July 2014
Participatory Citizenship and Legibility in the Community
Participation Processes of the Rajiv Awas Yojana Scheme in
Chennai, India | Iida-Maria Tammi
U
NIVERSITY OF
TRANSLATING PARTICIPATION
Participatory Citizenship and Legibility in the Community
Participation Processes of the Rajiv Awas Yojana Scheme
in Chennai, India
Student Iida-Maria Tammi 10635769
Programme MSc International Development Studies Graduate School of Social Sciences University of Amsterdam
Thesis supervisor Dr. I.S.A. Baud Second reader Dr. C. Richter
Email iidamaria.tammi@ gmail.com
Abstract
After over three decades of sustained commitment to participatory principles in international development, little is actually known how to foster successful and sustainable community participation. This research explores the underlying assumptions of legibility and participatory citizenship that shape these processes and develops an alternative analytical framework for understanding participation. Adopting a linguistic-relational approach, the study is an investigation of the planning and implementation of community participation in the Rajiv Awas Yojana scheme in Chennai, India. Drawing on a set of interviews and focus group discussions, it is found that the local actors interpret the national participation discourse through their personalised interpretative repertoires. This shapes the process of implementation and outcomes as the implementers rely heavily on the dominant participation discourse and thus further legitimate the existing status quo. Contrary to the common belief, the research thus suggests that even though the success of participatory initiatives is context dependent, a clear pattern emerges between planning and implementation.
Keywords: Participation, development outcomes, critical discourse analysis, legibility,
Table of Contents
Abstract
List of Figures and Tables
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms Acknowledgements
1. Introduction 1
2. Theoretical Framework 6
2.1. History of Participatory Development 6
2.2. Participation and Citizenship 9
2.3. Participation in Legible Society 11
2.4. Benefits of Analytical Linguistic Approach 14
3. Research Context 18
3.1. Indian Society and Framework of Governance 18
3.2. “Faster, Sustainable, and More Inclusive Growth” 19 3.3. National Responses to Challenges of Urbanisation 20
3.4. Chennai, Tamil Nadu 22
3.5. Case-Study: Kalvaikarai Sub-Standard Settlement 24
4. Research Framework 27
4.1. Research Questions 27
4.2. Research Methodology 28
4.3. Operationalization 29
4.4. Unit of Analysis and Sampling Method 30
4.5. Choice of Case-Study 34
4.6. Research Methods 35
4.7. Methods of Analysis 39
4.8. Ethical Considerations 41
5. Constructing National Participation Discourse 45
5.1. Textual Analysis of Emerging Positionalities 46
5.2. Competing Discourses 50
5.3. Contextual Analysis 55
5.4. Conclusion 57
6. Translating Participation to Local Implementation 59
6.1. Planned Avenues for Community Participation 59
6.2. Implementation of the Guidelines 62
6.3. Logic for (In)Action 66
6.4. Linking Localised Rhetoric with National Discourse 71
6.5. Conclusion 74
7. Slum Level Experiences of Participation 77
7.1. Community Participation Efforts in Kalvaikarai 77
7.2. Impacts and Effects 79
7.3. Conclusion 81
8. Conclusion 84
8.1. Main Findings 84
8.2. Theoretical Significance of Findings 89
8.3. Policy Recommendations 92
8.4. Agenda for Further Research 93
Bibliography Appendices
List of Figures and Tables
List of Figures
Figure 1.1. Overview of the proposed research 3
Figure 2.1. Overview of the proposed conceptual framework of the research 6
Figure 2.2. Relationship between the text and the context in CDA 15
Figure 3.1. The envisioned key elements and actors of the preparatory phase of RAY 21
Figure 3.2. Map of Tamil Nadu, India 23
Figure 3.3. Map of Kalvaikarai in ward 171, zone XIII 25
Figure 4.1. Network chart of the key actors 32
Figure 4.2. A map of the transect walks in Kalvaikarai 33
Figure 4.3. Rhetorical triangle 41
Figure 5.1. Structure of the analysis 45
Figure 5.2. The discursive construction of participation 51
Figure 5.3. The continuum of participation discourses 57
Figure 6.1. Real and envisioned key actors on a city-level in the preparatory phase 63
Figure 6.2. The link between national discourses and local rhetoric 72
Figure 6.3. The process of translating participation 75
Figure 7.1. Emerging co-existence of legibility and illegibility 82
Figure 8.1. Relationship of dominance between the discourses 86
Figure 8.2. Process of translation and the centrality of the policy implementers 87
Figure 8.4. Emerging analytical framework 92
List of Tables
Abbreviations and Acronyms
ADB Asian Development Bank
CBO Community Based Organisation
CDA Critical Discourse Analysis
CDW Community Development Wing
DPR Detailed Project Report
EWS Economically Weaker Section
GIS Geographical Information System
JnNURM Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission
LIG Lower Income Group
MC Municipal Counsellor
MIS Management Information System
MLA Member of Legislative Assembly
MoHUPA Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
POA Plan of Action
RAY Rajiv Awas Yojana
SC Scheduled Caste
SFCPoA Slum-Free City Plan of Action
SLNA State-Level Nodal Agency
TNSCB Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board
ULB Urban Local Body
UPA Urban Poverty Alleviation
UN United Nations
Acknowledgements
There are a number of people to whom I remain grateful for supporting me through this process. I would first and foremost like to thank my supervisor Isa Baud for guiding me in my work. I am also deeply grateful to all of those who helped, guided, and supported me whilst in the field. This includes my respondents, in particular the employees of Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board and Darashaw consultancy, the officials of Chennai Corporation, and the inhabitants of Kalvaikarai. Special thanks go out to my local supervisor Mrs. Dhanalakshmi, my selfless friend and translator Vijeya Kumari, and my second reader Christine Richter. I would also like to thank Transparent Chennai, ActionAid India, Information and Resource Centre for Urban Deprived Communities, Thozhamai, Mr. Naraynan, Joop de Witt, Tara Saharan, Shazade Jameson, and Martin Andersen for their helpful insights. I am most deeply grateful to you all.
