Revisiting Community Driven Development and the Reproduction of Villages in Indonesia
Sirojudin Abbas[*]
ABSTRAK
Sebagai negara yang tengah menghadapi problem sosial dan ekonomi seperti kemiskinan dan pengangguran, berbagai pendekatan untuk menyelesaikan masalah tersebut harus selalu dicoba dilakukan. Satu di antara sekian banyak pendekatan adalah CDD (Community Driven Development). Menurut penulis artikel ini, CDD adalah model konsep lama. Namun demikian, CDD mampu membangun kerangka baru bagi desa agar mampu menyerap apa yang datang atau didatangkan dari luar sehingga mampu membangun cara berpikir dan berperilaku yang baru, bahkan mungkin juga dengan CDD mampu membangun transformasi sosial. Selain itu juga akan membangun relasi yang kuat antara state dan society. Bahkan keseluruhan proses CDD akan memusatkan perubahan pada model keputusan yang top down atau tipe hubungan patrimonial kedalam pembangunan yang resiprok dan patrimonial. Penekanan akan proses pembangunan yang partisipatif, merefleksikan kesesuaian cara dalam pemikiran pembangunan.
Key Words: Rural Development, Community Development, CDD, Social Change
Introduction
The presidential speech before the House of Representatives on August 16, 2006, earmarked the formal acknowledgement of the Indonesian government over the two World Bank funded development projects initiated since early 1998. The two projects are Kecamatan Development Project (hereafter KDP) and Urban Poverty Project (hereafter UPP). President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono not only affirmed and praised the success of the projects, both administratively and substantially, but also announced that the two projects would be expanded as the primary national programs aimed at poverty reduction and community empowerment[1]. The national program, called the National Program for Community Empowerment (NPCE), which was formally launched in 2007, incorporates both KDP and UPP approaches.
The Indonesian government believes that the success rate of the above two projects has been proven. The Coordinating Minister for Social Welfare Aburizal Bakrie noted that the two projects were 56 percent more efficient than if they were implemented by government officials[2]. Up to 2006, KDP and UPP had covered no less than 39.282 (about 46 per cent) out of 69.929 villages (Desa and Kelurahan) in 5.623 sub-districts (Kecamatan) throughout Indonesia. NPPE is expected to cover the remaining villages and sub-districts in 2009 and will continue using the similar community-based development approach. KDP, UPP and NPPE rely heavily on the same the core development thrust, namely a "development block grant" (Bantuan Langsung Masyarakat/BLM) for financing various micro development projects and reliance on community participation in planning, managing and the whole processes of decision making. In 2007 NPPE was implemented in 1000 sub-districts and the remaining 3.800 sub-districts will be done in 2008. This project is expected to create 50.000 new job opportunities in 39.000 villages. Therefore, the government assumes, this program will be able to reduce the poverty-rate from 10.4 per cent in 2006 to 5.1 per cent of the total 106.3 million people of productive age in 2009. The total budget allocated for this project from 2007 until 2009 is no less than US $ 1.5 billion.[3]
The huge scale of the project and its possible replication in other countries[5] suggest that this new approach to development might not be ended very soon, as a critical commentary has pointed out.[6] As this new approach has been adopted by various countries, and thus its proponents gain more evidence from the field, it is likely that the CDD approach will have larger room to maneuver. It is important to underline, however, that this new way of thinking in the theories of development debate was one of the responses to the crisis in the previous development theories and practices during the mid-1990s[7]. The adoption of the concepts of "participation" and "local institutions" from the previously peripheral development thinking into the heart of the mainstream of development institutions was matched with growing attention toward the use of "social capital" theories.[8] The language of new development thinking and initiatives has been, somehow, shifted from the language of modernization and economic growth to the language of culture, particularly through the emphasis on the ideas of community, norms, trust and relationships.[9]
The primary objective of this paper is to explore the ways through which the CDD in Indonesia was designed and implemented as a set of materialized and meaningful procedures to produce a place for both a new culture and organization at the villages and a place for producing new knowledge and practice of development. The current implementation of village development projects in Indonesia, particularly, the National Program for Community Empowerment, can be seen as a process of reproduction of space, "the villages." The villages, in this instance, are not understood as a passive backdrop; but are actively produced through everyday power laden practices that are both material and meaningful (Hart, 2004). The reproduction of space is undergone through the continuous grappling with what Michel Watts (2006) calls the "cultural turn" in development practice and thinking.
With reference to this particular understanding of space production, this paper attempts to review the reproduction of the village and its cultural contents through the deployment of a set of planned of norms, values, behavior and conduct to be learned by the villagers. These sets of cultural engineering were claimed by the World Bank experts to be the procedure for rebuilding social capital and restoring the social defects resulting from the oppression of the New Order regime. Indeed, as Guggenheim (2006) points out, restoring the "lamentable loss of traditional mechanisms for social control" (p. 136) resulting from the implementation of a law released by the Indonesian New Order regime in 1979 on village structure governing the village organizations was among the primary objectives of the KDP project. Guggenheim envisions "the village" as a culturally bounded unit legible for special development intervention and control. This paper, instead, argues that the practice of "Community Driven Development" at the village level serves as part of the process of reproduction of the "new village," and not merely restoring "the so-called traditional mechanisms" in the lives of the villagers. Nevertheless, this paper will also briefly outline that CDD can be taken into further steps. The linkage of social capital with a political and economic view of development may light what Harvey (2006) calls "a space of hope" that the new development thinking may leave room for pursuing social transformations.
