Who Should Be at the Top of Bottom-Up Development? : A Case Study of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission in Rajasthan, India
It is widely acknowledged that top-down support is essential for bottom-up participatory projects to be effectively implemented at scale. However, which level of government, national or sub-national, should be given the responsibility to implement...
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/969661488810217801/Who-should-be-at-the-top-of-bottom-up-development-a-case-study-of-the-national-rural-livelihoods-mission-in-Rajasthan-India http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26246 |
| Summary: | It is widely acknowledged that top-down
support is essential for bottom-up participatory projects to
be effectively implemented at scale. However, which level of
government, national or sub-national, should be given the
responsibility to implement such projects is an open
question, with wide variations in practice. This paper
analyzes qualitative and quantitative data from a natural
experiment in the state of Rajasthan in India, where a large
national flagship project that mobilized women into
self-help groups for micro-credit and created a women's
network for other development activities was implemented in
two different ways. Some sub-regions were given to the state
government of Rajasthan to manage, while the Government of
India centrally managed other sub-regions. The study finds
that the nature of top-down management had a large bearing
on the nature and quality of local-level facilitation.
Centrally and locally managed facilitators formed several
groups with similar financial performance. But centrally
managed facilitators formed groups that were less likely to
engage in collective action, be politically active, and
engage with other civil society organizations. These results
raise important questions on how responsibilities for
participatory development projects should be devolved, and
how the nature of management affects the sustainability of
bottom-up interventions. |
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