The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in India opens a new chapter in rural governance, signifying transformative potential for enhancing economic and social security. One of the key objectives of the Act is to aid in the empowerment of marginalised communities, especially women, Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). However, no analytically rigorous attempt has been made to study the mechanisms and processes that are leading to empowerment or even the (unintended) processes of disempowerment. Our paper investigates (dis) empowerment as a process rather than as a (quantifiable) outcome and analyses the mechanisms through which the embedded gender and caste norms are being challenged (though not completely eroded), but also how powerful actors at household, community and market levels can come to resent processes that entail upward mobility of women and marginalised communities. We draw on a comparative study based on extensive qualitative indepth interviews and participant observation, in rural areas of two Indian states, Uttar Pradesh (North India) and Andhra Pradesh (South India). The former exhibits almost all the elements we associate with low development, whereas the latter belongs to a group of southern Indian states with higher levels of human and economic development.
While significant theoretical developments have been made in the research on common pool resources, heterogeneity remains a contested issue. Focusing on economic inequality, one particular aspect of heterogeneity, we examine its impact in facilitating cooperation in two rural forest communities in Sierra Leone. The findings reinforce prevalent ambiguities in the literature: in the context of economic inequality cooperation was thriving, while in the setting of uniform poverty cooperation was largely absent. Though further research is imperative, the key recommendation is that policies directed towards rural communities should take into account their ability to craft robust self-governing systems.
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