. 7).


constraint on well-being, and migration for work — ‘being forced to go out-side’ — was seen by respondents as a key indicator of economic hardship.12

As our study worked primarily with households, intra-household differencesin well-being were to some degree masked by these statistics. In Midnapore,as at the other four research sites, there were highly unequal gender relationswithin the household. While social taboos on women working outside thehome were more relaxed among Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe house-holds than among higher-caste households, women’s participation in paidand unpaid work in no way guaranteed them equal shares of the benefits oftheir labour.13 One indicator of this was the response to food shortages: inthe vast majority of cases, women missed meals in the first instance, adultmales, and particularly male children, were thus shielded from the worsteffects of household-level poverty. For the small number of female-headedhouseholds (primarily widows and divorcees), poverty rates were alsosignificantly higher than for the locality as a whole.14

Throughout the locality agricultural labour was the main income sourcefor the majority of the poor, and unemployment remained a major problemdespite relative agricultural prosperity.15 In these conditions, the Employ-ment Assurance Scheme seemed well suited to the problems of the poor, andits promise to provide lean-season work locally on demand would in theoryintegrate well with the other coping strategies followed by poor households.Even here, however, we need to note two important caveats before assumingthat participation within the EAS was of key importance to poorer house-holds.

First, intra-community differences in well-being were significant. Participa-tion in the EAS was not taking place within a ‘homogeneous’ community oreven among a homogeneous body of the poor. The local circumstances werefavourable for the poor: landholding was relatively widespread, caste and

12. Ben Rogaly stresses that migration is not a solely negative experience: migrants exercise

a degree of choice, and have some longer-term ability to accumulate wealth alongside

the short-term economic pressures to find work (Rogaly et al., 2001: 26). Within the

Midnapore locality, migrating for work was less onerous than for many of Rogaly’s

respondents due to the proximity of the Kolkata–Kharagpur railway — frequent and

short trips were possible, although some individuals travelled as far as the neighbouring

State of Orissa.

13. Although, as Agarwal notes (Agarwal, 1997), women’s participation within paid employ-

ment does play important roles in increasing the ‘visibility’ of women’s work (and hence its

perceived value), and at a more immediate and practical level, in widening women’s social

networks.

14. 50 per cent of female-headed General Caste households and 86 per cent of female-headed

SC/ST households fell below our poverty line: equivalent figures for all households were

10 per cent and 70 per cent respectively.

15. Double cropping had undoubtedly improved the total amount of work relative to twenty

years ago, but the potential for future gains through agricultural intensification was

limited. Furthermore, recent changes such as the widespread adoption of foot-treadle

threshers were eroding some of the increased demand for local unskilled labour.


ethnic identities were not overtly politicized, and CPI(M)-led agitationsaround land and tenancy had publicly and successfully challenged thedominance of the old village elite over a quarter of a century ago.16 But evenhere poorer households and individuals faced important and different struc-tural constraints to their public participation within the locality. Bengali isa second language for many adivasis, and this can make voicing theirproblems difficult. More importantly, most adivasis were also somewhatmarginalized from mainstream Bengali society through their religious beliefsand cultural practices, and were often stereotyped as profligate and drunken.Local constructions of ‘proper’ female behaviour discouraged General Castewomen, in particular, from participating in public events, but even amongother groups where social taboos are weaker it was difficult for women toraise their concerns directly.17

Second, although the Employment Assurance Scheme appeared wellsuited to the needs of the poor, participation within the scheme needs to beviewed in the context of their existing social networks. We trace out thesenetworks below, and we show that participation in government-sponsoredprogrammes was sometimes marginal to the interests of the poor, andalways mediated by local power brokers.

‘SPONTANEOUS PARTICIPATION’: THE SOCIAL NETWORKS

OF THE POOR

Approaching Social Networks

There is a prevailing image within the participatory development literatureof communities ‘waiting to be mobilized’ through the actions of outsideagents. As well as overplaying the potential benefits of ‘official’ acts of par-ticipation,18 such a view runs the risk of ignoring the breadth of individual andcollective actions already present within any community. The independent

16. The period of the 1960s and 1970s was one in which the party and its allies challenged the

dominance of village affairs by high-caste landowners in many areas of West Bengal where

these struggles were active (see, inter alia, Franda, 1971; Kohli, 1987; Lieten, 1992; Ruud,

1994). As will become clear below, this does not mean that the poor had direct access to

political power in the area.

17. Within our own research, initial group interviews conducted with poor women often

attracted richer, male caste Hindu observers who took it as their natural right to ‘interpret’

their views to us, with the result that discussion within the group was effectively foreclosed.

As a result, the vast majority of our interviews conducted with females was conducted with

respondents as individuals.

18. As Francis Cleaver wryly notes: ‘Development practitioners excel in perpetuating the myth

that communities are capable of anything, that all that is required is sufficient mobilization

(through institutions) and the latent capacities of the community will be unleashed in the

interests of development’ (Cleaver, 2001: 46).


actions of poorer households within their own social networks suggest thatparticipation is something that they are engaged in much of the time, if notalways in forms discussed within the development literature. Here we lookat this spontaneous participation through the social networks of the poor,rather than attempting to evaluate their social capital. We do so partlybecause the latter is a highly contested term within the literature (see, interalia, Fox, 1997; Harriss, 2001; Harriss and De Renzio, 1997), but also becausea focus on networks allows us to highlight aspects of poor people’s partici-pation that are in danger of becoming hidden from a social capital approach.

First, ‘social capital’ in Robert Putnam’s sense (1993) is treated as acharacteristic that pertains to particular locations as wholes (for a criticalreview, see Mohan and Mohan, 2002). Here, we investigate the networks ofinteraction used by the poor, and (as we demonstrate below) these differfrom those of richer households: we wanted to uncover these diversenetworks within a given location, rather than assessing levels of trust orreciprocity assumed to exist as a community’s ‘common property’. This hasparallels with Monique Nuijten’s call to move the focus of analysis awayfrom simplistic views of ‘the community’ and its collective goals towards ‘theway in which individual households are embedded in multiple institutionalsettings at the same time and how this is related to household livelihoodstrategies’ (Nuijten, 1999; see also Nuijten, 1992).