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1. Introduction
The notion of participatory development brings with it a long-waited promise of a paradigm shift that has the potential to finally tilt the scales to the benefit of the currently marginalised individuals. For over a decade influential multi-lateral actors and donors have demonstrated sustained commitment to participatory principles (see e.g. WBG 1996; UN 2008) and numerous regional and national organisations have incorporated civil society engagement into their development policies. At the same time, after having emerged as one of the most prominent trends of the contemporary development agenda, little is actually known about how to best foster successful participatory processes (Gaventa, Barrett 2012; Mansuri, Rao 2013). A lot of the knowledge that exists regarding participation is gained by learning through error and as a result, the term is increasingly being associated with unpredictable and volatile development outcomes. At this point, after years of adhering to participation as the key to sustainable and empowering development outcomes, it is important to take a step back and ask the question “why is it so difficult to translate declarations of intent into successful practices?”
Previous research has shown that the donor logic for encouraging participatory development is based on a set of normative assumptions, rather than empirical evidence (Menocal, Sharma 2008; Gaventa, Barret 2012). As the opening chapter of a recent World Bank policy research report notes, the contemporary commitment to participation is based on a ‘belief’ of its positive effects which are tentatively ‘proposed’ as a method in achieving a whole range of different development goals (Mansuri, Rao 2013: 1). The normative assumptions regarding participation associate it closely with the promotion of human rights, ‘good governance’, sustainability, and community empowerment (UN 2008; Zerah et al. 2011). At the same time, such seemingly progressive understandings mask archaic uncertainty regarding the underlying participatory pragmatics. Despite being revised and reformulated over the course of several years, the contemporary participation discourse still draws on the very same arguments for participatory development that first emerged some forty years ago when the term was first coined in its contemporary form (Cornwall 2000). This current understanding of participation thus relies
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on a set of normative beliefs and a notably static theoretical foundation, underscoring the need for further empirical evidence and critical analytical evaluation.
The current body of knowledge that exists of participatory mechanisms is mostly comprised either of individual project reports and macro-scale international evaluations. The pressure to bridge this gap draws from the need of the aid agencies to get more definitive answers regarding best practices as well as from the ongoing academic debate around the topic of participatory development. So far the evidence from participatory initiatives has been controversial, as a number reported positive outcomes have been accompanied by negative side-effects. In their extensive meta-analysis Gaventa and Barret (2012) draw attention to negative outcomes such as reliance of knowledge intermediaries, reinforcement of social hierarchies and exclusion, and even violent or coercive state response. This marks the need for further caution regarding the quality and direction of change and indicates a need for an improved understanding of the underlying processes that shape these outcomes. Only by establishing a better analytical understanding of participation, is it possible to develop a mechanism that will yield predictable and consistent outcomes. It is the aim of this research to contribute towards such improved understanding through an analytical investigation of the processes by which macro-scale participatory principles are translated into micro-scale implementation (see figure 1.1. below). Despite the fact that a case-study approach is adopted, the purpose it not to provide an evaluation of the effects of participation but rather to explore the factors that inhibit and enable the full realisation of the participatory principles in a case-study setting. Such insights are envisioned to shed light on the so-far obscure functioning of participatory mechanisms.
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Figure 1.1. Overview of the proposed research
This research provides a linguistic-relational analysis of the processes by which community participation is translated through the different levels of a national slum-upgrading programme in India. 1 The word linguistic refers to a critical understanding regarding the ways in which language is used to structure and give meaning to the world around us. Relational then again refers to the networks of the key actors involved in the programme with special focus on their respective socio-cultural context. Conceptualised in relation to the theories of participatory citizenship (Mohanty, Tandon 2006) and legibility (Scott 1998), the research explores the extent and ways in which the publicly acclaimed principles of participatory citizenship are translated through the legibility making processes of the scheme on a local-level. The question is approached from a critical linguistic perspective that seeks to unpack the language by which participation is constituted and analyse the shifts in meaning through different levels of the programme. The research argues that based on an improved understanding of the shifting
1 Terminology of ‘slums’ and ‘slum dwellers’ is acknowledged to be of ambiguous and potentially degrading
standing. These anyhow are the terms by which sub-standard settlements and their inhabitants are referred to in the RAY programme documents and for the sake of clarity and consistency, they will also be utilized in this paper.
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meaning of participation, it is possible to better understand the complex linkage between international, national, and local discourses that shape the success of participatory initiatives. These discourses emerge in the intersection between social structures and individual agency, reflecting the social positioning of the different actors. Furthermore, despite the analytical imperative of the research, the paper will conclude with some indicative policy recommendations. Macro-scale government policies have become the leitmotif of contemporary development policy (Mansuri, Rao 2013: 1) but especially in India they are plagued by the lack of extensive research and evaluation. The research thus has also an instrumental tenet to it, as it seeks to contribute towards improving the future participatory initiatives in the country.
The thesis is a synthesis of existing literature and theory and primary data gathered in the course of a ten-week fieldwork period in Chennai, India. The research is part of an international research project Chance2Sustain and thus forms part of a larger body of work focusing on issues of urban transformation and sustainability in the Global South. Seeking to understand the process by which national community participation guidelines unfold on a local level, the thesis begins by a critical discourse analysis of the relevant programme documents. Moving to regional and local levels of analysis, the focus shifts to the ways in which participation is represented and understood by the key actors involved in the process of implementation. Finally, the analysis is complemented by a case-study of the Kalvaikarai sub-standard settlement in Chennai. This explores the processes and effect of participation on a community level.
Structurally the thesis is divided into three sections: introduction and research framework, data analysis, and conclusion. Chapter 2 gives a literature review of participatory development, defines the key theoretical concepts, and presents the conceptual scheme of the research. Chapter 3 introduces the research context, followed by a methodological overview in chapter 4. In this the research questions, research methods, and methods of analysis are presented and some of the key ethical considerations and research limitations are discussed. The data analysis section is comprised of chapters 5, 6, and 7 which systematically answer the sub-questions of the research and lead up to a coherent answer to the main research question. Finally, chapter 8 formulates an answer to the main research question based on the findings and posits the
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research within its broader theoretical framework. This is followed by indicative policy recommendations based on the findings and a brief overview of the agenda for further research.
