Community management in rural Bangladesh
Fowzia Gulshana Rashid Lopa | Monday, 4 August 2008
In Bangladesh, community management is now increasingly used to refer to the need to increase sustainability and coverage by creating institutional supports for community-managed services, using a learning approach that includes all relevant stakeholders and allows for local context. However, do institutional supports ensure community management in a sustainable way? A learning approach is ensured among all stakeholders. Is it really so? The subject matter of this article is 'rural community management'. It is not ensured because of two reasons. One is that implementation agencies shift responsibilities to community people in materialising the convenient concept of community management model without establishing appropriate local management committee. And the other is that, local people cannot develop the sense of responsibility because of legal, land ownership, or community constraints.
Bangladesh and its governance: Through the liberation of 1971, it was expected that Bangladesh would, with its new-found political freedom, move towards the dream of 'Sonar Bangla', where poverty would soon become an anachronism. Nevertheless, after three decades, a large segment of the population are not functionally literate in its truest sense. A fewer of the nation's women are literate. In the field of health, it has high infant mortality rate - 79.9 deaths out of 1000 births. Seventy per cent of the workforce is involved in agriculture, and 15 per cent and 10 per cent are employed in the service and industrial sectors. However, the dream of 'Sonar Bangla' still remains a dream and it is lagging behind in the race for development.
Historical perspective: In the face of deteriorating circumstances, in the early 1980s, the government of Bangladesh undertook the community participation approach as a new development tool. It appeared to 'roll back the state,' reducing state spending on social welfare and promoting alternative solutions based upon the private market, voluntary/NGO sectors and community-based self-help. Based on this approach, in the late 1980s and 1990s, the government undertook a number of development projects. It found most of the projects incomplete. However, it realised that discontinuities were occurring because the system of community management was not ensured properly.
Sustainability factor: The concept of community management developed predominately in the West for community participation in municipal planning. However, over the two decades, the community management has become the predominant model for management of rural services throughout Bangladesh. Development workers adopt these policies to attract foreign fund. They have also undoubtedly a tendency to idealise foreign communities and to view them as being based on simplistic cultural differences rather than to judge them by our own standards and values. Presently, it is not time to dispense with this model, since it already covers enormous space in the fields of development projects. It is also observed that this model has high potential in rural community of Bangladesh if both development workers and community people ensure better management and participation. Thus, it needs to explore the implicit problems associated with both the sides.
Community management usually relies on the formation of committees, which are responsible for all management issues related to services in the community. There is an essential role of the implementing body, which is to facilitate the formation of an appropriate management body and to enable the community to take care of its system after they leave it. However, in Bangladesh, it is observed that the implementation agency implements some activities as part of a project and then leaves the project area after several months and years without establishing appropriate management committee. In 1999, with the support of the development partners, the government of Bangladesh had made a considerable investment in developing rural infrastructure through the Rural Infrastructure and Community Development Project (RICDP). The project created some community structures but no arrangements were made for their maintenance. Investigations found that the local government division did not constitute the steering committee, which was supposed to give guidance and leadership towards achieving objectives. Here, community management became a convenient concept for shifting responsibility for the ongoing operation and management (O&M). By handing over the service facilities to them to manage, the agency was able to abrogate the responsibility with a clear conscience.
On the other hand, in case of community people, it is expected that after handing over the service facility to them to manage, they will lead to the effective community management automatically. Nevertheless, practically, they become reluctant about managing the project in the long term. Though they do participate for a while initially because of the attraction of incentives but it is observed in implementation phase that agencies have very little interest in providing incentives in the long term. Since development workers do not ensure any kind of responsibility after handing over the project to community people, sometimes they face some technical problems in case of' transparency, especially in credit management. They are also too poor to replace the major capital items.
However, the key problem associated with the community people is the 'sense of responsibility', to realize 'ownership'. Although theoretically, the concept of community development model focuses on the sense of responsibility of beneficiaries but it is very difficult to establish such sense or ethics among rural people in rural society. Community management will be effective when people have identical interest in the community. But on the question of the ability to pay, it may vary greatly in the rural area and the requirement of each household to contribute the same amount may be seen as 'unjust' by some. In case of selecting the location for service facility, especially for water supply, it is observed that if the facility is installed on land which belongs to an individual or to the government, the widespread perception is that it does not truly belong to the community. Alternatively, it can be said that since rural community in Bangladesh covers a vast geographical area, the location of the facility is unlikely to be equidistant from all users and hence true equity is impossible to achieve.
