ISTR Sixth International Conference Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004 Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

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Social Capital In Rural Economy---A Missing Link? A Case Study of Bangalore Rural District.
by
Hebbale Anantharamaiah Shankaranarayana
National College, Bagepalli

Neo-liberal development highlights the role of financial and human capital in the development discourse. It is widely believed that the problems of underdevelopment would be naturally overcome once we eliminate the deficiency of capital. Therefore, top-down planning is encouraged globally not only by third world countries but even by the multi-lateral agencies and donors. But this strategy has failed in achieving its objectives. These Euro-centric models have failed mainly because they neglected the role of culture in the process of development.

A third component of development, called social capital, has long been highlighted by the Global Third Sector Movement (GTSM) and is now increasingly recognized globally by the policy makers.

Social capital is the internal social and cultural coherence of society. It is the norms and values that govern interactions among people and institutions in which they are embedded (Collier Paul). Trust, reciprocity, interpersonal networks, co-operation, and co-ordination can be viewed as “civil social capital” that conditions the interaction of agents and yields externalities. It has an economic payoff too, when it is a social interaction that yields externalities and facilitates collective action for mutual benefit outside the market.

In development discourse there are diametrically opposite views regarding the role of social capital. It is viewed as the ‘missing link’ which assists economic actors to organize and interact in ways that makes a society out of individuals (Christiaan Grootaert). It acts as the glue that enables cohesive communities to pull together, help distressed members, mediate conflicts, penalize deviant behavior and reward desirable behavior, far more efficiently and cheaply than the government and the market. Again the opponents of social capital believe that the theory of social capital ignores power as it focuses only on relations within [bonding] and between [bridging] communities and that elaboration of the idea of social capital is mystical rather than practical. It systematically evades issues of context and power. The mystification serves the political purposes of depoliticizing the problems of poverty and social justice; and, in elevating the importance of ‘voluntary association’ in civic engagement, of painting out the need for political action. Thus ‘social capital’ is a weapon in the armory of the ‘anti-politics machine’ [John Harriss] The Five Year Plans in India have failed in achieving the rural development objectives in spite of more than fifty years of planning. The Community Development Programme (CDP), that was based on Panchayati Raj institutions has failed in India. Panchayati Raj creates local governments at the Zilla (district), Grama (taluk) and Mandal (village) levels. A zilla parishad can cover two million people, a mandal more than 200,000. To call such huge conglomerations as communities is very simplistic. They are decentralized political entities, not communities and cannot always harness social capital.(Swaminathan. S. A. Iyer) It is stated that a village in India is not a homogeneous community but a battleground of conflicting castes. As such devolution of power to the mandal or grama panchayaths would be self-defeating. But caste loyalty is often the strongest in India. As such social capital lies mainly in caste groups in villages.

This paper is an attempt in that direction. It examines the working of self-help groups active in four villages of Bangalore Rural district. These villages are communities because they are single caste villages. An NGO called SUVISHESHA, is sponsoring the self- help groups.

The impact of these self-help groups in terms of harnessing social capital is examined in this paper by analyzing the primary data collected through interview guides and interview schedules.

Date received: September 28, 2003

Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # camk-51.