Second, within Nuijten’s work these multiple institutional settings arerecognized as being open and informal, and not constrained to group activityper se.19 Rather, they consist of organizational practices — regularizedinteractions between individuals that exist in personal networks extendingfrom family members to friends and local elites. There are thus no a prioriattempts to separate out ‘bonding’ from ‘bridging’ social capital, or to value(semi-) formalized group-based activities over individual coping strategies.In practical terms, our work aimed to uncover these practices by looking atwhat individual households actually did to meet their needs, and how theyvalued these activities. In the village-based elements of our own work, weselected 100 households in each of our localities for in-depth interviewing,of which 80 per cent were poor or destitute. Interviews included detailedquestions on respondents’ strategies for accessing various sources of help(gaining work and loans, accessing healthcare and education, and resolvinglocal conflicts): in addition, we had opportunities to observe first-hand thesocial interactions they described through a year-long period of ethno-graphic research. Methodologically, our work therefore differed from theWorld Bank’s Social Capital Assessment Tool (Krishna and Shrader, 1999),which focuses on mapping and assessing formalized groups, and thus

19. Indeed, Nuijten recognizes that the rural poor may often avoid group-based ‘local’ or

‘community based’ forms of organization as strongly as they avoid formalized and/or

state-oriented institutions.


potentially reproduces the emphasis on institutions over practices noted byNuijten.20

Finally, we would like to differentiate ourselves from the political projectimplicit within the World Bank’s use of social capital. As Ben Fine (1999)has noted, social capital should not become another mechanism by whichthe Bank blames poverty on the poor (they are poor because they lack it)whilst ignoring macro-scale power relations. By contrast, our analysis ofsocial networks which follows explicitly recognizes these networks asmechanisms created within (and used to negotiate) highly uneven powerrelationships. Our research re-emphasizes the fact that maintaining socialnetworks through contacts with friends and relatives, and, more significantly,with those Chambers would label as ‘uppers’ (economically powerful, oldermales of high social standing), was an important, and everyday, activity ofpoorer households.

Social Networks and the Needs of the Poor

For most poor households, minimizing unemployment through findingopportunities for unskilled labour was central to their well-being.21 In thesearch for work, regular employers were the single most important point ofcontact for poorer households. Opportunities for poor labourers to work asyear-round farm servants (bandha) were limited but, nevertheless, main-taining good relationships with employers helped to ensure that they wouldbe called for whatever slack-season work was available. Government work,provided through schemes such as the EAS, was of relatively minor financialimportance, but usefully concentrated in the slack-season. To access thiswork, the poor turned primarily to their local councillor or other Com-munist party members resident within the village. Employment wasrelatively secure for the majority of non-poor families, and among theseonly Scheduled Tribe households actively sought panchayat work.

The importance of a regular employer to the poor was further underlinedby the need for credit. For poor Scheduled Caste and Tribe households theregular employer was the predominant source of loans, particularly to meetseasonal consumption needs. These loans were repaid at interest, sometimesby giving ‘free’ labour. Loans from neighbours and relatives were alsoimportant, although these were generally smaller than those obtained from

20. The Social Capital Assessment Tool involves a breadth of individual and group interviews,

and generates much data that could be of use in tracing the social networks of the poor.

This, however, is not its primary purpose, and it does not permit the direct observation of

social interactions facilitated by more ethnographic work.

21. Those too old or infirm for work were one important exception. For these individuals,

begging was the ‘occupation’ of last resort, and indicated the failure/weakness of their

other sources of support.


employers. If neither source was available or sufficient, known money-lenders at the nearby market were approached. These were paddy whole-salers or shopkeepers, and they required borrowers to mortgage utensils,or other property, to secure a loan. Even within these more ‘formal’ creditarrangements, maintaining social contacts was still important: householdswould only approach shopkeepers with whom they had an establishedrelationship. Poor General Caste families generally did not take loans fromemployers, and relied instead on relatives. Independent access to bank loanswas exclusively limited to the non-poor, and these loans were usually taken forinvestment purposes. However, a substantial number of poorer householdshad benefited from bank loans to purchase assets via government schemessuch as the Integrated Rural Development Programme. In all such cases, loanshad been arranged with the help of a panchayat member, with no beneficiariesgoing directly to the Block office, or to higher-level politicians. These pro-grammes were seen as distinct from other forms of borrowing: despiteoccasional ‘misuse’ of IRDP loans to support consumption (cf. Williams,1999: 204–5), there were no cases of households turning to either the banksor the panchayat to secure a loan explicitly to meet consumption needs.

Away from the arena of economic support, links with political inter-mediaries became more important for all villagers. Where households facedmedical problems, help was sought in the first instance from a range offriends, neighbours, direct contacts with local doctors, and (for the moreconfident) contacts with more distant health services. However, the panchayat,or local political activists, emerged as key points of contact when accessinghealth services in times of particular distress. It was the poorest, and non-General Caste households who were most reliant on these contacts, but allinterviewees expected that the panchayat member (or other experienced partymembers) would help them if they had difficulties with hospital admissions.Similarly, the panchayat was well established as the primary point for assist-ance with educational matters if a direct approach to the school had failed.Less than a quarter of respondents had sought help with problems regardingeducation, but for this group the panchayat members had either taken upcomplaints or helped parents (particularly adivasis) to register their children atschool. Political intermediaries also resolved local disputes, with the panchayatmember or another local political activist settling most disagreements thatwere not successfully mediated by neighbours. Traditional community leaders(morol ) were also active here among adivasi households, but the panchayatwas well established as a ‘higher’ authority — except where judgements wereabout personal law — when this form of mediation did not work.

Sources of Support: ‘Local Uppers’

For the poor then, a series of ‘local uppers’ — individuals with economicand/or political resources — were important sources of support, and of


these the CPI(M)’s workers were undoubtedly the most visible within thelocality. Six male party activists and the female council member lived in theward: as a group, their social and economic backgrounds reflected those oftheir constituents,22 and all were active in helping households in the varietyof ways noted above. Interviews with other villagers suggest that they weregenerally trusted, and were seen as playing a valuable role.23 The clearestdemonstration of the CPI(M)’s links within the community was the holdingof gram baithaks, or ‘neighbourhood discussion groups’. Local party workersorganized baithaks in each hamlet of the locality every few months, ascircumstances demanded, and actively encouraged all poor households toattend. These informal gatherings were used to discuss issues important totheir participants, including government development schemes, but alsoa range of other village affairs. These meetings ensured that the CPI(M)remained in direct contact with a wide range of people’s opinions, and thatthe local party’s actions were responsive to (or at least informed about)poorer households’ interests.

