Awareness-to-Action Processes for Citizens and City Managers
Capacity building for municipalities in understanding community participation, and participatory approaches is one sphere of interface that needs primary attention. Equally important is to organise citizen groups and implement capacity-building strategies for citizen action. The third sphere of action, perhaps the most difficult, is to adopt an integrated approach to a mixed group. Hopefully, this process should lead to understanding the underlying currents of urban governance, the complimentarity of service providers and service receivers, ultimately leading to improved quality of life with mutual respect. This is a long-term process, and easier said than done.
It is towards this goal, that Program I is being submitted as a pilot/preparatory phase. This Program is supported by The Ford Foundation.
Methods of governance, as they exist presently, are under criticism from the point of view of sustainable developmental processes. Living conditions, the level of services, and the overall quality of life are far below desired levels of satisfaction. And this is mainly because of a near-absence of civil society (i.e. people or primary stakeholders or so-called beneficiaries) in the process of governance.
It is evident that the government (alone and in the present 'system') has delivered what it could. For improvement and better results, involvement of civil society, including option of privatisation, is inevitable. Present form of governance is also criticised for bureaucracy that it has generated and nurtured. It is a classical example of "structure" being in the driver's seat (and of course the "function" in the back seat!).
Governance in the present form, and supporting institutions need to change to once again find their place in changing scenario. The shift is expected in terms of taking on a role of facilitator rather than implementor. The role of facilitator assumes that "doing" is not the primary responsibility. "Getting things done" or "creating conditions for processes to emerge" becomes the primary task for those who are in charge. Moreover, collaboration, networking and partnership with stakeholder groups, involvement of CBOs and NGOs are seen as some of the essential components of participatory developmental processes. Skills that are required to take on differing roles, and to integrate new or additional components, are perhaps not adequately developed in the present set up. Therefore, any effort in the direction of change will have to address need for capacity building.
CMAG (City Managers' Association, Gujarat) proposes to develop a broad strategy, and implementation methodologies for involvement of civil society in urban governance at least in 5 cities and towns of the Gujarat state. This would become a pilot for developing a long-term strategy that could be put into practice on a larger scale.
In consultation with the envisaged stakeholder groups in each of the five places, CMAG will evolve an action plan including the training methodologies, and communication techniques.
As we look beyond the stated program, the long-term focus is on building capacities of primary stakeholders (including their institutions) and managers of service-providing institutions (officers in Municipalities and other public institutions). Capacity building, here, is perceived as a necessary condition; efforts will also be made to create space for testing of capacities by way of developing "action programmes" at micro level. Thus, efforts for capacity building would be taken to logical end i.e. action or implementation., possibly beginning at the end of Phase II, 2003.
Four stakeholder groups have been identified for the project. These are:
Briefly therefore, the needs assessment process will involve
