Enhancing Pro-Poor Governance in Eastern India: Participation, Politics and Action Research

Reflecting on the experience of an action research project conducted from 1998 to 2000 in Eastern India, this paper explores the use of participatory methods to promote pro-poor governance reform. The study addresses the issue of politics within participatory practices, criticising the World Bank's interpretation of participatory reform. A set of workshops with non-governmental organisations (NGOs), public servants, and citizens were employed to promote information and dialogue about problems of pro-poor programmes engaging stakeholders in the design of an agenda for reform. The authors argue that self-reflection about actors’ political position, and alliances among a variety of reform-minded actors are important steps in building political capabilities to challenge structural blockages to pro-poor governance. However, reform and long term change calls for wider institutional adjustments that support stakeholders' commitment to change.

Evaluation/Research Methodologies:
This action research project followed a two-phase design combining evaluation and participatory methods. Between 1998 and 2000, an academic study examined poor people's interactions with government in five districts of two states in Eastern India. Findings from this study were employed to run a multi-stage process of consultation with a variety of stakeholders (citizens and programme clients, upper and lower-level public servants, political party workers, and NGOs) in two districts with severe blockages to pro-poor governance. Through a set of linked workshops, participants were encouraged to define and debate governance problems, and to develop their own solutions to the identified problems.

Different stages of the consultation process employed different communication techniques. The primary strategy of interpersonal and face-to-face interaction used in neighborhood and stakeholders meetings was complemented with speeches and dramas in larger town-hall meetings. Self-reflection about actors' political position and their agendas were factors addressed in stakeholder meetings. The study did not have specific instruments to measure the impact of communication on the project.



Key Findings/Impact:
This action research project generated a final report listing over one hundred recommendations for governance reform for pro-poor programmes. Communication techniques were employed in the phase of consultation and design of this agenda for reform. Beyond this outcome, researchers reported changes in stakeholders' attitudes towards governance issues. Prior to the research, stakeholders tended to place all the responsibility in the hands of public officials. An attitude change was reflected in several recommendations and called for multiple-stakeholder involvement in the information process, monitoring, and advocacy of pro-poor programmes.

Participatory techniques encouraging self-reflection of participants were found to be valuable tools to advance dialogue and understanding among stakeholders prompting changes in the administration of the programmes. For example, the format of the workshops themselves had provoked requests for different working relationships between higher- and field-level government staff. The latter preferred the communication dynamics developed in the workshops over hierarchical and distant relationships imposed by their everyday roles.

However, researchers warned that the influence of the workshops to generate change is and ought to be limited. Resistance to change persisted within the political leadership, which had been benefiting from the status quo of "clientelist" practices. Reform and long-term changes demand wider institutional adjustments that can support stakeholders’ commitment to change.