By contrast, local BJP activists (the CPI(M)’s main political rivals) had amuch lower profile. With only marginal influence in the panchayat,24 theywere not seen as important figures within the locality. Beyond their lack ofcontrol of panchayat resources, they were also more distant economicallyfrom the poor and adivasis than the CPI(M)’s own workers. While nonewere spectacularly wealthy, all were from small land-owning General Castehouseholds, and none fell below the poverty line or worked as agriculturallabourers. Furthermore, although the BJP was undoubtedly better organizedthan the Congress in the area, their contacts linking grassroots workers bothto their electorate and to higher levels of the party were not as well estab-lished as those of the CPI(M).

Larger landholders played a less visible role, but one that was central topoorer households’ economic well-being. Trust was central to their relation-ships with labourers and, given the levels of seasonal unemployment, poorerhouseholds were conscious of the need to maintain a good relationship withthese key employers. In some cases, the support landlords gave throughproviding work and credit showed a degree of care beyond a narrow

22. The senior party worker, NS, had completed secondary school, and owned a small amount

of land (one acre): he and two other paid party workers enjoyed some security through

their party connections, but were not significantly ‘well off’. The remaining party members

all came from households that suffered from seasonal unemployment: three fell below our

poverty line, and only two were caste Hindus.

23. Particular value was placed on party workers’ knowledge and experience of government,

but also on their engagement with poorer households. Typical comments made about one

of the full-time party workers by poorer interviewees included: ‘He is the friend of poor,

knowledgeable and a good person. All people respect him’; or more simply ‘He is my

neighbour. He knows my condition’.

24. In the gram panchayat as a whole, the BJP and the TMC had two seats each. The

remaining fifteen, including the seat in our ward, were held by the CPI(M).


economic relationship, and long-standing employees spoke with warmthabout their ‘patrons’. There was also a degree of mutuality — trustworthylabourers were undoubtedly valuable to their employers — but whatever themotivation for this support, it remained the private business of the partiesconcerned. No one talked of richer villagers having a generic duty to helpthe poor, although they did see the panchayat representative as having thiswider public responsibility.25

Evaluating the Networks

Villagers were thus engaged in the development and maintenance of anumber of important social networks and relationships. These encompassedoverlapping public spheres dominated by the government (the provision ofpublic services and conflict resolution) or the market (gaining access to workand credit). Almost half of our respondents stated that ties to the panchayatand to political activists were their most important sources of help (Table 3).However, important differences existed between poor and non-poorrespondents. For richer households, friends and relatives were of far greaterrelative importance in ‘market’ relations, and when seeking government helpthey often went outside their village to seek assistance from the panchayatpradhan (chairperson) rather than contacting more junior political workersliving within the locality. For poorer households, ties to an agriculturalemployer (and other richer households supplying credit) were much moreimportant, as were their political contacts, which were exclusively throughlocal-level intermediaries. The poorest thus face a double burden: not onlywere their sources of livelihood highly insecure, but their existing kinshipnetworks are less able to provide access to key resources and support intimes of crisis. From their perspective, staying on the right side of powerfulintermediaries — political workers and richer villagers — was an essentialpart of their everyday ‘participation’ in village life.

A detailed examination of poor households’ connections with their morepowerful neighbours reveals some important insights. First, party activistssustained ‘spheres of influence’ through their experience in negotiating withimportant outsiders. Although this provided them with power and standingin the village, they were neither economically dominant nor socially distantfrom their core support. As will be described further below, this does notmean that the poor enjoyed an equal partnership in implementing develop-ment programmes, but it did provide local party workers with a degree oflegitimacy. Second, the resources controlled by employers and money-lenders

25. These landlords’ marginality to the public life of the ward was demonstrated in the

previous panchayat elections: one household had put forward a Congress candidate but

she had polled a mere five votes.


remained key to poor households’ survival. Government assistance hadprovided some access to work or credit, but did not supplant the positionof the economically powerful.

Finally, finding ways of making a living within existing unequal economicand political relationships was a central concern for the rural poor. Employer/money-lenders and party activists both possessed resources unavailable to themajority of the rural poor. Challenging the former would involve a dramaticchange in property relationships, and a form of politics that is seldomdiscussed in the participatory development literature.26 In theory at least,participatory development could challenge the latter: it has the potential todemocratize the contacts and access to higher levels of government currentlymonopolized by party workers. But poor people’s own perceptions werethat political intermediaries played a valued role, and many recognized thatparty activists had forms of knowledge and social contacts that they did nothave time to acquire. For the poor, the presence of ‘localized uppers’ —political patrons who were responsive to their needs27 — was therefore ofkey strategic importance, and possibly of greater value than any powerreversals occurring within the more limited sphere of formal developmentprogrammes. The value of participation in such programmes is therefore

Table 3. Household’s Most Important Source of Help/Support:Midnapore Locality

Non-poor Poor Destitute

Local political worker 7 (37%) 28 (47%) 12 (60%)Employer or creditor 0 (0%) 12 (20%) 5 (25%)Neighbour or relative 12 (63%) 19 (32%) 3 (15%)

Source: Interviews with random samples of poor/destitute households (N = 80) and non-poorhouseholds (N=20).

26. Chambers’ own view of traditional left-wing politics is somewhat dismissive. He argues

that more radical forms of participatory development suggested by Friere are unattainable

and rely on party ideologues practising a radical ‘crypto-paternalism’ that is insensitive to

the true aspirations of the poor (Chambers, 1994a: 954). Whilst left-wing parties may often

be guilty of ‘vanguardism’, this does not justify completely sidelining a discussion of class

relations within participatory practice.

