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Operationalising Participation

Technical Management Solution

As mentioned earlier, the rhetoric of participation permeates a majority of the thinking regarding local resource management. Earlier efforts at encouraging community participation for local resource management arose from development-driven agendas. These early approaches basically constructed 'people as objects of a national programme of development' [Nelson andWright 1995]. Even though the need for the involvement of the 'beneficiaries' (of the programmes) in the actual projects was acknowledged, it was seen as a tool to facilitate their implementation process. In fact, in many a case this acknowledgement followed the realisation that many such projects had failed to take off because of the non-involvement of the people affected by them. There were plenty of examples available to form the basis for these conclusions privileging the idea of participatory local resource management. Many scholarly analyses of developmental interventions by the state in the 20th century in local resource management point out that they did not take into account the ground-level realities, did not pay adequate attention to participation by the communities affected by these interventions, and with new legislations managed to exclude underprivileged sections of the community even from the previously available customary rights of resource use and access. For instance, one of the main causes of the decrease in food production in Africa was seen to be the fact that research and the implementation of projects for food grain production had ignored female farming practices [ibid]. Land tenure reform in Kenya, initiated by the colonial government and continued by the post-colonial state, for example, excluded women from the land resources that they were entitled to customarily. Though reform led to new resource values and property rights for some men, on the whole it led to 'destruction of forests, grasslands, water sources, and soils' [Rocheleau et al 1996].

Similarly, in India, scholars like Ramachandra Guha have blamed the colonial state for initiating policies (that were subsequently taken up by the post-colonial state like in the African context) that sought to exploit timber for imperial needs by enclosing forests and consequently excluding peasantry from using forests as a resource-base. This is seen as one of the main reasons for the deforestation crisis of the late 20th century in India [Guha 1989]. In the same vein, the schemes that were undertaken to mitigate the fuel wood crisis in the 1970s and 1980s were seen to be an overall failure because they were top-down and non-participatory.6 Such analyses pointed to the need for the involvement of communities that had been traditionally associated with resource management, for the success of the new state-initiated local resource management projects.

Community participation, therefore, came to be seen as the answer to the need for improving the effectiveness of various development projects and promoted as an ideal by both state and non-state organisations like the World Bank. As one author puts it, in the context of the World Bank's publications on gender-related participation issues, gender bias in earlier development projects was seen in terms of the 'economic inefficiency of such bias' [Elson1995].An interesting example undertaken with such a goal in mind is the joint forestry management programme (JFM), formally launched as a part of the national forest policy in India in the form of guidelines issued by the ministry of environment and forests in June 1990.7 These guidelines envisaged the involvement of NGOs, village communities and state governments in management,protection and regeneration of forests. One of the key objectives of the national forest policy is'meeting the requirements of fuel wood, fodder, minor forest products and small timber of rural populations' [Sarin 1998]. The broad arguments that were given for community involvement in forest management were:one, that sharing of responsibilities of management with the primary user group would ensure sustainability of the resource by encouraging 'prudent practices'. Two, it was felt that in a context where the government owned the resources but did not have the managerial capacity nor the commitment to manage these resources, community involvement would result in regulated useand conservation of resources [Kameswari 2002; Locke 1999]. Keeping these utility-based arguments in mind, the JFM programme can be considered to be a relative success. By 2000, 22 state governments had adopted JFM, and 36,075 JFM committees were managing around 10.24 million hectares of forest land. Remote sensing images taken in2002 showed an increase in forest cover in many areas in the intervening 10 years [Jodha 2000].

A Tool of Empowerment and Equity
Contemporary interest in the ideas of democratic governance and human development is also reflected in the issues of local resource management. The earlier utility-based arguments – of how the involvement of users of local resources in their management is going to lead to better implementation of the development projects undertaken by the state – in most cases are now accompanied by, at least, a rhetoric of how involvement, inclusion and participation of the local community in their resource management are steps towards their empowerment and equity. This is in part an acknowledgement of the current climate privileging such ideas and in part a result of an understanding of the need of normative goals (beyond utility) to ensure participation.Most analyses of common property resources,8 for example, now talk of how important they are to the poor, especially poor women, for sustaining their livelihoods. They point to the need to maintain these resources, and ensuring access to them by policy measures, which ensure that there is participation of the people who use these resources in the decisions that are going to affect them. In the words of two advocates of participatory development, "The broad aim of participatory development is to increase the involvement of socially and economically marginalised people in decision-making over their own lives" [Guijt and Shah 1998].

