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Embedding poor people’s voices in local governance: participation and political empowerment in India
Creator
Williams, G, University of Sheffield
Study number / PID
852352 (UKDA)
10.5255/UKDA-SN-852352 (DOI)
Data access
Restricted
Series
Not available
Abstract
The project’s central research question was: to what extent do initiatives to make local governance more participatory enhance poor people's opportunities for political empowerment? Looking at four rural field sites in West Bengal and Kerala, India, it examines poor people's use of the formal opportunities they have for participation within the local state. This ‘invited participation’ is examined within the context of the social relations reproducing poverty and marginalisation, and informal structures of authority and power, both of which reshape governance reforms away from their intended practice.
The data available for archiving comes from two distinct groups of research participants; those implementing participatory initiatives within the local state (including civil servants, political leaders and community activists); and marginalised communities themselves. Both were subjects of in-depth qualitative interviews (in Bengali/Malayalam) with a field team that was located within the research areas for a period of 8 months. Transcription and translation is of mixed quality, so the research team has largely worked with the original audio voice recordings in West Bengal. Copies of the original audio files of all interviews have been archived with both project partner institutions (Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum and Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta). The materials remain a rich source for the research team, but detached from their proper context their value to third-party researchers is uncertain.
In addition, a short questionnaire was conducted with every household in three wards of each of the four local councils (panchayats) of the study. This provides a micro-level snapshot of some basic poverty indicators within the four field sites, and was constructed to contextualise the qualitative field materials. This data could not be used to generalise about conditions at scales above the fieldsites themselves – for example, making...
Terminology used is generally based on DDI controlled vocabularies: Time Method, Analysis Unit, Sampling Procedure and Mode of Collection, available at CESSDA Vocabulary Service.
Methodology
Data collection period
01/01/2008 - 30/11/2010
Country
India
Time dimension
Not available
Analysis unit
Housing Unit
Individual
Universe
Not available
Sampling procedure
Not available
Kind of data
Numeric
Text
Data collection mode
For the qualitative interviews – face-to-face interviews, in the four rural field sites of the study (each being three electoral wards of a local council), and neighboring government offices. Number of households: Kerala (Wayanad) = 1071; Kerala (Palakkad) = 1037; West Bengal ( Dubrajpur) = 872; West Bengal (Mayreswar I) = 1474 For the short questionnaire survey – conducted with adult household members of each field study area (complete listing of all households within 3 electoral wards of each local council)