27. In Malda, the other West Bengal District of our study, we identified local forms of

political patronage that provided much more restricted opportunities for the poor. Here,

the CPI(M)’s own workers candidly recognized that they had become ‘distanced’ from the

poor in many parts of the District, and in our study locality party workers’ activities were

more focused on maintaining contacts with powerful outsiders (including contractors, key

government personnel, and even political rivals) than they were on their own constituents

(Veron et al., forthcoming, 2003). For a discussion of the implications of such local

variation in the CPI(M)’s activities for Atul Kohli’s classic study of politics in the State

(Kohli, 1987), see Williams (2001).


contingent on its effects on poor people’s existing social networks. With thispoint firmly in mind we turn now to poor households’ engagement with theEAS, both in terms of the scheme’s intentions and their realization withinthe localities of our study.

THE EMPLOYMENT ASSURANCE SCHEME AND GRASSROOTS

PARTICIPATION

The EAS was, at the time of our study, the largest employment provisionprogramme operating in India, and a major plank in the nation’s anti-poverty policy.28 The programme aimed to develop rural infrastructurethrough a series of projects which have a high labour component, such asminor irrigation works, soil conservation, or the building and repair of ruralroads. Research has suggested that earlier programmes in this mould —such as the Employment Guarantee Scheme in Maharashtra — wererelatively well targeted towards the poor. Unlike schemes distributing cheapcredit, the principal benefit of the EAS is manual labour paid at the rate ofthe government’s minimum wage: this entails no financial risk or long-termcommitment from the participants, and is unattractive to middle or upperclass households. Beneficiaries are thus to a degree self-selecting, and ‘leakage’rates can be expected to be good relative to many other anti-poverty pro-grammes.29 Particularly in the States of our study, where seasonal unemploy-ment is high and rural infrastructure relatively poorly developed, public worksschemes could be expected to suit the needs of the poor rather well.30

Above and beyond the benefits expected from other public worksprogrammes, popular participation was written in to the design of the EASin a number of ways. First, the scheme was to be ‘demand-led’: unemployedlabourers could demand that the local state find them work, up to amaximum of 100 days per year for any two adults within a household. Thisassurance was, in theory, backed by an unlimited central budget. As long asthere were work schemes to be undertaken and labourers unemployed, New

28. In 1999, each Block received between Rs. 7 and 9 million per year (around US$ 200,000)

under the EAS. Although insufficient to meet the total demand for work, this was

significantly more funding than that committed to other programmes such as the IAY,

JRY or IRDP.

29. A World Bank review of India’s anti-poverty programmes recommended — with some

reservations — the use of public works schemes for targeted poverty relief over and above

other schemes such as the IRDP or the Public Distribution Scheme (World Bank, 1997:

xix; see also the discussion in ibid.: 26–34).

30. In the longer term, there are questions about both the productivity of the assets provided

through such schemes, and the ability to continue to find schemes that can be defined as

‘labour-intensive’ (within the EAS, schemes on aggregate had to have at least a 60 per cent

labour content). For a discussion of these problems within Maharastra’s celebrated

Employment Guarantee Scheme, see Joshi and Moore (2000).


Delhi would send additional allotments of funding once existing projectswere completed. This demand-led element had great potential to transformpoorer households’ relationship with government, allowing labourers totrigger the implementation of development works. This in turn could havemade the poor much more assertive in dealing with the local state, exercisingtheir rights to work rather than passively waiting for schemes to arrive.31

Second, grassroots participation was built in to the planning, implemen-tation and monitoring of the projects undertaken. The EAS guidelinesrequire that public meetings are held to identify and prioritize projects thatthe public deem to be important within their own area. Once money for ascheme arrives, the guidelines also stipulate that a Beneficiary Committeeand a Job Worker appointed from the locality should ensure that the work isconducted properly. The Job Worker, who must be a registered unemployedlabourer, acts as a foreman responsible for hiring labourers for the scheme anddirecting their work. All labourers should be registered as unemployed andshould come from the area in which the project takes place. The BeneficiaryCommittee acts to oversee the work, checking on the Job Worker andlabourers, verifying the physical assets produced, and ensuring that wagesare properly paid and materials properly purchased.32 Throughout, individualprojects’ budgets should be publicized at the time of implementation, andthe project accounts are meant to be signed off by a combination of govern-ment servants (Job Assistants, Sub-Assistant Engineers), elected membersof the local council, and lay participants (Job Workers and members of theBeneficiary Committee).

The intended operation of the EAS thus goes some way towards meetingthe aims of participatory development. Expressions of the community’sneeds are ordered, rationalized and integrated to form a plan for EASspending: the EAS funds then provide the means for (parts of ) this plan tobe realized. Again, ‘the public’ are active in the realization of this plan, notjust as worker-beneficiaries, but as ever-watchful eyes to check on theactions of civil servants, the elected members of their councils, and indeedtheir fellow-citizens. In this sense, the EAS guidelines propose a change in

31. This potential was not realized in practice. Nowhere in our interviews — which extended

beyond the five Districts of our study — did we hear any mention of mobilization of

labourers around this right to demand work. This was in part because the aims of the EAS

were significantly re-interpreted as the scheme was integrated with existing government

structures and practices within the two States of our study (Srivastava et al., forthcoming

2003).

32. The implementation of small-scale and labour-intensive projects requires relatively little in

the way of outside technical support, and within West Bengal was largely provided by the

gram panchayat staff. Larger and technically more complex schemes (involving activities

such as casting reinforced concrete or brick-soling of roads) are still, in theory, under the

control of the Job Worker and the Beneficiary Committee. In practice, neither may have

the skills to supervise projects of this magnitude, and so a Sub-Assistant Engineer will

effectively take charge of such projects.


the relationship between the local state and the public in the monitoring ofdevelopment: instead of relying on top-down bureaucratic surveillance, theEAS should provide improved opportunities for public accountability.33 Intheory then, this is a development programme not only suited to the immedi-ate material needs of the rural poor, but also one that offers opportunitiesfor their longer-term empowerment through participation.

A presentation of the EAS based around the procedures of its guidelinesis, of course, an idealized one, and as such is partial in two different senses.First, it does not take into account the complexities of the institutionalcontext within which the poor participate. The EAS undergoes numeroustransformations and re-interpretations as it passes through the variouslayers of the state, and our work has documented that there are complexprocesses at work here that cannot be reduced to the perversion of altruisticgoals by a ‘rent seeking’ bureaucracy (Srivastava et al., forthcoming 2003).Furthermore, the resources flowing through the EAS are sufficiently largethat they attract a degree of interest from politicians and, as a result, thelocal form of political society is an important constituent of this institutionalcontext (Veron et al., forthcoming 2003). Second, and importantly for ourpurposes, this description of the EAS presents the opportunities for formalparticipation as unproblematic events in which ‘the public’ expresses its will.It does not take into account either the tensions within these events, or howthey interact with poor people’s existing social networks.