Another scholar defines participation as "the ability of people to share, influence, or control design,decision-making, and authority in development projects and programmes that affect their livesand resources" [Peters 2000:6; Beck 1994]. In fact the same kind of ideas get articulated in manypolicy formulations concerning resource management. So, for example, Ribot in his studymentions the forest policy introduced in Senegal in 1993, that its aim is among other things toredress a long history of village exclusion from forest commons and encourage equitable ruraldevelopment [Ribot 1995].This section follows up on the example discussed in the previous section, the joint forest management programme in India, and tries to see how far this approach gets reflected in this real-life example.State-owned forests account for about 23 per cent of India's land area and represent thecountry's largest land-based common property resource. The partnerships between state forestdepartments, local institutions of forest rights holders/users and NGOs that the programme talksof are for the purpose of sharing both the benefits and responsibilities of the management ofdefined forest areas. A large population, as well as other disadvantaged communities living in oraround the forest areas continue to depend on these forests for most of their livelihood andsubsistence needs.

A shift to joint resource management could, therefore, be of benefit to millions of poor people. As one scholar puts it, "It offers immense opportunities for empowering the women and men of the most forest-dependent and marginalising communities to gain equal access to and control over the use and management of common pool resources. In doing so, it can, in theory, improve their well-being" [Sarin 1998].In many cases there is a reversal of the earlier argument, in which the aim of equitableparticipation was sustaining the forest resources, to the one in which regenerating and sustainingforest resources is in order to alleviate the poverty-related sufferings of the users of theseresources. The idea being that by enabling the disadvantaged sections of society to analyse theirown realities and influence development priorities they would gain the ability (self-confidence andskills) to act in their own interests. Through empowering participation, the disadvantaged can getan opportunity to influence policies by getting their particular needs on board [Guijt and Shah1998]. Likewise, unlike the earlier approaches that pointed to the gendered nature of women'swork and their association with the forests to provide justification for inclusionary forest projects,now participation now is seen more as a means to empower women to 'challenge and change' these gender roles and other power relationships.9Some Realities of Participation What seems to come across from the earlier discussion is that participation is seen as a desiredgoal in local resource management projects such as JFM for reasons of efficiency as well asequity and empowerment. In fact, claims can be made of such programmes being a successbecause they have managed to include communities in the project of resource management.However, the picture is somewhat more complicated. Take the case of the involvement of womenin JFM, an issue that has received widespread attention. There seems to be agreement inprinciple for the inclusion of women.

The concern for women as key actors or privilegedparticipants primarily stems from both instrumental reasons as well as reasons of social justiceand equity. The former because their additional or even sole participation is seen as value addedin terms of project efficiency. In words of one author, "women's productive roles, not their needsprovide the justification for including them in forestry programmes" [Tinker 1993]. And the latter(of equity and empowerment) because women are seen as being affected more by the waynatural resources are managed due to the gendered nature of their work at the community level. Involvement in the decision-making process would enable and empower them and would alsoresult in equitous decisions, because their voices would be heard.10The justification for the efficiency argument runs thus: since women are most dependent on forests for their subsistence (relying on them for non-timber forest products for the kind of work they are supposed to do courtesy gender-based division of labour – gathering fuel, fodder and wild foods; and growing subsistence crops) and are therefore, most severely affected bydeforestation. So they are more sensitive to the ecologically sustainable goals of JFM and are the'most appropriate participants' in forest conservation projects. Also, since women constitutenearly half of the community population, no real participation is possible without their inclusion.An article on community forestry groups in India and Nepal, for instance, talks of how nonparticipationof women in groups such as JFM groups can lead to inefficient results (among otherthings): "Women's greater participation in rule making could reduce tendencies to rule breaking."The fact that women, as among the principal user groups of the forests, are also the primaryrepositories of local environment information, their absence can result in the loss of importantknowledge of what is needed in terms of forest protection and regeneration [Agarwal 2001].The justification for the equity argument also falls back on arguments about the gendered natureof women's work in relation to the forest. However, the emphasis changes here; the reason whywomen's participation is encouraged is because they would bring in their concerns arising out oftheir own experiences to the decision-making table. Their participation would result in themacquiring self-confidence and the power to be able to voice their opinions about the things thatmatter to them and to bring about changes in the spheres they want.Over the years, arising from such ideas, JFM resolutions in many states have made provisions forwomen's involvement in the projects undertaken.11 Yet, what comes across from the studiesdone on JFM programmes is that their participation is confined to formal procedures. Many ofthem have pointed out that these policies are preoccupied with questions of formal representation,assuming that once women get into general bodies and management committees they would beable to bring their experiences and knowledge into these foras.12 So they fail to take into account the fact that a rule such as one that talks of membership in JFMs as one person per household usually ends up excluding women. They do not account for the fact that women might not be ableto adequately participate because they feel too inhibited or even intimidated in such settings.Traditional norms and mores of the community usually do not include in the list of acceptablebehaviour the inclusion of women in village councils and assemblies, and they have differentnotions of 'proper' roles of women, which do not allow for their effective participation. They do not,in most cases, take into account the possibility that women might not have the skills (articulatoryand educational) to have an effective and assertive presence in these fora. There is no realisationof the fact that women's participation might also be impeded by constraints like meeting timingsand extra work burden. Also, they do not recognise that there is a wide variation of gender rolesamong different groups within a particular community itself [Agarwal 2001; Kameswari 2002].In spite of the recognition of the gendered nature of work at the local community level, legislationdoes not factor this in terms of policy. As mentioned above, women in most cases are traditionallyin charge of collecting non-timber forest resources for subsistence purposes while men areprimarily interested in the use of forest products like timber to get cash. JFM programmes do not take this reality into account. So, it has been pointed out that after the institutionalisation of JFMin many villages for the ostensible purpose of protecting the forest, many disadvantaged womenare forced to go elsewhere looking for firewood and/or switch to other fuels. In the words of oneauthor, "To be labelled 'offenders' and forest destroyers into the bargain, while suffering anincrease in labour and the time required for performing an almost daily chore, is making a parodyof participatory forest management" [Sarin 1998; Agarwal 1986].