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2. Theoretical Framework
Participatory development has a very rich and critical theoretical background but, as discussed, not much is known of how it actually functions. The aim of this research is to explore community participation through the interaction between the principles of participatory citizenship and the underlying context of legibility making (see figure 2.1. below). Participation is understood to have its initial point of reference in the Indian societal context, which shapes the national community participation discourse. The ways in which actors perceive participation are shaped by these overarching national discourses and this is further reflected in the rhetoric of their efforts to induce community participation. This shapes the planning and implementing of participation as well as the expected outcomes of community participation on a local level. As such, participation is understood both as a set of practices as well as a discourse, translated from national to local level.
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This chapter gives a critical overview of the development and contemporary meaning of participation and relates it to the other key theories used in this research. Section 2.1 begins by giving an overview of the history of participation in international development and of the changing meaning of it, followed by an introduction to the concept of participatory citizenship in section 2.2. The term is problematized in section 2.3. in relation to the theory of legibility by Scott (1998) and the way in which this conceptualises the state-citizen relationship. Finally, the attention will be directed towards the benefits of an analytical approach. Section 2.4. introduces the premise of critical linguistics and discusses its applicability in this research context.
2.1. History of Participatory Development
The history of participatory development is a compelling narrative of shifting balance of power in development initiatives around the world. Through the processes of scaling up and out, participation has become mainstreamed as a popular development tool that is associated with principles of sustainability (Gaventa 2002). The terms in its contemporary form emerged originally in the 1970s outside the official development paradigm through the Participatory Action Research School. Most prominently associated with the work of Paulo Freire, this subversive movement emerged as a response to the tradition of understanding the local communities as homogenous and passive beneficiaries of development projects. Freire emphasized the crucial role that active and deliberative community participation should have in all social and political life, including development efforts (Freire 2005). To him, participation was means to understand and engage communities through a focus on experience and social history. This radical re-conceptualisation of the meaning and value of participation was further supported by the influential work of Julius Nyerere (1973) in which he discussed the paradox of externally imposed development. Nyerere argued that without the element of self-reliance development efforts were unable to yield sustainable and truly transformative results. Despite the numerous shifts in meaning that participation underwent in the course of the following decades, this original emphasis on experience still emerges as the key concept of the contemporary counter-hegemonic understanding of participatory development.
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Within the mainstream development paradigm, participation has gone through series of shifts in meaning. At the time when Freire’s and Nyerere’s works were published, participation was primarily understood in terms of sharing costs or as means to acquiring cheap labour force within a project-based approach (Cornwall 2000; Bliss, Neumann 2008). In the course of 1970s, the popular emphasis shifted towards basic needs approach and, as part of this, human resource development. By mid-1980s, participation had emerged as part of mainstream development efforts. In a climate of international aid fatigue, it was seen as the key to successful and sustainable development outcomes. Academics had previously raised concerns regarding the dangers of tokenistic participation (Arnstein 1969) but it was the works of Chambers (1983) and Cernea (1985) that became influential in mainstreaming the concept of meaningful participation. The authors emphasized the failures of technocratic leadership and overpowering focus on technical and financial aspects of development projects. As a solution, a heightened social and anthropological understanding was offered, empowering the local communities to contribute towards their own development.
By mid-1990s participation had already become a development orthodoxy and a number of key actors had started publishing participatory guidelines (see e.g. WBG 1994). The focus had shifted towards mutual learning and the project beneficiaries of 1970s emerged as stakeholders in development programmes (Cornwall 2000). Participation was considered to positively contribute towards the sustainability of development programmes through increased ownership and commitment and to empower the community to become formalised and active members of the society. In the course of the next decade, participation became a standard element of international development guidelines as part of human rights promotion through de-centralisation of power and ‘good governance’ (UN 2008; Menocal, Sharma 2010), re-introducing the question of citizenship into the development discussion. The association with issues of governance and human rights problematized the contemporary relationship between the state and its citizenry, calling into question the meaning of contemporary citizenship in relation to participation.
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2.2. Participation and Citizenship
Academic debate has seen a decisive shift towards the relationship between citizenship and participation in Global South, calling for a reconfiguration of the traditional Western understanding of citizenship (see e.g. Eckert 2011; Puzon 2012). In traditional Western citizenship theories the premise of citizenship is universal equality that is assumed to subordinate and erode local hierarchies and statuses (see e.g. the seminal work of T.H. Marshall [originally published 1950, reprinted in 2010]). More recently a number of academics working with development context have in any case come to highlight citizenship as inherently differentiated (Holston, Appadurai 1998; Nuijten 2013; Nyamu-Musembi 2007). Participatory citizenship is a subversive conceptualisation developed by Mohanty and Tandon where the authors look at the relationship between the state and its vulnerable citizenry from the vantage point of the excluded (2006: 10). Drawing on a set of case-studies from India, the authors argue that the Western citizenship theories are unable to account for the experiences of the socially marginalised groups in developing countries. The theory is part of a larger body of work focusing on the Indian context and the ethnocentric fallacies of the traditional approaches. Seminal Indian scholars such as Appadurai (2002) and Chatterjee (2004) have previously discussed the topics of state, society, and democracy as they emerge in the India post-colonial context and explored their relationship with the modern forms of governance. Mohanty and Tandon build on this previous knowledge by emphasising how in India the relationship between the state and the individual is not based on the premise of equality but rather reflects the inherently differentiated structures of the society that are founded in discourse and practices.
Mohanty and Tandon build the theory of participatory citizenship on the understanding that in a post-colonial context citizenship is often structured along the existing socio-cultural stratifications of the society. Unlike in the West, the democratic citizenship in the post-colonial context is not historically founded in the society as the newly independent states have the responsibility of transforming the post-colonial subjects into citizens with rights and freedoms (Mohanty, Tandon 2006: 9). In this process citizenship emerges in many ways as a reflection of
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the prevailing social conditions. The authors thus emphasise the significance of socially ascribed identities and differentiated experiences of citizenship that emerge. The theory of participatory citizenship revolves around the question ‘what is equity and participation to those excluded from the society?’ Participation is not merely a question of voting or being a development beneficiary but about the ability to gain agency and articulate one’s needs and demands. In other words, it is a case of being able to exercise those citizenship rights that are obstructed by socio-culturally established inequality.