Turning briefly to the institutional structures through which the EAS is tobe implemented, there are important differences between the Bengali andBihari localities of our study. Within West Bengal, the EAS ran throughthe State’s system of panchayats. Schemes were to be proposed and theiraccounts presented within gram sangshads, or village open meetings, and thegram panchayats collated scheme proposals from the cluster of villages undertheir jurisdiction and formed these into EAS plans.34 These would then bevoted on in public meetings open to all living within the gram panchayatarea and, finally, with technical input from civil service staff where appro-priate, passed upwards to Block and District councils for approval. WithinBihar, an established system of local public meetings had not been in placeprior to the EAS, and in 1997 the State’s panchayats (which had last beenelected in 1978) were finally suspended. The framework of institutionsresponsible for implementing the EAS was thus much less established thanin West Bengal, and this affected the programme’s operation as Block-level

33. Echeverri-Gent describes this as a shift from a government that conducts ‘police patrols’ to

one that responds to ‘fire alarms’ (1995: xxii–xxiv).

34. The selection of Beneficiary Committees was also to be conducted through public

meetings: these were separate from the gram sangshads, held on the work site of each

individual scheme immediately before commencement. Given the small size of many of the

schemes undertaken within the EAS, these meetings would often involve a single hamlet or

neighbourhood.


civil servants had to organize the scheme’s open meetings themselves.Particularly in Bihar, then, the EAS required a significant degree of changedbehaviour from state personnel, who had to embrace the programme’sparticipatory intent if it were to become a success.

Measuring Formal Participation

At the crudest level, the information presented in Table 4 suggests thatparticipation in the EAS was strong in the Debra field area. At first glance,the number of people attending public meetings where the EAS was dis-cussed was very impressive: three-quarters of the poor had attended a meetingat some point, and the ratios of attendance among tribal and destitutehouseholds were impressively high (76 per cent and 71 per cent respectively).Work was also well targeted towards the poorest households: 90 per cent ofdestitute households surveyed had received work, as opposed to 69 per centof the poor and only 35 per cent of the non-poor. The total number ofworkdays provided was low,35 but these were at least channelled towardsthose who needed them most.

Very few people had been deliberately marginalized from the EAS, eitherin terms of their participation in scheme meetings or from the benefits ofwork. Claims of political bias in the selection of workers came from only a

Table 4. Participation in the EAS by District, Poor and Non-poor Households

Aware of the EAS by

name

Attending public

meetings on the EAS

Gained work under the

EAS

Poor/

destitute

Non-Poor Poor/

destitute

Non-Poor Poor/

destitute

Non-Poor

Midnapore (WB) 30% (24) 45% (9) 75% (60) 85% (17) 75% (60) 35% (7)Malda (WB) 1% (1) 25% (5) 23% (18) 10% (2) 24% (19) 0% (0)Ranchi (Bihar) 14% (11) 55% (11) 3% (2) 25% (5) 21% (17) 15% (3)Bhojpur (Bihar) 8% (6) 25% (5) 10% (8) 20% (4) 25% (20) 0% (0)Vaishali (Bihar) 6% (5) 25% (5) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0)

Source: Interviews with random sample of poor (N = 80) and non-poor households (N = 20)in each District

35. Over the period 1995–9, each poor household benefiting from the EAS received an average

total of 12.8 workdays, averaged over all poor households this is equivalent to 9.6

workdays (corresponding figures for Malda are 5.7 and 1.4 days respectively). In most

cases, the impact on household incomes would therefore have been limited. The EAS

provides cash incomes at a key crisis point within the seasonal calendar, but a few days’

work per year at the minimum wage cannot be said to be either an assurance of

employment, or in itself a mechanism to lift households out of poverty.


handful of respondents: far more either excluded themselves by taking jobselsewhere, or were unable to take up work due to physical incapacity.Gender-based inequalities in participation and the provision of work weresignificant, but even given these barriers women in Midnapore were playinga more active role in the EAS than their male counterparts in otherDistricts.36 Relative to all of the other localities of our study, the EAS inMidnapore was a successful example of participatory development. Thisapparent success, however, needs to be viewed with some caution. Althoughawareness of the EAS was highest in this District, only a minority of house-holds recognized the scheme by name, and only 11 per cent knew about itsdemand-led component. For most people the EAS, for all its participatoryintent, was ‘just another scheme’. This was reflected in the form of ordinaryvillagers’ participation, and in the limited control that they could exerciseover scheme selection and implementation.

Our observations of one of the key points at which participation wassupposed to occur, the village meeting (gram sangshad), highlighted thecontradictions within the processes of formal participation. Attendance atthese meetings was high: around 80 people attended the ward-level meetingswe saw, and panchayat members stated that here (unlike in other parts ofWest Bengal) there were no difficulties in ensuring that the meetings werequorate.37 Of those attending, women made up around a fifth of theparticipants, and the poorest households were, if anything, over-representedrelative to their richer counterparts. For many poorer villagers, however,this attendance at meetings was quite often ‘passive’. Some said that theywere attending the meetings primarily because party activists had told themto do so: far more came independently but felt unable to speak up, often dueto illiteracy.38 Furthermore, a number of key decisions regarding the EAS,including the prioritization of schemes, the selection of the Job Worker, andthe election of a Beneficiary Committee, were taken out of the control of thepublic meeting altogether. The public perception was that the gram sangshadwas mainly for proposing schemes and hearing about other developmental

36. Only 44 per cent of female household heads had attended meetings where the EAS was

discussed, and access to work for women (41 per cent) and female-headed households (38

per cent) was lower than for males (60 per cent). These levels of female participation were

not peculiar to the EAS, but indicated the need to actively promote women’s engagement

with the scheme (see also note 41 below).

37. Panchayat legislation requires that 10 per cent of a ward’s electorate are present for the

gram sangshad: the figures in Table 4 reflect the total number of people who had ever

attended a meeting in which the EAS was discussed.

