Summary information

Study title

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 Copies of the original audio files of all interviews have been archived with both project partner institutions (Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum and Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta).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...
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Keywords

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)

Funding information

Grant number

RES-167-25-0268

Access

Publisher

UK Data Service

Publication year

2016

Terms of data access

Not available

Related publications

Not available