The element of power is central in understanding participatory citizenship in India. As Mohanty and Tandon underscore, citizenship is not limited to the relationship between the state and its citizenry but emerges as a broader question of reconfiguring the relationship between the ‘powerless’ and the ‘dominant’ (2006: 10). Only by understanding citizenship in relation to the prevailing social conditions, it is possible to reconfigure it as a set of truly inclusive and transformative practices. Similar argument is put forth by Lister (2002) who discusses the importance of respect and recognition in enabling participation. People’s self-perceived identities in combination with their social acknowledgement are a significant element shaping participation through citizenship. As Lister further notes, the perceptions and identities are created in interaction with the dominant power structures and discourses in the respective society, reflecting a need for a thorough institutional as well as epistemological reconceptualization of the citizenship and identity of poor in order to make participation effective. In the work of Mohanty and Tandon (2006), such concerns emerge as a call for a fully inclusive citizenship status for the marginalised individuals which is grounded in their experiences and identities. This encompasses the process of acknowledgement of these identities as legitimate and building a foundation of mutual transparency and accountability with the state and the society that will empower the individuals to claim their rights.
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2.3. Participation in Legible Society
The aim of participatory citizenship is to raise the previously marginalized individuals to a position of citizens with legitimate and equitable stake in development and governance. It is the responsibility of the state to open up avenues and invite the marginalized individuals into full membership of the society, retaining the state as the essential reference point of citizenship (Mohanty, Tandon 2006: 16). A number of challenges for the realisation of participatory citizenship emerge from this underlying element of state-centrism. The relationship between the state and its citizenry was famously conceptualised by Scott (1998) as built on the premise of legibility. According to Scott, modern states are faced with a practical need to simplify and transform complex social reality into a more bureaucratically manageable form that renders the society legible. The state in fact has no interest in exploring the system in its complexity but seeks knowledge and thus control of it for the purposes of taxation, conscription, and other classic state functions. In short, Scott refers to these as the processes of ‘standardisation and rationalisation’ (2-3). The ‘illegibility’ of the population is making the state ‘blind’, so to say, as society that is illegible has the potential to disable the state. Through processes of mapping and surveying its population, Scott argues that this reality is both depicted as well as remade. In the course of the years the techniques devised to create legibility have become more sophisticated and complex but, as Scott notes, the underlying political motives have remained largely unchanged (77).
The core assumptions of legibility are in conflict with many of the principles of participatory citizenship (see table 2.1. below). Legibility is based on a belief that a thoroughly legible society eliminates local monopolies of information, creating a state of national transparency that enables the state to control its population (Scott 1998: 78). The maps and surveys are prescriptive operations that are used to construct a more desirable society based on a set of abstractions and simplifications. To Scott, this is a high modernist project of ‘civilising mission’ that implies a viewer with a central position and a synoptic and overarching vision (82). The aim is not only to build a descriptive database of the society but rather to shape the people
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and the landscape in a manner that suits these processes of observation. The data that is produced becomes a point of departure for state knowledge and for reality itself as the officials apprehend it. This understanding conflicts with participatory citizenship in its assumption of the state as the sole key actor, the prescriptive rather descriptive premise of the theory, and in its aim to reproduce complex social reality in a static and simplified form.
Participatory Citizenship Legibility Vantage point Marginalised individuals State-centric
Relationship with social reality
Descriptive Prescriptive
Understanding of citizenship
Differentiated through experience Universal equality
Assumption of identity
Multiple socially and historically ascribed identities
One simplified and homogenous identity
Key actors Vulnerable citizenry State
Aim To alter the existing relationship with the state and its vulnerable citizenry
To simplify reality for classic state purposes
Approach Dynamic Static
Table 2.1. Conflicting principles of participatory citizenship and legibility
From these conflicting key assumptions emerge two very different conceptualisations of citizenship. Mohanty and Tandon envision citizenship as being built on the acknowledgement of multiple identities and differentiated experiences, embracing the complexity of the Indian socio-cultural context. They aim to reconfigure the prevailing power relations by exploring citizenship from the vantage point of the marginalised individuals and to develop a counter-hegemonic theory. In comparison, legibility assumes universal equal citizenship. By constructing a set of criteria and codifying the population based on it, the state is able to develop an overarching and unifying identity based on shared nationality. Scott notes how the ‘abstract grid of equal citizenship’ results in a new social reality comprised of, not subjects, but citizens (1998: 32). The key challenge for the realisation of the principles of participatory citizenship emerges from the
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realisation that a state that operates on the basis of a simplified prescriptive understanding of social reality is unlikely to accommodate an alternative viewpoint based on plurality of experiences and identities. As a result, as also Scott critically notes, centrally managed large scale schemes will face ultimate failure due to unacknowledged, and thus unforeseen, social complexities (1998: 315-316).
This existence of informal and marginal spaces, actors, and processes problematize the applicability of Scott’s conceptualization of legibility in the Global South. Scott notes how in a society with unequal power relations “the transformative power resides not in the map but in the power possessed by those who deploy the perspective in that particular map” (1998: 87) but fails to fully discuss this significance of such ‘street-level bureaucracy’. This term was originally coined by Lipsky in 1980, who argued that the government employees who actually implement the policies should also be included in the ‘policy-making community’ (2010). His work has been further complimented by Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2003) who find that the role of street-level bureaucrats is not limited to policy implementation but that they actually make policy decisions based on their own value-systems in their daily work. The authors argue that coexistence of law abidance and cultural abidance defines the tensions of street-level work, unsettling the prevailing state-centric narrative of governance and policy implementation.
These findings gain particular gravity in the Indian context where these processes are a result of complex informal and formal networks of association (see e.g. De Wit 1996; Harriss 2005; Van Dijk 2009; Roy 2009). Drawing on this contextual awareness, in this research the concept of ‘street-level bureaucrats’ is taken to include also non-state actors, such as individuals from the private sector who are involved in the processes of policy implementation. An alternative conceptualisation of legibility is developed by Das and Poole (2004) who reconfigure the concept in terms of the illegibility of the state. Drawing on a set of case-studies from the Global South, the authors note how the state is produced both in a rational-bureaucratic form as well as in terms of the semi-official interpretations of its power. The result is a so-called ‘illegible state signature’ (Hoag 2010) that disqualifies the common understanding of state as legible, orderly, or rational. Rather, as Das and Poole show, the state emerges as a fragmented
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and contested illegible conglomeration of multiple interests and actors. In this research this awareness is grounded to the Indian context through emphasis on ‘location’ and ‘positionality’ in the analysis. As described by Anthias, this implies consideration of both local context as well as social positioning of the actors in the intersection between social structures and their individual agency (2008: 15-16, for an excellent discussion of the applicability of these terms in the development context see Ngomba and Thorsen [2012]).