38. Despite the high attendance rates noted above, only a third of poor and destitute villagers

had actually spoken at meetings, and only a quarter said that they were satisfied with their

level of participation. Given that the meetings were predominantly reliant on oral

presentations and exchange, comments about illiteracy should not be read in narrow

functional terms: rather, it was poorer villagers’ ‘uneducated’ status that made them less

confident in voicing their opinions in these formal gatherings.


activities within the area: panchayat members, or ‘the party’, made the finaldecisions.

These public perceptions fit closely with what elected members of thegram panchayat consider to be ‘good participation’. They thought that agood gram sangshad was one in which the people present suggested a rangeof different development schemes that could be undertaken. Their justifi-cation for deciding the final prioritization and short-listing of these schemesthemselves was that this avoided the conflict and tension that would inevit-ably result from attempting this during a public meeting. A ‘bad’ meeting,by comparison, was one where not many schemes were proposed, butvillagers spent the time raising other, more contentious issues, such asarguments about the conduct of past development works, or the perform-ance of their local council members. Similarly, in EAS project meetings,elected members generally pushed their own trusted workers forward as JobWorkers or Beneficiary Committee members, and were happiest when theseindividuals were accepted without opposition. In their attitudes and actions,panchayat members thus ensured that participation was a fairly ‘routinized’affair: public meetings were not held with the intention of sharing power in aradical manner.

In the Bihar Districts, by comparison, many of the conflicts glossed overor avoided within Midnapore were very much out in the open. For Block-level officers charged with implementing the programme, organizing publicmeetings to select schemes and Job Workers was an onerous or even fright-ening activity: lower-level officials do not generally command the authoritythat an elected councillor enjoys amongst his/her own constituents, andnone had been trained to manage such events. It is therefore unsurprisingthat, in many cases, EAS meetings existed on paper only.39 When publicmeetings were held, our ethnographic evidence suggests that conflicts overdevelopment projects were closely tied to other power struggles in thevillages. In Bhojpur, rival candidates were pushed forward for the job ofimplementing EAS work. This rapidly turned into an argument betweencaste blocks: large farmers had ‘their own’ harijan candidate, and he wasopposed by the candidate put forward by the informal leaders of theScheduled Castes themselves. A Scheduled Caste leader was clearly usingthis occasion as an opportunity to demonstrate the strength of his following,and forced a vote to be held on the decision. In Ranchi, there were reports ofseveral thousand people attending meetings for the selection of executingagents, and the meetings being cancelled due to the threat of widespreadpublic disorder between competing factions.

39. It is important to note that most people involved are low ranking (non-gazetteered) staff:

although District Magistrates (and some Block Development Officers) still command the

respect (and/or fear) associated with their office, those entrusted with holding EAS

meetings in the main had to do so without the enjoying the ‘spectacular’ power of the state.


What are we to make of such contrasts? Is the restricted access of poorpeople to ‘real’ power over the EAS in Midnapore evidence of partici-pation’s pervasive effects as a Foucauldian act of subjection (cf. Henkel andStirrat, 2001: 178)? Are open conflicts in Bihar a sign of healthy compe-tition? We believe that matters are not so simple. To understand what isgoing on here, we trace the connections between formal acts of participationin the EAS and poor people’s maintenance of the social networks describedabove, and consider how both are affected by local power holders/keyintermediaries.40

The Mediation of Participation

In Midnapore, the partial success of formal participation within the EASshould be understood alongside a consideration of other informal spaces ofpublic action open to the poor. Here, the CPI(M)’s gram baithaks played avitally important role. Participation within the baithaks was not universal —those openly identified with rival political parties were not encouraged toattend, and richer villagers also stayed away — but these subtle acts ofexclusion actually improved poor people’s representation. As select gather-ings in which the poor were numerically dominant, and sheltered from anychance of ego-clashes between rival political ‘big men’, the baithaks pro-vided an informal space in which many poorer individuals felt able toexpress their opinions.41 They also enabled the ‘stage management’ andrehearsal of participation for subsequent official open meetings: forexample, the baithak would decide which individuals would propose EASschemes in forthcoming gram sangshads. This gave poorer participantsconfidence to play an active role in formal meetings, and, importantly forthe CPI(M), ensured that schemes were not always proposed by partyactivists themselves.

40. Alternative readings that would seek to attribute the differences observed to the simple

presence/absence of panchayati raj institutions, or (worse still) to assumed ‘pathologies’

specific to Bihar, can be discounted when evidence from the other West Bengal District of

our study is considered. In Malda, many panchayat pradhans had managed to avoid

holding gram sangshads at all. When the Block Development Officer had forced meetings

to be held in our locality, these had been done without the legally required publicity, their

content was limited to collecting the names of beneficiaries, their conduct was

acrimonious, and it was, moreover, only richer villagers who actively participated within

them.

41. Whilst local party workers’ actions empowered those subordinated in class terms, they did

not create equivalent ‘engineered’ spaces of participation to challenge gender roles. The

local communist mohila samiti (women’s committee) confined itself to dealing with

‘domestic’ issues (in particular, domestic violence) on an individual basis, and did not

provide an equivalent forum where a female view of public development needs and

priorities could be produced.


Alongside ensuring the participation of the poor, local party workers werealso important in containing popular expectations of the EAS. The partydid not use the scheme’s theoretical provision of 100 days’ work to organizemass-mobilization, or to connect this scheme to a wider political agenda oflabourers’ right to employment. Given the extensive roles played by localparty activists in the locality, this inactivity cannot be blamed on a lack ofpolitical capacity. Rather, poor households’ ignorance of the distinctivefeatures of the EAS was the result of a conscious strategy by the party todeal with the difficulties of the scheme’s implementation (see Veron et al.,forthcoming, 2003). The rate of absorption of EAS resources was limited,42

and in this situation the local party had made the decision not to raiseworkers’ expectations beyond the panchayat ’s abilities to create employ-ment. This suggests that party members’ success as intermediaries dependedin part on their ability to deliver immediate and concrete benefits tosupporters, and that this was seen as more important than playing a wider‘conscientization’ role. Significantly, this left existing social networks usedto negotiate access to agricultural work intact, and did not challengeperceptions of these being a ‘private’ affair.

