I asserts here that social capital is not a final output to
resolve the problem of collective action in one hand, but social capital is
seen as a process to build confidence and capability of everyone in the
communities and to scale up in every situation. The availability of social
capital is abundance in the community, but the significant aspect is that how
mediating agencies (CBOs, NGOs or government agencies, Local organizations)
formulate strategy to use it as an effective mechanism and tools, which enable
communities to deal their urgent issues and needs collectively.
My argument here is that
how social capital is formed? Does social capital grow as form of culture or
structure or functional body of rule and regulation? Does social capital play
limited roles between mediating agency and collective action? Why the basic
tenets of social capital active among the vulnerable section of community, but
not able to recognize their status at community level? This is also important
point is that why social capital is seen as important for the community
development in last ten or fifteen years?
I have tried to put an
effort to understand the significance of social capital, whether this really
helps in enabling the community to participate actively at local level? Social
capital has been clearly identified and evaluated, but how far external
assistance requires for strengthening the existing community organizations or
building new organizations? In some cases, the gap between formal and non
formal institutions negatively affects the social capital, which may be
potential cause of project failure or diminishes the possibility of collective
active for certain period of time.
There is a paper entitled “A Social Science Perspective on
Social Capital: Social Capital and Collective Action” precisely shows that
defining social capital needs multidisciplinary approach and denying the other
aspects (human, physical etc) of social capital is not advisable. The economic
growth and development is not simply a combination or function of capital and
labor. There are many other unseen cognitive forces, such as norms, trust,
relationship, engagement, institution (formal and non formal), which have always
been significant elements for motivating and inspiring both individual and
institutions for making and implementing economic policies. This is the dilemma
of defining the social capital and its utility for promoting economic growth
and democracy development.
In minimalist view, an Individual is interrelated, interconnected
and also interdependent with the society, but the combination of many
individuals help in formation of society. Defining social capital as ‘informal
norms and cooperation between two individuals’ (Fukuyama, 2000) elaborates the
instrumental value of individual, who sometime assists the process of group
formation and after a period of time, the social norms, establishing rules;
guiding principles of the organization develop collectively. This defines a
process, which probably possible in a kind of social structure, where
associational affiliation of individual as a member of trade union, club, and
professional organizations etc, is important for his or her personal growth and
networking. Here, this is not meant to say that the role of individual is not
important for building and strengthening social capital at community level, as
‘naya neta’ (new youth leader) in Prof Anirudh’s Active Social Capital (2002)
enlarges the definition of leadership, which
manifests a new kind of
individual identity emerging within the community. However, the sum up of this
article is that the social capital is complex concept and derives from various
means. But the meta question is how social capital is built? Why this is
essential? Is theory and practice of social capital different from each other?
How to evaluate and assess social capital in the development perspective?
Before going further, I would like to bring Parson’s General
Theory of Action in this discussion, in which he argues that the evolution of
society or it structure, is based on four systems, such as the cultural system,
the social system, the personality system and behavioral organism as a system. The
effective coordination and coherence between and among each of these systems
help in building ‘social capital’. But, a well developed (active) social
capital is not enough to address the policy issue and development problems at
community level without the ‘coordination between the government and local
based organization’ (Krishna, 2003). Active social capital involves both
instrumental as well as cognitive elements, which evolves collective action.
Krishna’s argues that institutions matters in establishing ‘link between social
capital and societal performance’, capability of agents and institutions
(formal and non formal) ensure ‘community development, establish communal
harmony and improve people participation in democratic process’.
The study of social capital in Indian villages empirically proves
at first instance that the social capital is not static in nature. However, the
instrumental nature of social capital in the Indian villages are not free from
the identity politics and also not clearly provide enough space for women
empowerment and involvement of youth in decision making at community level. Is
this a dilemma of existing social structure or is this a deep rooted believe
system, which helps in maintaining the status quo in the society? When we evaluate the social capital in the
context of ‘social construction of reality’ (Berger and Luckman, 1966), in
which they argues that ‘man is social product’, where the process of
socialization and internalization of knowledge play important role in shaping
the social structure. In this situation, the cognitive elements of social capital
need to be examined deeper.