2.4. Benefits of Analytical Linguistic Approach
The understanding of multiple identities and citizenship as a social construction implies an interpretivist research paradigm. Such an approach adheres to the belief that truth is negotiated through interaction and dialogue, making knowledge of reality situational and context-dependent. Drawing on the seminal authors such as Michel Foucault, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Roland Barthes, the relationship between language and reality is problematized in terms of the representative and performative power that language has. Rather than being a neutral mirror for reality, language both reflects the underlying power relations of the society and shapes our understanding of the world around us. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an approach that draws on the traditions of classical rhetoric, text linguistics, as well as applied linguistics and pragmatics, exploring language as a social practice in consideration of the context of language use (see e.g. Fairclough, Wodak 1997; Wodak 2006; Fairclough 2010). Anyhow, it does not form a specific direction of research and thus does not have a unified theoretical framework. Rather, a lot of borrowing and adapting of methods and definitions takes places across disciplines, making CDA a methodologically flexible approach. This research adheres to the principles of CDA as outlined by Fairclough (1989; 2010) as the common thread of analysis.
In the social sciences tradition discourse is taken to be language use conceived as a social practice. The aim of CDA is to explore the patterns and underlying rules of language use in their respective social context, seeking to understand the ways in which power and social practices interact with discourse. As conceptualised by Fairclough (2010), CDA emerges as relational,
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dialectical, and interdisciplinary (see figure 2.2. below). In other words, the emphasis is on the relationship between the material and the semiotic that is best explored through an interdisciplinary critical social analysis.
Figure 2.2. Relationship between the text and the context in CDA (Source: Adapted from
Fairclough 2010)
Moving beyond descriptive textual analysis to consideration of discursive and social practices, Fairclough places emphasis on the cultural norms, disciplines, and rituals that form sets of rules that construct and shape discourses (2010: 6). Contrasting influences have thus the potential to produce diverging yet parallel discursive constructions. Fairclough’s model is in any case highly intricate, involving in-depth analysis of the textual and social relations that shape discourses. For limitations posed by time and resources, this research takes the core principles of Fairclough’s model of CDA as its common analytical thread but otherwise follows the approach only loosely. The benefits of this approach are further discussed at the end of this chapter.
Despite its popularity among social scientists, discourse analysis is relatively new in the field of development studies. A growing body of research exists regarding international
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development discourse (see in particular Cornwall 2000; Bliss, Neumann 2008; Cornwall, Eade 2010) but, as Della Faille (2011) observes, there seems to be an overarching epistemological resistance towards the use of discourse analysis in development studies. As a result, the critical study of language and power dynamics has been largely marginalised against more positivist research approaches. Discourse analysis has in any case a lot to offer in understanding the participation and development. Observed through the lens of critical discourse analysis, the history of participatory development appears as a series of discursive shifts laden with issues of power and dominance:
Participation was originally conceived as part of a counter-hegemonic approach to radical social transformation and, as such, represented a challenge to the status quo. Paradoxically, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, ‘participation’ gained legitimacy within the institutional development world to the extent of achieving buzzword status. The precise manipulations required to convert a radical proposal into something that could serve the neo-liberal world order led to participation’s political decapitation. (Leal 2010: 89)
As Leal argues, participation has been stripped of its original philosophical and ideological meaning as a result of appropriation to mainstream development. A similar observation is made by Bliss and Neumann, who note that this was a process by which the term became both presentable but also lost its subversive and progressive content (2008: 16). The same discursive elements that emerged in 1970s have been recycled in mainstream participation discourse time after time (Cornwall 2000), up to a point where the term has gained an almost paralysing gamut of associated meanings and nuances. The way in which participation is thus wedged between the dominant and counter-hegemonic discourses makes it a highly contested concept, making questions of power and dominance central to understanding it.
The flexibility of CDA as a methodological tool allowed the research to inductively distinguish between two emerging levels of analysis and to develop an application of discourse analysis particularly suited for this research paradigm. Alvesson and Karreman observe in their work the common problem in discourse analysis of being unable to move between specific empirical material, such as interviews, and “to address discourses with a capital D – the stuff
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beyond text functioning as a powerful ordering force” (2000: 1127). The authors further distinguish between four different levels on which discourses operate, ranging from micro- and meso-levels to grand- and mega-level discourses. The former are defined in terms of the everyday ‘social texts’ (both spoken and written) and the latter as a large-scale ordering and constituting of social world (see also Van Dijk 1985). This research seeks to compliment Alvesson and Karreman’s work by understanding discourse as a national, grand-level of understanding which is then made sense of on a micro-level through personalised interpretative repertoires. Interpretative repertoires are defined by Potter and Wetherell as the resources that speakers use to make judgements, build factuality, and present themselves in different situations (1992: 90). Drawing on this theoretical understanding, two levels of analysis emerged from the data as the local actors draw on the national discourse in making policy implementation decisions on a local level. Unlike originally assumed, the discourse does not directly shape implementation but is understood and applied differently depending on the interpretative repertoire used by the actor. As such, the interactive relationship between national macro-level policies and planning and micro-level implementation emerges as a new analytical approach to understanding the functioning of participation in complex societies.
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3. Research Context
The research took place in Chennai, Tamil Nadu over a ten-week period in the spring of 2014. A case-study method was adopted to narrow down the otherwise broad focus of national slum reduction scheme. The work thus spans over national, regional, and local levels of planning and implementation and a broad range of contextual knowledge is required. This chapter gives an overview of the research context. Section 3.1. introduces India’s struggles with poverty and sustainable urban transformation, followed by section 3.2. that zooms in on India’s growth-oriented development policies and the challenges that have ensued. Section 3.3. introduces the Rajiv Awas Yojana scheme and, finally, sections 3.4. and 3.5. introduce Chennai and the case-study settlement of Kalvaikairai.
