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Global consensus is expanding that participation makes good business sense in development.
While such an intellectual agreement exists across international financial institutions (IFIs) and development thinkers and practitioners, there is a certain amount of wishful thinking associated with putting this perspective and approach into practice.
Small-scale, NGO-animated, local development projects can demonstrate good principles and methods for promoting meaningful participatory development, but it becomes increasingly difficult to translate these principles and methods into large-scale, national development programs.
This is where international development agencies, in particular development banks like the Asian Development Bank (ADB), face an enormous challenge.
For participation to be made a meaningful and sustainable process for achieving concrete results, it is important to identify selected—yet strategic—areas of intervention that may need focused attention from those who design and implement such large-scale development programs. So what are some of those strategic arenas for attention?
First, it is useful to ensure an agreement within a development agency about possible advantages that participation can bring. With many development programs attempting to focus on issues of poverty eradication, it is important to look at the potential outcomes of participation from the vantage point of primary stakeholders—those for whom the benefits of a development program are intended.
Several aspects merit attention. Participation can ensure that local needs and priorities of the primary stakeholders get attention in a context-specific manner. “Poor” is not a homogeneous category in any country, province, or district.
Different priorities and needs exist for different categories and clusters of the poor. Participation enables efficient mobilization and use of development resources, both local and external.
Participation can also ensure individual and collective ownership of the development intervention by the primary stakeholders themselves. Protecting a community forest and maintaining a watershed are examples of potential outcomes of effective participation by the primary stakeholders.
Agreement on these potential outcomes can help identify ways in which a development program can take into account these aspects.
The second arena for IFIs to focus attention on is the manner in which their counterpart government departments and ministries work in a particular country.
These have been called secondary stakeholders, but they have a significant role in ensuring the effective participation of primary stakeholders. Historically, most government agencies and departments have been designed “to deliver development” to the beneficiaries. So elaborate mechanisms, systems, and attitudes have been nurtured to ensure delivery of development resources in the form of projects.
These government agencies and departments are usually inadequately prepared and equipped to promote, support, and nurture participatory development.
IFIs need to focus on possible arenas of institutional reform of their partner government departments and agencies to enable them to promote participatory development by being responsive, flexible, and accountable.
Responsiveness is required to be able to assist primary stakeholders in doing development themselves. Flexibility is required to ensure differential responses in specific contexts so that ‘one shoe fits all“ is not the mantra.
Accountability to the primary stakeholders can be nurtured to ensure that the project activities continue to be aimed at benefiting them in the manner intended in the objectives.
Thus, institutional reform of partner government agencies and departments responsible for using development resources must be built into strategies for promoting participation.
A third arena for strategic attention is the combination of software and hardware components in a large-scale development program. By its very nature, a national-level primary education or social forestry program always has some construction and hardware components. Hardware has its own technical-administrative logic.
Most systems in IFIs and recipient government agencies focus primarily on this component of a development program.
Software components require a different logic: a social logic. Process becomes an important part of the delivery of development. It is difficult to combine process objectives with outcome targets in the increasingly “results-based” orientation of development regimes.
Specifying results in the process-oriented social logic of software components is not easy. It gets particularly complicated as the social processes of participation must be embedded in a complex social reality.
In most countries where such poverty eradication development programs are implemented, local social reality consists of discrimination, hierarchy, and conflicts.
Bringing a process-oriented intervention requires attention to such social realities and an understanding of how to mediate them in a meaningful way. Developing an organic and mutually supportive approach to planning and implementing software and hardware components of a development program become a challenge for effective participation of primary stakeholders.
Another strategic arena to look at is institutional complementarity from local to global levels. Different institutions have different areas of strength and competence. Local village institutions and community-based organizations are essential building blocks for long-term sustainability of any development intervention.
Likewise, enhancing capacity of the local community—particularly of the primary stakeholders—to be able to participate meaningfully and collectively becomes an important requirement.
Intermediary NGOs and others in civil society can add value in supporting and nurturing such local capacity enhancement and local institutional development.
Also, government agencies and departments, and professional and technical institutions can bring in their special competencies and strengths to ensure desirable outcomes of the development program. IFIs also add value—in terms of resources and knowledge—that they can bring in a complementary fashion.
Inadequate attention has been paid to identifying and supporting differential institutional contributions and ensuring a cooperative and mutually supportive interface between them.
Experiences in participatory development of large-scale programs supported by IFIs suggest the need for their internal reform to ensure that their systems and business processes are aligned with the overall objectives that participation “‘can deliver” in relation to development goals.
Areas requiring attention are capacity of the IFI staff, internal systems and procedures (particularly those related to tendering and contracting external services), and a culture of incentives that encourages innovation, risk taking, and learning.
For large-scale organizations like ADB, such internal institutional reform is never easy. But it needs to be addressed if participation is to be promoted in a meaningful and longtime manner.
Development, whether participatory or not, is often difficult. Any development program is an intervention in a given sociopolitical reality. It is only hoped that the “unintended” consequences of such interventions support those that are intended in a positive manner. Yet each intervention brings its own surprises.
Promoting participatory development will always be tough in conflict-ridden, hierarchical, and pluralistic contexts. Two institutional characteristics, however, may be essential to mainstream participation.
One is a learning orientation, where there is explicit support for drawing lessons from previous experiences to be incorporated into the new plans and program.
Many talk about becoming learning organizations, but it is not easy. It requires investing resources and effort, and an attitude that acknowledges “we do not have all the answers”—not an easy thing to do even under the best of circumstances.
The second is perseverance, which requires not giving up when short-term obstacles arise.
To succeed, players must have a clear perspective in addressing concrete problems as they emerge, and keep in mind that, historically, the road to improving the lives of the people has never been easy or straightforward—or the one that results in applause.
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Learn more about participatory development in Asia and the Pacific
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* Viewpoint is a regular feature of ADB Review. Prepared by a senior journalist, academic, or analyst, the articles are meant to provide fresh perspectives and stimulate debate on development issues. The material in this article does not necessarily reflect the official views of ADB.
** Rajesh Tandon is President, Participatory Research in Asia, a major nongovernment organization in India, and has served as Chairperson of the International Forum on NGO Capacity Building.
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