Conclusion: Since the government of Bangladesh has already adopted this approach, it should take steps to strengthen the local government system in the rural setting, especially in the Union Parishad (UP). The UPs can give support to the community body providing encouragement and motivation, educating in monitoring strategies, participatory planning, capacity building and specialist technical assistance. Given support, the committee members will be accountable not only to the implementation agencies but also to their own community.
The writer is studying Masters in Development Studies at the
East-West University
Bangladesh and its governance: Through the liberation of 1971, it was expected that Bangladesh would, with its new-found political freedom, move towards the dream of 'Sonar Bangla', where poverty would soon become an anachronism. Nevertheless, after three decades, a large segment of the population are not functionally literate in its truest sense. A fewer of the nation's women are literate. In the field of health, it has high infant mortality rate - 79.9 deaths out of 1000 births. Seventy per cent of the workforce is involved in agriculture, and 15 per cent and 10 per cent are employed in the service and industrial sectors. However, the dream of 'Sonar Bangla' still remains a dream and it is lagging behind in the race for development.
Historical perspective: In the face of deteriorating circumstances, in the early 1980s, the government of Bangladesh undertook the community participation approach as a new development tool. It appeared to 'roll back the state,' reducing state spending on social welfare and promoting alternative solutions based upon the private market, voluntary/NGO sectors and community-based self-help. Based on this approach, in the late 1980s and 1990s, the government undertook a number of development projects. It found most of the projects incomplete. However, it realised that discontinuities were occurring because the system of community management was not ensured properly.
Sustainability factor: The concept of community management developed predominately in the West for community participation in municipal planning. However, over the two decades, the community management has become the predominant model for management of rural services throughout Bangladesh. Development workers adopt these policies to attract foreign fund. They have also undoubtedly a tendency to idealise foreign communities and to view them as being based on simplistic cultural differences rather than to judge them by our own standards and values. Presently, it is not time to dispense with this model, since it already covers enormous space in the fields of development projects. It is also observed that this model has high potential in rural community of Bangladesh if both development workers and community people ensure better management and participation. Thus, it needs to explore the implicit problems associated with both the sides.
Community management usually relies on the formation of committees, which are responsible for all management issues related to services in the community. There is an essential role of the implementing body, which is to facilitate the formation of an appropriate management body and to enable the community to take care of its system after they leave it. However, in Bangladesh, it is observed that the implementation agency implements some activities as part of a project and then leaves the project area after several months and years without establishing appropriate management committee. In 1999, with the support of the development partners, the government of Bangladesh had made a considerable investment in developing rural infrastructure through the Rural Infrastructure and Community Development Project (RICDP). The project created some community structures but no arrangements were made for their maintenance. Investigations found that the local government division did not constitute the steering committee, which was supposed to give guidance and leadership towards achieving objectives. Here, community management became a convenient concept for shifting responsibility for the ongoing operation and management (O&M). By handing over the service facilities to them to manage, the agency was able to abrogate the responsibility with a clear conscience.
On the other hand, in case of community people, it is expected that after handing over the service facility to them to manage, they will lead to the effective community management automatically. Nevertheless, practically, they become reluctant about managing the project in the long term. Though they do participate for a while initially because of the attraction of incentives but it is observed in implementation phase that agencies have very little interest in providing incentives in the long term. Since development workers do not ensure any kind of responsibility after handing over the project to community people, sometimes they face some technical problems in case of' transparency, especially in credit management. They are also too poor to replace the major capital items.
However, the key problem associated with the community people is the 'sense of responsibility', to realize 'ownership'. Although theoretically, the concept of community development model focuses on the sense of responsibility of beneficiaries but it is very difficult to establish such sense or ethics among rural people in rural society. Community management will be effective when people have identical interest in the community. But on the question of the ability to pay, it may vary greatly in the rural area and the requirement of each household to contribute the same amount may be seen as 'unjust' by some. In case of selecting the location for service facility, especially for water supply, it is observed that if the facility is installed on land which belongs to an individual or to the government, the widespread perception is that it does not truly belong to the community. Alternatively, it can be said that since rural community in Bangladesh covers a vast geographical area, the location of the facility is unlikely to be equidistant from all users and hence true equity is impossible to achieve.
Conclusion: Since the government of Bangladesh has already adopted this approach, it should take steps to strengthen the local government system in the rural setting, especially in the Union Parishad (UP). The UPs can give support to the community body providing encouragement and motivation, educating in monitoring strategies, participatory planning, capacity building and specialist technical assistance. Given support, the committee members will be accountable not only to the implementation agencies but also to their own community.
The writer is studying Masters in Development Studies at the
East-West University