3.1. Indian Society and Framework of Governance
A country of continental proportions, India is the world’s biggest democracy. It got its independence in 1947, after over a century of British imperialism, and has ever since been on a path of establishing a secular nation of multiple ethnicities, religions, and languages. As one historian notes, “the history of independent India has amended and modified theories of democracy based on the experience of the West. However, it has confronted even more directly ideas of nationalism emanating from the Western experience.”(Guha 2011: 754) India is a country with a complex society that is historically stratified along caste, religion, and gender distinctions. Individuals are endowed with a set of socially ascribed roles that restrict their involvement in the society. Despite the fact that the caste system was constitutionally abolished at the dawn on India’s independence, caste-based discrimination is still prominent and majority of India’s poor belong to the scheduled caste (SC). The rates of poverty reduction for the SC lags ten years behind that of the rest of the population and concerns have been raised that India’s history of social stratification is excluding these marginalized groups from development processes (WBG 2011: 4).
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Similar historically established stratification also retards the development of India’s institutional framework. India is divided into 27 states and 5 union territories, of which the former have their own elected governments and the latter are headed by the central government. Thus the implementation of the national schemes and policies that emanate from the central government is in the hands of the individual states (Desai 2013). A set of reforms in the 1990s sought to further decentralize power in decision making and policy implementation by establishing a three-tier system of governance and extending the responsibilities of the urban local bodies (ULBs). The aim was to shift the power away from state governments to encourage locally representative decision making but the results have been in many cases unsatisfactory (Harriss 2005; Kothari 2011). The state governments continue to have a significant role in framing and financing urban policies, sidestepping especially the smaller ULBs.
3.2. “Faster, Sustainable, and More Inclusive Growth”
India’s development has been spearheaded by rapid economic growth after the liberalisation policies of late 1980s. The growth of the national economy rose from 8.5 to 9 percent per annum in the course of the 10th and 11th Five-Year Plans, and the upcoming 12th Plan calls out for both ‘faster’ as well as ‘sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’ growth. The challenges of such neo-liberal development paradigm are evident on a grass-root level. The urban areas are envisioned to be the power houses of the national economy and the structural adjustments of the early 1990s favoured strongly the urban sector (Kundu, Samanta 2011). As a result, India has seen a process of rapid urbanization in the course of the past decades. Despite the fact that declining poverty rates are slowly starting to emerge (WBG 2011; ADB 2013), the dividends of growing national prosperity have been primarily centred on a few geographical hotspots and the more economically affluent social groups (Kundu, Samanta 2011). This has resulted in rising levels of inequality and unsustainable trends in development, as half of the country’s population still continues to be affected by poverty (WBG 2011).
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Some of the core challenges of ineffectively managed economic growth and valorisation of the urban sector emerge as failures in urban planning. As is estimated by the Indian government, during the next 20-25 years the amount of inhabitants in Indian cities is expected to double, raising issues of sustainable urban transformation high on the national agenda (Planning Commission 2013: 34). The land is quickly becoming scarce and thus valuable in and around Indian cities, resulting in squatter settlements and illegal colonies as the urban poor are unable to afford proper housing. According to the Census 2011, approximately every sixth urban dweller resides in slums or squatter settlements (Planning Commission 2013: 41). At the same time, it has become increasingly important to secure the attractiveness of the major metropolitan cities to domestic and international investors and to create a pleasant living environment for the entrepreneurial class (Dupont 2011; Kundu, Samanta 2011). The Indian society which is increasingly dominated by the middle-class tends to associate poverty and slums with increased urban informality and the urban poor often emerge as the scapegoats for urban problems (Roy 2009; Harriss 2010; Swain 2012). As a result, many of these beautification efforts have been supported by state and city level macro-policies, effectively pushing the urban poor to the outskirts of the cities and resulting in urban sprawl and intra-city disparities.
3.3. National Responses to Challenges of Urbanisation
The central government has in the course of the years initiated a number of schemes, acts, and legislative amendments to curb the challenges of rapid urbanization. Poverty reduction and inclusive development have been prominent elements of the past two Five-Year Plans and there have been a number of political and institutional reforms that have encouraged more inclusive forms of governance and development. One of the most prominent recent schemes is the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) that focuses on improving the urban infrastructure and service delivery mechanisms of Indian cities. Inaugurated in 2005, the aim is to address issues related to urban infrastructure and governance and to secure the basic needs of the urban poor (JnNURM 2011).
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The most recent scheme introduced as part of the Mission is the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) scheme, developed as part of the Indian National Urban Poverty Reduction Strategy. Released in its preparatory phase in 2011, the purpose of RAY is to establish a ‘Slum-Free India’ by 2022. The scheme approaches the urban housing problem through a multi-pronged approach that is characterized by active civil society engagement and the sustainability of the results (see figure 3.1. below). The aim is to create a city-wide comprehensive database of the slum areas and their inhabitants through extensive mapping and survey activities. The preference is on in
situ upgrading of the slums in order to support the development of an inclusive urban future for
India.
Figure 3.1. The envisioned key elements and actors of the preparatory phase of RAY. (Source:
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The key element in ensuring the sustainability of the programme results is active community involvement. The role of inclusive urban planning and active civil society engagement in Indian national programmes was further legitimated by the Delhi Declaration in 2013, in which the Ministry of Urban Housing and Poverty Alleviation (MoHUPA) affirmed its commitment to these guiding principles. RAY is thus the first national scheme to boast with a design that integrates community participation into all stages of planning, implementation, and the eventual maintenance of the structures as mandatory.
3.4. Chennai, Tamil Nadu
The state of Tamil Nadu is located in the Southern-most part of the Indian peninsula (see figure 3.2.below)and is the third most urbanized state in the country (TNSCB Handbook 2014). Almost half of its population lives in urban areas, accounting to 35 million people of whom almost 20 percent is estimated to live in slums (ibid.). The state passed a Slum Areas Act as early as 1971, followed by the establishment of Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB). TNSCB is a state nodal agency with jurisdiction to declare slums as they emerge, take preventive measures, and to improve the existing areas (TNSC Act 1971). Local researchers have in any case found that no new slums have been officially recognized since 1985, resulting in hundreds of unacknowledged settlements over which the government exercises power in an ad hoc manner (Transparent Chennai 2012). Other research has traced these state-level governance reforms to the entry of the World Bank to the urban sector in the 1970s (Harriss 2005), resulting in promotion of parastatal agencies on the premise financial sustainability and insulation from political inference. As a result, the urban poor in the megacities of Tamil Nadu often live in spaces that are either ungoverned or governed by parastatal agencies that are answerable to the state government rather than to the ULB (Swain 2012).
