Who Should Be at the Top of Bottom-Up Development? A Case-Study of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission in Rajasthan, India

Abstract

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 of a large participatory project in the state of Rajasthan in India comparing central management and state-level management. We find that locally managed facilitators formed groups that were more likely to engage in collective action, be politically active, with higher savings and greater access to subsidized loans.The authors are indebted to Radha Khan for supervising the qualitative fieldwork, Ritwik Sircar and Anirvan Chowdhury for outstanding research assistance, SRI-IMRB for collecting the quantitative data for this study, the Government of Rajasthan for sharing valuable data, PRADAN for valuable initial conversations, and the staff of PRADAN, PEDO, SERP and the Rajasthan SHG federations for their support. We are grateful to Georgetown University and the South Asia Food and Nutrition Security Initiative for their financial support. For excellent comments and conversations we thank the two anonymous referees, Radha Khan, Sanjay Sharma, Irfan Nooruddin, Milan Vaishnav, Anders Olofsgard and participants of the India Politics Workshop in Washington DC. This paper reflects the individual views of the authors and does not in any way represent the official position of the World Bank or its member countries.

Does multifaceted livelihood intervention improve well‐being: Reflections on a case study from North‐eastern India

“…Following that, World Bank proposed North‐East Rural Livelihoods Project (NERLP) as a rural livelihood project for the remaining north‐eastern states. Further, in 2011, in similar line, GoI launched NRLM as one of the largest community‐based projects (Joshi & Rao, 2018). Meanwhile, in 2006, India also launched world's largest public works programme, MGNREGA (Das, 2016).…”

“…The context of livelihood interventions works across various dimensions such as socio‐economic situation, demographic factors, variation in local needs, changing environment and role of formal and informal institutions (Chambers & Conway, 1992; Das, 2016; Desai et al, 2015; Joshi & Rao, 2018), and all these correlate with several types of policy regimes adopted (Devereux, 2016; Kuyvenhoven, 2004; Narayanan, 2011). Literature also underscores that these interventions are associated with the way of life, exhibit high degree of inter‐dependencies among various livelihood assets and strategies and work with a variety of approaches that builds on the strengths and potential of people (Allison & Horemans, 2006; Bebbington, 1999; Kumar et al, 2022; Scoones, 1998).…”

Interventions for sustainable livelihoods: a review of evidence and knowledge gaps

“…The review suggests that there is a significant role of trade and market policies and importance of local institutions and practices in shaping rural and community livelihoods (Joshi and Rao, 2017; Wang et al ., 2017; Tezzo et al ., 2018; Allison and Horemans, 2006). One of the key syntheses of this review point towards the ongoing debates between formal and informal institutions (Ertör-Akyazi, 2019; Frey et al ., 2019; Babulo et al ., 2009).…”

“…Livelihoods goes beyond looking rural people as farmers or fisherfolks; and incorporate a broad understanding of rural activities functional in several domains. Various kinds of interventions such as food security (Clay, 1986), social security (Devereux, 2016), facilitating credit markets (Patnaik and Prasad, 2014), local institutional support (Joshi and Rao, 2017), promoting participatory forest activities (Islam and Sato, 2012) and strategizing for sustainable tourism (Tao and Wall, 2009) are utilised to address issues of sustainable livelihoods. A wide range of mechanisms are adapted to increase livelihood choices.…”

Self-help groups as platforms for development: The role of social capital

“…linking SC) ( Rankin, 2002 ). Kumar et al (2018:174) reflect this conceptualization to hypothesize that bonding forms of SC, defined as norms of trust and reciprocity, may be harnessed and strengthened through group activities and rituals that translate social ties into SHG best practice and develop into other types of capital formation and collective action to secure public goods (see also Joshi and Rao, 2018 , Mitra et al, 2020 ).…”