Also many studies point out that the way JFM is practised on the ground shows that questions offorest protection to regenerate timber are still more privileged. This is important because it essentially means that better-off men in the village are defining the priorities of forest management, given that the poor, especially poor women, are essentially dependent upon nontimberforest products while their better-off male counterparts are more interested in timber as aneconomic resource. Studies suggest that in such cases women are pressurised to follow men'srules [Sarin 1998].

Therefore, the factors which seem to militate against women's inclusion range from a lack of clarity in the JFM legislation regarding their role, lack of serious operationalsing and monitoring ofwomen's presence to constraints of tradition and norms. The policy statements regarding theirrole in JFM are usually references to their inclusion unsupported by practical mechanisms.Even if participation by women was seen solely as an instrument in furthering the goals of JFMprogrammes, the way it is implemented leaves a lot to be desired. Since these reasons are nottaken into account in the legislations that claim to be advocating participation they risk becomingwhat one scholar very evocatively calls 'participatory exclusions'.This analysis could easily be extended to other disadvantaged sections of the community. Otherstudies that have been done on real-life cases with managing local resources in a participatoryway point to very similar practical impediments in ensuring the participation of the people who aredependent on these resources. Most management projects do not take into account the fact thatthe community they are going to be working with is made up of people placed very differently. It isassumed in most cases that once provisions for participation have been made, people wouldparticipate. No thought is given to how a community is not a homogeneous whole but is made upof people whose roles are determined socially and culturally – roles of class, caste and gender.Similarly, the fact that in such community settings there are strong associations of superiority andinferiority with the collection and use of different products depending upon a person's position inthe social hierarchy, is also not considered. So, in certain communities, collecting a certain forest product might be considered a sign of inferiority; for example, Sarin talks of Gujjar women in Haryana who consider it beneath their dignity to process a local fibrous grass into rope becausetraditionally it is seen to be the vocation of banjaras, who are seen as people of lower status [ibid].If rules of participation and representation do not account for the fact that the communities forwhich these rules are made are in themselves spaces of internal differentiation and hierarchies,they would always be open to manipulation by better-equipped sections of the community. Betterequipped would mean having more power to influence decisions courtesy their social position,economic power or better skill (both information and communicationwise). In most cases, all ofthese attributes come as a package.

Another aspect that needs to be considered (at the institutional level) is the relation of a participatory agency for local resource management like the JFM with other similarly placed agencies, and the statutory village authority of the panchayats, the lowest tier of the Indian federation. As all of them are elected by the same franchise, in all probability there would be amultiplication of authorities elected by the same voters and may add up to the authority of the onedominant group.

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