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Figure 3.2. Map of Tamil Nadu, India. (Source: Adapted from Wikipedia,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Nadu>)
Chennai is the capital of Tamil Nadu, housing almost 4.5 million individuals of whom over a quarter live in slums with inadequate access to clean drinking water, sanitation, and security of tenure (TNSCB Handbook 2014). This is partly a reflection of the fractured governance structure and social organization of the city, as there is little or no elements of inclusive development in the local urban planning. Chennai, like any other Indian city, is an intricate network of relationships between the elected representatives, government bureaucrats, and external stakeholders. The city is headed by Chennai Corporation, dividing Chennai into 15 zones that are made up of 200 individual wards. Each of these wards has an elected representative called a Municipal Counsellor (MC) and the zones are in turn headed by the Zonal Officers. Beyond this seemingly organized structure for local governance lies a complex structure of formal and informal relationships between numerous private and parastatal agencies (Swain 2012; Chandramouli 2013).
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In 2009, Chennai was one of the cities chosen for the RAY pilot project scheme and today the City-Slum Free Action Plan (SFCPOA) is being prepared. The city has a bleak history of forced evictions and relocations of the urban poor to faraway resettlement colonies in the outskirts of the city (PUCL 2010; Transparent Chennai 2012). The RAY scheme is a culmination of the key challenges of sustainable urban planning in Chennai, as the scheme is struggling with budgetary concerns, availability of land, and inability to open up avenues for democratic participation (Desai 2013). TNSCB has a dominant role in relation to that of the Chennai Corporation in both the RAY scheme as well as in other slum policies in the city (Swain 2010) and local NGOs have raised concerns regarding the lack of penalties or other elements safeguarding proper implementation of the scheme (Transparent Chennai 2012a). In sum, the scheme is a chance for the city to induce meaningful institutional change and to develop mechanisms that ensure locally relevant representation but these potentials are hindered by the existing institutional framework and lack of enforcement.
3.5. Case Study: Kalvaikarai Sub-Standard Settlement
The sub-standard settlement of Kalvaikarai is located in Saidapet, South-Chennai. The first tents were erected in the area in the seventies and today the slum houses some three hundred families. Majority of the inhabitants work as kulis, day labourers without any income security. There is a government school nearby but the quality of education is poor and many children stay at home to help their parents to earn money or to take care of their siblings. The settlement is in three separate segments divided by natural barriers, as there is a busy road and an open sewer running through it (see figure 3.3. below).
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Figure 3.3. Map of Kalvaikarai in ward 171, zone XIII. (Source: First figure is adapted from
Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chennai_Corporation>, whereas the second was acquired from TNSCB during fieldwork)
The water invites swarms of mosquitoes that bring diseases and drive the residents from their homes to sleep on the streets during most nights. The huts are accessible only by a narrow footpath and there is no sanitation, drainage, or legal electricity source. Despite being located in the heart of the city, the area has seen little development during the past decades. No NGOs are active in the community and the government organized self-help groups have stopped functioning.
The area in which the community is located is disputed for a number of reasons. First, the huts are prominently located next to the road that visitors take to enter the city from the airport. High walls have been erected on the bridge so that the settlement is no longer visible from a car, effectively shielding the community from the public eye. Second, the land is in the close proximity of the centre of Chennai and thus very valuable. In the past, part of the community was evicted and a residential complex was built on that land. In a similar fashion, part of the community was relocated as a result of a large infrastructure project that cuts across the area.
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This section of the community is still represented in the official government maps of the area (see figure 3.3. above). The remaining community is waiting for the results regarding the feasibility of in situ development as part of the RAY scheme.
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4. Research Framework
The planning and execution of this research, as well as the interpretation of the results builds on an understanding that knowledge of a social phenomenon is possible, if yet situational, and thus best explored through a qualitative approach. This chapter gives an overview of the research framework of this thesis. Section 4.1. begins by introducing the specific research questions that the work seeks to answer. Section 4.2. outlines the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of the research, followed by an overview of the logic of operationalization in section 4.3. Sections 4.4. and 4.5. discuss the unit of analysis, sampling methods, and the choice of research location. Section 4.6. discusses the choice of methods of analysis, followed by a critical overview of the research methods used in section 4.7. Finally, section 4.8. discusses the core ethical considerations regarding the research and fieldwork, and section 4.9. discusses the potential research limitations.
4.1. Research Questions
The aim of this research is to understand the ways in which community participation is realised throughout the planning and implementation processes of a national development initiative. Thus, the main research question is formulated as ‘how are the principles of participatory citizenship translated through the legibility making processes in the Rajiv Awas Yojana programme?’ The ways in which the principles of participatory citizenship and legibility are negotiated throughout the different levels of the programme are taken as indicative of the ideological underpinnings that shape participation is practice. The case-study approach of the research ensures that the results are grounded into ground-level realities and everyday experiences of community participation in the RAY scheme.
The main research question is broken down to a set of sub-questions that tackle the key elements of the research. To begin with, understanding the relationship between participatory
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citizenship and legibility on a macro-level entails an exploration of the so-called ‘base discourses’ that lay the groundwork for giving meaning to slum dwellers and their participation in the RAY scheme. The research thus begins by answering the question ‘what kind of discursive construction of participation is given in the RAY documents?’ Building on this data, the research explores the real and planned avenues of community participation and the rhetoric used by planners and implementers in community participation in the RAY scheme. Answering the questions ‘what are the avenues available for community participation in the RAY scheme in Chennai’ and ‘what is the rhetoric used for community participation, or the absence of it, by the policy implementers in Chennai’ enables the research to move the analysis from a national to a local level. It also supports the understanding of participation as both a discourse as well as a set of practices. Finally, this evidence is complemented by a case-study of a single sub-standard settlement in Chennai and their experiences of community participation in the RAY scheme. The aim is to find out ‘what are the implications of the community participation efforts on a slum-level?’ Together these four sub-questions provide an understanding of the ways in which participation is translated through the various levels of the RAY scheme.
