Events & Issues

New Delhi, 13 January 2014

NRLM & Social Capital

MUSTN’T GO FREEBIES WAY

By Dr S Saraswathi

(Former Director, ICSSR, New Delhi)

The National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) has recently introduced an intensive strategy to implement the Mission’s project for the rural poor. It will focus on social inclusion by identifying the poor through participatory system, and by universal social mobilization in project implementation. The NRLM is to concentrate at the first instance on 12 high poverty States.

The Mission was launched in April 2013 essentially by restructuring the Swarnajayanti Gram Rozghar Yojana (SGRY). It is a poverty reduction programme through building strong institutions of the poor, particularly women, and enabling them to access a range of financial and livelihood services.

The Mission aims at tapping and nurturing the unutilized social capital and activating a resource already hidden in the society by dedicated and sensitive external support structure. This support is expected to induce social mobilization, institution building, and empowerment process.

The strategy involves creating 400 “intensive blocks” for implementation of the NRLM. Out of this, it is proposed to develop 100 blocks as “resource blocks”, where several activities would be undertaken to promote social mobilization and create as well as promote institutions to include the poor and the marginalized in development avenues.

Inclusive development is sought to be achieved through universal access to rights, entitlements, and services, and empowerment of the weak. Key features of the project include training, capacity building, skill learning as well as access to public financial services.

NRLM is considered as a strategy for building social capital and not just another poverty alleviation scheme. For, it provides for inclusion of the poor in all stages of the process including the identification of the poor. The entire process will be transparent. It relies on community self-reliance.

The NRLM is not a sudden development. It has a solid background in public policy on development models. In the past two decades, voluntary movement has been silently growing across the country perhaps as spontaneous reaction to globalization, economic reforms, and market power that were jointly widening the gap between government and people.  Decentralization and collective action for common good are partly answers to political and bureaucratic stranglehold.

The spirit of self-help and self-reliance was roused and a demand for effective, responsive, and responsible government grew. Their political expression was participatory governance reflected in reformulation of government schemes as people’s programmes.

Increasingly, the concept of government as “facilitator” and not “provider” has come to be accepted. But, recognition of the role of “people” as “participants” by the government, and assumption of the responsibility of the participants by people who are no longer mere “recipients” takes time in view of the gap between the ordinary, “aam admi” and the government that has existed all along.

Anna’s movement that has its roots in social activism and voluntary service among people rocked the country for the first time after JP’s movement. It seems to have caused a perceptible change in and outside the governments, and in political parties and corporate houses to think more seriously about the power of the common people.

The Aam Admi Party’s success in Delhi further emphasizes the presence of people in non-election times also. Whether the party achieves any tangible results are not, it has at least notionally raised the status of the common man and the value of social capital in the sense of communal resources.

Social capital refers to institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the size and substance of social interactions. It can be built only by social cohesion. And it is indispensable for economic welfare and sustainable development. It can no longer be ignored under the delusion of political and financial capital or power.

The term “social capital” has been in use since 1890s. The level of social participation which shows the quantity and quality of social capital was said to be high in American society. That resulted in better working of democracy. Social capital has indeed been linked with the success of democracy and people’s involvement in politics.  

Social capital is distinct from economic capital, and cultural capital.  Anything that facilitates individual or collective action generated by networks of relationships, reciprocity, cooperation, team work, trust, and norms is looked upon as building social capital. The source of social capital is the civil society and not the government. 

Cooperation between mobilized communities and active governments can achieve a great progress in developmental efforts. Unfortunately, we are still in the process of mobilization for elementary level of development – reducing infant mortality, eliminating illiteracy, and removing poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. Under the circumstances, the NRLM is looked upon primarily as a poverty alleviation programme and it is likely to come under the overarching influence of political parties. The Self-Help Groups in some States have been politicized.

From the stage of fighting inadequacies, the nation has to go forward to achieve the real fruits of social capital. Importantly, social capital and political parties are natural allies. For, both believe and engage in mobilizing people for a common cause. Indeed, there is reason to treat political parties also as social capital. 

But, political parties – even those having humble beginning – have grown as elite institutions with the main object of winning elections. The successful ones are not those engaging with people on all public matters and encouraging wide participation in party matters. Political parties seem to believe more in financial power and muscle power than social capital – the power of the people.

It is the age of “new politics of community”. Myriads of associations of people are organized on daily basis; group activities flourish despite individualistic aspirations and competitive spirit. Rights-based approach to development places citizens’ groups at the centre of project formulation and implementation.

In some countries, the welfare policy of a government is based on the twin concepts of entitlements of the people concerned and their obligations in return. It is a system of mutual obligations. In the Indian context, the stress is more on rights and entitlements than on obligations and duties. This may be due to long history of deprivations and inequalities. 

Such justifications have over-lived their usefulness. If the object of the NRLM is to harness the “innate capabilities” of the poor, it should undertake the job of complementing their capacities with necessary information, knowledge, skills, tools, resources, etc., and see to it that the support provided yields lasting results and does not go the way of  freebies offered by political parties.---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)