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Abstract:
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There is little doubt that one of the most momentous policy events within the development community at the beginning of the previous decade was the return of poverty on the international development agenda. This is very much associated with the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which, on the part of the latter, culminated in the inauguration of the Human Development Report (HDR) in 1990. In a similar spirit, the World Development Report of the same year focused almost exclusively on the state of poverty in the world. Suffice it here to note that the underlying theme for the HDR is essentially an ultimatum to all countries, regardless of their levels of development, to champion a human-oriented brand of development.
In the wake of democratisation, most developing countries have had to reorient their characteristically top-down development strategies to embrace a participatory development philosophy in a bid to reinvigorate their rural development efforts. This article argues that the professed commitment to participatory local planning, as a hallmark of contemporary grassroots development intervention, is largely rhetorical. It further argues that:
- The exogenous nature of the drives to reform forces developing countries to pretend they are committed to the reforms merely to appease the West.
- These reforms can only be genuine and sustained if the will to do so springs from within developing countries with external stakeholders playing simply a facilitatory role.
- The recognition of the voices, aspirations and fears of the poor in development efforts requires a pre-existing democratic structure and policymakers who are sympathetic to the basic interests of the rural poor.
In his concluding remarks the author observes that:
- There is little doubt that participatory local planning is now the catch phrase in contemporary rural development efforts and local governance.
- The apparently questionable commitment of developing countries to the participatory development philosophy could perhaps be better understood in the context of the exogenous nature of the drives to reform.
- Local participation has been sought without a meaningful reform of the power relations between development planners and the grassroots. |