Prof Anirudh Krishna of Duke University has captured the new
pattern of leadership in the Indian villages and how an individual (naya nata)
matters for promoting and strengthening the collective action. The emergence of
these new breed of leaders is based on many factors, but one of the important
factor is that the consistent failure of the government intervention and
institutions, and irregular availability of government officials in the local
offices has created space for new leaders at village level. This space has been
captured by those youth members, who are well connected with the political
parties, political leaders and able to play a mediating role between the
government officials and villagers. Again, in many ways, these young leaders
are different than the traditional leadership in the village and the community.
Education and exposure with many types of government offices and officials has
enhanced their skills of negotiation, skill to get the work done and enable
them to explore incentive for doing work.
Coordination and trust among the group of naya neta in these
villages seems challenging because there is hardly any constructive youth space
available in the Indian villages, where these neya neta and rural youth have to
have regular interaction. Even the community based organization and NGOs
address the issue of development, but miss to include these important actors in
various activities. Despite of the presence of strong social capital in many
villages, there is challenging situation to sustain this social capital for
building collective action in future.
The interesting aspect of social capital here is that there
are many villages in this study show that these villages have high social
capital and high agency capacities, but these villages are not role model of
development. This shows how complex is the web of development paradigm? In
Indian villages, the capacity and capability of agency is important and these
agencies able to facilitate the social capital for the collective action. Generally,
villagers do have faith and trust to each other. They do also have knowledge
accessing the quality services, but they want their skills to be enhanced in
multi dimensional ways to facilitate the collective action process. In this
situation, the role of mediating agencies and institutions are significant.
Prof Anirudh’s study about the active social capital precisely
asserts that the Indian villages are not homogeneous and state agency and its
activities try to fix the development in common parameter. Here, the role of
active social capital is significant, which enable community to get advantage
of maximum benefit. In many villages in this study, this has been positively
correlated that the active social capital in the village able to coordinate
with the mediating agencies and individual to get the work done in their
village. The study shows that
educational activities in villages are positively correlated with the political
activity. This does not mean that this makes villagers politically conscious to
make political decision. In fact, educational infrastructure and its space in
many villages is widely used by government agency and even political leaders
use to organize meeting with villagers in the school premises. Second, local elected body is responsible for
the educational activities. Villages where coordination between elected members
and villagers are positive, the educational activities are regularly monitored,
but this coordination in many villages also unable to ensure that teachers are
regularly coming and classes are being held on time. This affects the quality
of education in broader level.
The case study of Watershed development and soil
conservation shows that success of program depends upon the combination three strategies,
such as technical, social and administrative, which play significant role in
involving the villages and this combination ensured the success of the project.
This is valuable lesson for the mediating agencies and outside intervention
that a comprehensive understanding about the stock of available social capital
can be effective tools for the development activities. In last, the discussion
of social capital and its measurement are losing the importance of small
elements and events, which regularly rebuilding the community and revitalizing
the social capital in day to day basis. What I have observed that there are two
neighboring villages in conflict to each other. Both of these villages are
highly active social capital within each other, but at the time of crisis and
happiness, they are together and they work together. Is this a social capital
works without any mediating agency? Or is this basic need of human survival and
security of human being in the community set up?
This is also a fact that there are large number of vulnerable
population, who unable to share their voice in front of village council and
leaders. For example, women, children and youths are almost non existences in
the decision making process, even the mediating agency don’t actively involve
them, but the basis ethos of social capital is preserved or practiced by these
groups regularly in their respective sexual and age group. Women group show
tremendous level of cooperation and trust at the time of domestic violence and
communal disturbance at village level on each other. In the same ways, the
youth group is best connector in any of the village. I believe that an
alternative set of evaluation and assessment of social capital could be developed
or evolved for building development programs and activities for promoting
collective action in the present scenario.
