Cover Story 1: Purnabha Dasgupta, Dr. Rupak Goswami and Dr. Md. Nasim Ali

Importance of collective action in shaping capabilities of the people living in the rural area

Purnabha Dasgupta1, Dr. Rupak Goswami 2 and Dr. Md. Nasim Ali 3 are in a discussion on field reality. UNPUTDOWNABLE! If you haven‘t experienced to handle a project yet!

Collective action actually depends on the heterogeneity of the people living in a geographical location. In a heterogeneous group the action of typical mass is most important. Typical mass is that mass which has greater influencing power in the society with high degree of importance in the society. However, all of them might not be considered as leader in the society but have high degree of influence on others. Some of them are innovator-leaders and many of them are just follower of their leader. Nevertheless, most importantly incorporating the critical mass in a development process is necessary and sufficient condition for successful implementation of a project or developmental process as a whole.

In our experience during the first phase of a Natural Resource Management Project funded by SEED Division, Department of Science and Technology, GoI in West Bengal we have noticed two very important things in the behaviour of the critical mass living in the society. Firstly, some part of this critical mass played a passive non-cooperation drive with the people engaged in the project which supersedes in creating a negative sense among the people that this project is not going to have any impact on their life. On the other hand, another group directly created hindrances in the project by using their political connection. On the onset of Panchayat vote these two groups come closer and started creating trouble for the local CBO personnel to look after or implement the project activities. However, in the next phase we find the project whenever started generating a confident move they tried to isolate other interest groups in the society to grab all the benefits coming from this project. Virtually, their passive role changes into alarming active participation to nullify the expansion of the project activity in this phase. Thus sensitization regarding the project activities actually strengthens their status quo. On the onset of this crisis we have started following the Hiwre-bazar model and started collaboration with different government agencies primarily the Brindakhali Gram Panchayet.

Moreover we have started building a strong network with the local people through public gatherings. Those informal meetings gave us the ideas of forming small groups comprising with both the genders. Most importantly during this period we consciously incorporated other caste and religious members into our meetings. We understood their primary need is associated with something that we actually ignored as Paruldaha was changing every day, particularly after the all-weather road connectivity with Uttarbhag (nearest town).Most importantly, with the advent of MGNREGA Act, absolute poverty decreased in the village. As a result other than the selection of only BPL, SC community people we also included people from each religion, gender and caste.

As villages like Paruldaha already came one step ahead with respect to development parameters, we have shifted our primary focus from the construction of scientifically formulated models of different technologies to increase capability so that they can build their own technologies. As a result, their unfelt need has changed to felt need and they get the way out from their deprived past. People understood the difference between getting a help from external agents like us and importance of learning how to help them.

Our learning from that experience is that, the people get their motivation from something that can stretch them capability and not mere benefits. Pragmatic deliberations are required to raise their capabilities are the key in this regard. Realizing their changing felt need, project staff has also rescheduled all the activities planned beforehand and formed Para and village committees (before doing anything else)to give them all kind of freedom to implement their ideas by raising their own capabilities.

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About the authors: 1 Ph.D. Scholar, IRDM Faculty Centre, Narendrapur, RKMVU , 2 Asst. Prof, IRDM Faculty Centre, Narendrapur, RKMVU, 3Asst. Prof, IRDM Faculty Centre, Narendrapur, RKMVU).