These aspects of the CPI(M)’s activities within the locality were importantin understanding the limited mobilization of poorer households over theEAS. Given political intermediaries’ wider importance within the publicsphere of the village, it would be unrealistic to expect that formalizedparticipation within the EAS would dramatically challenge their position.For the poor, there was limited value in antagonizing these key power-brokers over a few days of paid labour, and they had other opportunities toplace their views — including any dissatisfaction with the party’s actions —away from formal EAS meetings. ‘Good participation’ in Midnaporetherefore went hand-in-hand with the routinization of power. EAS projectswere proposed publicly, there was satisfaction with the programme, butmass participation in no way challenged existing power structures, orbrought ‘alternative’ interpretations of the scheme to bear.

Within Bihar, the process of mediation was perhaps less subtle. Competitionover EAS resources occurred between local political ‘fixers’,43 and supportgiven to these people came with the full expectation that any schemes would

42. Even given a theoretically ‘unlimited’ fund from New Delhi and a range of locally

sanctioned work projects at the grassroots, further instalments of EAS resources could not

be activated until earlier funds were properly accounted for. The time taken for this was

considerable, and was increased by implementation of numerous small schemes and

through the multiple tiers of the panchayat system itself. Ironically, therefore, the hyper-

localization of development appeared to set its own limits on the implementation of the

EAS.

43. In Hindi these individuals are called chota bhaia netas, which translates literally as ‘little

brother leaders’. This term neatly captures local understandings of the relational nature of

their power — their power comes from being intermediaries between the villagers and the

dada (‘big brother’) figures who wield real authority.


enhance the well-being of the key protagonists to a far greater extent thanthat of their supporters. When EAS projects arrived in the Bihar localities,these individuals made the choice of programmes, acted as (or directlycontrolled) the Job Workers implementing the schemes, and often managedto divert substantial resources to their own pockets.44 In this situation, it iseasy to write off the fixers as self-serving or parasitic, but it was preciselythese intermediaries who ensured that villagers accessed government schemesat all. Particularly in Bihar, where formal responsibility for scheme selectionlay with block-level government officers largely unaware of grassroots needs,these intermediaries were key to drawing down government resources.Without the knowledge, contacts and active lobbying of its ‘fixers’, therewas every chance that a village would be bypassed by the EAS altogether.

One final puzzle that emerges from this discussion concerns the degree ofparticipation in formal public meetings that did occur in the Midnaporelocality, despite the seemingly negligible power that people could expressover key decisions. The answer to this puzzle appears to be that the gramsangshads have been institutionalized as a mechanism of information flowabout developmental activities in the area, and were therefore of interestabove and beyond any relevance for particular villagers’ immediate interestswithin the EAS. This flow had numerous features deemed to be negativewithin the literatures on participatory development: people’s knowledgeabout local needs was extracted, to be made the subject of ‘professional’analysis elsewhere; and information dissemination was about standardized‘top–down’ schemes designed in New Delhi. Nevertheless, this informationflow was valued by rich and poor alike. For some respondents, ‘passive’participation appeared to be constitutive of a broader sense of citizenship,or membership of a village community: in more practical terms, participantswere using the knowledge so gained to challenge any improper aspects of theEAS’s implementation.45

If we are to follow Chambers’ dictum and ‘unlearn’ our existing prejudicesby respecting the views of ‘lowers’, we need to take on board the lessons of

44. Comparative statistics on the levels of corruption are hard to obtain. Nevertheless, it

should be noted that there were examples of rampant corruption in Malda that exceeded

anything observed within the three Bihar Districts. Corruption within Midnapore was

harder to measure, not least because most benefits appeared to accrue not to individuals

directly, but to the CPI(M) collectively via ‘donations’ to party funds.

45. In terms of the former, numerous households mentioned the importance of public

meetings within the affairs of the village, a typical comment (from a non-poor household)

being ‘If we are to stay in this village, we also have to attend the various meetings

otherwise we will not be able to know what is happening’. In terms of the latter, members

of the locality not directly involved in monitoring the work done within EAS schemes cited

concrete examples where they had taken action against panchayat members and project

workers deemed to be performing poorly. More generally, numerous respondents suggested

that they would be able to seek redress within the gram sangshads, although this was rarely

seen to be necessary.


these grassroots responses to experiences of real participation. There areimportant differences between the stated purposes of idealized participationwithin the EAS, and the power exercised (and reinforced) by key inter-mediaries through ‘flawed’ participation on the ground. So much would beexpected from the participatory development literature itself, with its variousappraisals of participatory methods. Nevertheless, poor people’s interpreta-tions of political intermediaries within the Midnapore locality remainedoverwhelmingly positive, and even in Bihar the chota bhaia netas were seenas playing a useful if self-aggrandizing role. As such, these findings presentimportant challenges for Chambers’ normative statements about the powertransfers that should be occurring within participatory development.

CONCLUSIONS: PARTICIPATION, POWER AND THE POOR

Our investigation of ‘spontaneous’ participation in Midnapore has indicatedthat maintaining social networks plays an important part within the liveli-hood strategies of the rural poor. Within these networks, local ‘uppers’ wereof greater immediate importance to the poor than the powerful professionaloutsiders stressed in Chambers’ writing. Although grassroots party workersor owners of small businesses and farms had little control over political oreconomic power in the world beyond the villages of our study, these indi-viduals control resources central to the well-being of the poor. On a day-to-day basis it is therefore empowerment in relation to the lowly panchayatmember, shopkeeper, or political ‘fixer’, rather than vis-a-vis the distantDistrict Magistrate, that is most likely to matter to the poor. These localinflections of power matter, and perhaps deserve greater attention within thediscussion of ‘uppers’, ‘lowers’ and ‘power reversals’ in Chambers’ own work.46

Intermediaries connecting poorer villagers to government were undoubtedlykey players within these social networks. However, our research underlinesthe fact that the ‘developmental state’ was not an all-embracing presencewithin the villages: in other spheres of activity, such as the search for workor credit, a ‘good relationship’ with those holding economic power was ofgreat strategic importance to the poor. As a result, poor people’s responsesto developmental activities such as the EAS depended in part on theirestimated impact on other social contacts that are of value within their day-to-day survival. For numerous poor households, participation in meetingsabout the EAS was not as important as being available to work for a

46. This is not to deny the real power that such dominant uppers hold, but rather to recognize

their lack of immediate relevance to the poor. Furthermore, whilst transforming the

attitudes of development professionals remains an important task, our study of the EAS

would suggest that attempts to embrace participatory ideas at this level alone are likely to

be insufficient. It was, after all, the bureaucrats in Delhi who engineered the EAS’s

somewhat idealistic participatory elements.


powerful employer. We therefore need to recognize that developmentalactivities can be participatory and well-targeted to the livelihoods of thepoor, but still remain of limited interest to their intended beneficiaries.