4.2. Research Methodology
The epistemological and ontological assumptions of this research rest heavily on those of critical realism. The world is understood in terms of ontological realism and epistemological constructivism, assuming the co-existence of both material and social realms. The reality is taken to exist independent of our knowledge of it whilst the social world is situational and constructed of events and discourses (Danemark et al. 2002; Bryman 2012: 29). Knowledge of the world is thus possible but provisional in terms of the context in which it was attained, allowing one to explain but not to predict. As such, this type of reasoning is neither inductive nor deductive but, as termed by Blaikie, ‘retroductive’ in its inference of underlying causal mechanisms (2002, as cited in Bryman 2012). As it follows, the aim of critical realism is to identify the ‘generative causal mechanisms’ that entail the entities and processes constitutive of the phenomenon under inspection (Bryman 2012: 29). Mental concepts are taken to be causally relevant to social
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phenomenon which then again shapes material reality. Only by identifying these mechanisms it is possible to understand and, what is more, to change the social world.
The adherence to the principles of critical realism allows this research to explore the relationship between legibility and participatory citizenship as a social phenomenon that subsequently shapes the material realm of existence. Depending on the way in which community participation is understood and given meaning in the RAY scheme, it shapes the process of implementation. The critical realist understanding of social reality as a complex web of social structures, cultural systems, and human agents (Wikgren 2005) facilitates a localised and context specific understanding. In methodological terms, this translates into an exploration of the conflict between the two generative mechanisms of legibility and participatory citizenship, reflected in the event of community participation. Following from this, a qualitative driven mixed methods design was deemed as the best suited approach. As recommended by Morse and Niehaus (2009: 15), mixed methods are a commendable approach when the phenomenon in focus is too complex for a single method approach. By overcoming the limitations of individual methods, this approach has the potential to yield a rounded understanding of the situation with multiple actors and processes.2 As such, it is a form of triangulation as it establishes epistemological dialogue between different methods (Hammersley 2008: 28). In this way it is possible to explore the different actors and the stages involved in translating mental concepts into material reality and in this case, community participation from planning to implementation.
4.3. Operationalization
The aim of the operationalization of the key concepts of participatory citizenship and legibility was to transform abstract knowledge and theory into concretely measurable form. In doing this, the research drew closely on the work of Mohanty and Tandon (2006) and Scott
2
A more detailed discussion regarding the chosen mixed research methods and their role in answering the research question can be found in section 4.6. on p. 35.
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(2008) and on the ways in which the authors sought to ground their theories into practice.3 As it follows, participatory citizenship emerges in terms of the elements of inclusion, identity, legitimation, and agency of the urban poor, as well as the opportunities for articulating their citizenship experiences and the ways in which the state has sought to mobilise them. The questions that the operationalization poses to the data are such as ‘what are the identities assigned to the people addressed through the RAY scheme’, ‘how is the relationship between the state and the urban poor changing’, and ‘how have the urban poor been able to take part in the RAY scheme?’ The methods of discourse and document analysis are central in answering these questions.
The operationalization of the concept of legibility draws the attention to the relationship between the state and social reality, and the ongoing negotiation between descriptive and prescriptive practices. Legibility is thus understood in terms of the key actors and the process of translation of social reality. By exploring the roles and responsibilities of the key actors, the elements of negotiation in relation to power and dominance on a local-level are emphasised. Translation then again emerges in terms as a negotiation between the prescriptive and descriptive approaches in terms of the ways of acknowledging local knowledge. Legibility thus emerges as potentially inhibiting or enabling participation as it is mediated through a set of actors and processes involved. Furthermore, the focus is on the ways in which reality is translated through the legibility processes, measured by the extent to which local knowledge is reflected in the knowledge produced by the state. This is also taken as a further indication of the extent to which participation has permeated the legibility processes.
4.4. Unit of Analysis and Sampling Method
The research takes a linguistic-relational approach to exploring participation. Thus, the unit of analysis is the set of key stakeholders, their relations, and the processes of establishing
3
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community participation. Limited in scope by its case-study approach, the research relied primarily on purposive sampling in order to cover the key informants and policy documents and the logic of saturation in determining the appropriate number of respondents. The data is comprised of three distinct sources of information, which are the key individuals in charge of planning and implementation, the community members of Kalvaikarai, and the official RAY documents. In addition to this, in the course of the fieldwork a number of local NGOs, social activists, volunteers, fellow academics and researchers, and other individuals knowledgeable of the topic of the research were consulted. These accounts in any case emerge from outside the RAY scheme and thus serve the purpose of critical second-hand information.
4.4.1. Regional and City Levels
The individuals working for TNSCB, Chennai Corporation, and Darashaw are primarily in charge of the planning and implementation of community participation in the RAY scheme in Chennai. The respondents form a tight-knit community of formal and informal relations and overlapping responsibilities, and thus the key respondents were sought out based on the specific insights that they offer rather than for the sake of numerical representation. Figure 4.1. below presents the key informants from this group and their official relationships with each other.4
4 This figure is by no means a complete representation of the key actors in the RAY scheme in Chennai but rather a
representation of the actors that were deemed relevant to this research and ability of the research to establish a comprehensive sample.
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Figure 4.1. Network chart of the key actors
The individuals approached were either in charge of the planning or execution of participatory activities in RAY or closely affiliated with the case-study community. The choice and recruitment of respondents was enabled by snowballing, as the primary respondents were informed of any further need for particular information or experiences and who then facilitated an introduction to a third party. The use of this particular sampling technique is recommended when researching hard-to-reach groups of informants or when specifically focusing on networks of people (Bryman 2012: 424). In the end, the group of respondents spans from state-level coordination of the RAY scheme to community officers and field coordinators, and forms a sample of ten key informants.
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4.4.2. Slum Level
In comparison, the logic of sampling the case-study community was significantly different. Working with a larger set of informants with a more homogenous knowledge-base, purposive sampling was complemented with elements of convenience sampling and numerical representativeness of the sample. Snowballing was not considered a suitable method and comprehensive sample was sought by actively seeking out new informants rather than relying on the relatives or friends of the existing ones. Upon being introduced to the community by an employee from Darashaw, the respondents were gathered in the course of transect walks that were conducted on different days and times to ensure representativeness of the take. As can be seen from figure 4.2. below, the walks also made it possible to establish the boundaries of community.
