The business of development: a case study of participation and dependence

Abstract

Micro-interventions in rural India to create sustainable livelihoods are all aimed at generating income and wealth through new activities, preserving and accumulating natural assets like water and trees, and empowering poor people by encouraging their active participation. We studied one such intervention in the state of Gujarat and its implications for sustainability. In this project, small and marginal farmers after being introduced to new economic activities were pooled together into a larger cooperative network that in turn fed into a producers’ company. This organisation created its own brand, used modern technology and accessed markets all over India. The idea of this experiment came from a well known NGO with experience of working in rural India. This experiment was a novel way of bringing poor farmers into the structure of a modern and reasonably large, market-driven enterprise, without creating wage labour or dispossessing people from their lands. The lessons from the experiment indicate the importance of understanding that participation and empowerment cannot be attained through a mechanical, target-driven and time bound approach. Instead, it could result in a relationship marked by dependence and passive participation.