Seven - A shifting paradigm: engendering the politics of community engagement in India

Summary

Introduction

Community development, as a distinctive approach to socioeconomic development, began to be official practice in India in the early 1950s. Although such approaches have, in different ways, addressed women's experiences of discrimination in society, the specificity of women's needs and their gendered identities have largely been ignored. As a result, the agency of women has not, historically, been given sufficient attention within the dominant community development paradigm. It is only since the 1990s that specific structures for women's participation have been included in development programmes, although these were originally limited to participation in those ‘invited’ political spaces (Cornwall, 2002) created and mediated by powerful interests which were not necessarily committed to women's empowerment. In the mid-1990s, when the affirmative policy statutorily reserved places for women in local government institutions, their presence in public spheres did increase to some extent, but, similarly, this did not necessarily ensure that their voices were heard or their contributions recognised.

Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) was set up as an educational support institution for the empowerment of the excluded in 1982. Its founding inspiration was the theory and practice of participatory research, and its belief in the capacity of ordinary citizens to transform their lives and societies. As we discuss in this chapter, PRIA's experiences of building the collective capacities of elected women leaders has shown that an alternative pedagogy and methodology for addressing gender discrimination is both required and possible. However, this approach has had to challenge embedded inequalities within the institutions of governance and elsewhere, while at the same time addressing power issues within families and communities.

This chapter attempts to analyse the evolution of community development thinking and programming in India using a gender lens. It brings into focus the complex politics and practices of gender discrimination that persist within the structures and institutions of development. Consequently, it also argues that development must be ‘engendered’, in the sense that it must demonstrate a critical understanding of, and commitment to, the political empowerment of women. Engendering development entails prioritising the special needs and interests of women as equal partners in and active agents of development, not merely as passive beneficiaries (Farrell, 2014). This is necessary in order to transform community development itself, and to ensure real participation and engagement by women in governance, local democracy and development.