We have also indicated that the social networks which households andindividuals bring to formal instances of participation vary immensely, andthese impact upon their ability to take up those chances for empowermentthat do present themselves through development programmes. It is perhapsunsurprising therefore that despite the numerical dominance of the poor atgram sangshads, a greater proportion of richer villagers spoke in thosemeetings. Our research thus confirms an important criticism of participatorydevelopment cited elsewhere within the literature: namely, that the ‘com-munity’ empowered through open meetings is a heterogeneous creation(Mosse, 1994; Guijt and Shah, 1998), and as such there is no simple equationbetween the localization of development projects and their democratizationin any fuller sense (Mohan and Stokke, 2000).

Beyond confirming these limitations of formal acts of participation,our research also raises more fundamental questions about ‘the new highground’ claimed by advocates of participatory development (Chambers,1997: 188). As John Echeverri-Gent (1995: 169) notes, participation presentsits own paradox: ‘If public participation is to make policy responsive to theneeds of the poor, their interests must be equitably represented, but as longas the poor remain poor, their position in the process of interest represen-tation is disadvantaged’.

For Chambers, the solution to this paradox is to be found in a reformu-lated professional practice, in which ethical probity, reflexive learning, andultimately the spontaneous renunciation of power by ‘uppers’ are key. Thiswill allow the multiple voices of the poor to be heard clearly, and willempower them to gain the skills, confidence and knowledge to representthemselves. Such appeals to the good nature of development professionalsare undoubtedly well-meaning, and hopefully inspire many in helping thepoor to articulate their needs. However, the vested interests that would haveto be overcome to reach this developmental utopia receive rather limitedattention within Chambers’ own work, and it is important that developmenttheory and practice do not ignore the structural constraints to therepresentation of the poor.

Looking at these structural constraints directs our attention away fromwhat is happening within the spaces and moments of officially recognizedacts of participation, and towards the wider contexts within which these actsare placed. As noted above, institutional contexts are already receivinggreater attention within the literature, and this work highlights the oftenambivalent roles participatory discourse plays within the legitimization ofdevelopment programmes (see also Williams and McIlwaine, forthcoming,2003). In this article we have indicated that it is equally important to shiftour attention downwards, to constraints directly faced by the poor them-selves. It is through such a shift that the processes involved in the mediation


of participation at a village level, and their role in interest representation,come to light.

Here, we need to move beyond assessments of the failure or success offormal acts of participation in narrow terms. Quite clearly, ‘actually existingparticipation’ within the EAS in Midnapore did not empower poorervillagers to take control of the scheme, to transform their relationships withlocal government, or to remove their dependence on larger landowners forwork. The quieter success lurking behind these more obvious failures wasthat the EAS gave further concrete content and value to processes ofmediated participation already existing in the locality. Control was not fullyhanded over, but opportunities to suggest schemes, criticize their imple-mentation, and to observe directly the operation of local state were provided.Furthermore, through these activities the formal and informal arenas forpoor people’s participation were reaffirmed and reproduced. The EAS wasthus helping to reproduce ‘business as usual’ within Midnapore, supportingthe position of local party activists and their views (however limited) of whatit was to be a good representative of the poor.

The wider point to be taken from this is that poor people’s primaryconcern is not necessarily that suggested in Chambers’ question about ‘whoholds the stick’, but is rather focused on how the stick is wielded. Bydefinition, the poor live most of their lives on the wrong end of a range ofinterlocking and unequal power relationships. Formal acts of participationinvolve but a small subset of these, and the development programmes inwhich they are located are not designed to reverse all aspects of margin-alization. Two important conclusions stem from this observation. The firstis that it is often not hierarchy itself but the (non-) responsiveness of power-holders that is of interest to the poor. ‘Failed’ (routinized and ritualized)processes of participation can, in such situations, provide reliability andempower intermediaries who are sensitive to poor people’s concerns, eventhough they do not offer the power reversals sought by Chambers. Under-standing how and when such ‘non-ideal’ participation is of strategic valueto the poor may be a modest task, but its importance should be noted bypractitioners and academics alike.

The second is that more dramatic transformations of power relationshipsare unlikely to be effected by simply enhancing opportunities for poorpeoples’ participation in and of itself. Chambers’ own hopes for a newdevelopmental ‘higher ground’ are undoubtedly more ambitious than themodest implementation of welfare schemes described here. But to blamethese shortcomings on failed participatory processes within the EAS, oreven on the attitudes of ‘localized uppers’ distributing its resources, is tosomewhat miss the point. Attention to formal acts of participation shouldnot obscure the importance of class, ethnic and gender-based dimensionsof marginalization. The constraints of the latter are inscribed throughoutpoorer people’s social networks, and should remain central to the concernsof a radical development practice.


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Glyn Williams, Rene Veron, Stuart Corbridge and Manoj Srivastava havebeen working together for the last four years on research projects on poorpeople’s interaction with the state in Eastern India, funded by the UKGovernment’s Economic and Social Research Council and Department forInternational Development. Prior to the fieldwork discussed in this article,they have had extensive experience of rural-based research in West Bengal


(Williams), Kerala (Veron), and Bihar/Jharkhand (Corbridge and Srivas-tava). They can be contacted at the following addresses: Glyn Williams:Department of Geography, King’s College London, Strand, London, UK,WC2R 2LS. Rene Veron: Department of Geography, University of Guelph,Guelph, Ontario, Canada, N1G 2W1. Stuart Corbridge: Department ofGeography and Environment, London School of Economics, HoughtonStreet, London, UK, WC2A 2AE, and Arts and Sciences, University ofMiami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA. Manoj Srivastava: DevelopmentStudies Institute, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London,UK, WC2A 2AE


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

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