This paper is divided into four main sections. The first section revisits the conceptual framework of community driven development and the use of social capital theories to frame the new approach to development. Discussion in this section will be located within the context of the efforts of the proponents of development in the World Bank to craft new theoretical grounding and to regain a new legitimacy. The second section reviews the growth of the ideas and practice of CDD in Indonesia. The reminiscent article by Scott Guggenheim, one of the prominent figures in the process of nurturing the ideas and practice of CDD in Indonesia, will be the primary backdrop of the discussion. The subsequent section examines one of the core claims of the CDD pertaining to the roles of the community-based organizations as social capital at the village level in development processes. It shows that the CDD practice did not actually strengthen the existing social capital associations already existing in the villages; instead, it established a new organization with a set of cultures and procedures in addition to the existing organizations. CDD does not necessarily restore the so-called damaged villages, as it was claimed by the project designers, but produces a new form of villages. The last section envisages the possibilities for the CDD to contribute to the process of social transformation. Many writers acknowledged apolitical tendencies in the concept of social capital but they may possibly be linked with the questions of political economy.
Community Driven Development Revisited
The concept of community-driven forms of development has long been associated with critiques against the predominant government-driven development. The first was regarded as a bottom-up approach to planning and implementing development projects using the strength of the community participation in collective action tied with accountability arrangements to ensure that development will benefit the whole community, particularly the poor.[10] The latter was understood as the most common project orchestrated by huge international development agencies, together with national governments, to reconstruct social, economic and infrastructure of the post-World War II independent states. The adoption of the concept of CDD to become the new World Bank language of development, as it is these days widely celebrated in the large CDD projects in many third world countries, involves a long process of struggle and negotiation among actors of development discourse, both within the bureaucracy of the international development agencies and among development scholars outside the agencies.
The growth of the ideas of CDD in international development can be summarized in two phases[11]. The first phase is exemplified by the work of Gandhi and of Freire. Gandhi initiated a village-level movement to promote self-reliance and small-scale development as means to deal with the influence of cultural domination of the colonial ruler to the lives of the community. Furthermore, the work of Freire (1970), the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, suggested the strategic values for the poor and the oppressed to unite and to use their own strengths to be able to change the oppressive structure and poverty. Mansuri and Rao (2004) noted that these two pioneering ideas in community-based development had spread out to more than 60 third world countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, particularly through the facilitation of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This support was coexistent with the domestic thrive in the United States to "fight against" poverty in early 1960s.
Despite the celebrated acceptance in many third world countries, the idea of community-based/driven development did not attract sufficient attention from the multilateral development institutions. Instead, it was seen with "a great deal of pessimism" toward the viability of collective community action in the provision of public goods[12]. Nevertheless, the approach continued to take shape in many third world countries, with partial support from several leading trans-national Non-Government Organizations.
The second phase of the emergence of CDD in international development initiatives was signified, among others, by the works of Cernea (1985), Ostrom (1990) and Sen (1999). Cernea led the emergence of social awareness within the World Bank by revealing the meaning of "putting people first" in the development processes through understanding social aspects of development and working with local people affected by development initiatives. Ostrom reveals a strong case about the effectiveness of collective action in the management of common-pool resources. Through the case studies, she argues that endogenous institutions embedded within the poor communities were useful in the management of common-pool resources for the benefit of all.
Furthermore, the work of Sen (1999) was particularly influential in encouraging the shift of development focus from material well-being and economic growth to the broad-based "capability" approach.[13] Among the prominent arguments proposed by Sen was the idea of empowerment as a strategy to enhance the capability of the poor. The theory of community-based/driven development with the core principles of participation and empowerment has been further adopted by the two prominent international development agencies, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a new core language of development. This is not to say that the two have convergent visions about development, but both of them have taken advantages out of the above theories to further their development initiatives in the third world.[14]
The inclination of the World Bank to the concept of CDD, however, can not be divorced from the strong criticism which had resulted in the Bank's crisis of legitimacy from the late 1980s until the early 1990s. The crisis of legitimacy was, among other things, due to strong evidence-based critiques, both external and internal to the World Bank, on the practices and theoretical construct of Development—with a capital "D" to denote Development as the post-colonial or post-World War II projects.[15] Development in this instance was predominantly led by experts who strongly believed that development was a merely technical matter, excluding the questions of political economy and politics.[16] These technical and a-political practices of development had been deemed to fail in addressing the problems of poverty and underdevelopment.
Another outstanding line of argument concerning the "failure" of development was presented by James Scott (1998). Development as an attempt to improve human conditions was orchestrated through various mechanisms of control, intervention and simplification and had led to the subjugation of preexisting local knowledge and practice. The projects of development sponsored both by the state and transnational development agencies were rendered on technicalities and did not allow the metis (local knowledge and practice) to inform the way the systems work. The exclusion or subjugation of political economy, politics and local knowledge and practice has been deemed among the main factors contributed to the failure of the large development institutions to deliver their promises in improving human conditions.[17]
The internal changes within the World Bank also contributed to the Bank's interest in the concept of CDD. The changes can be traced back to the acceptance of "social" as part of development language in 1974 when the Rural Development Department recruited the first sociologist in the Bank, Michael Cernea. The department was instituted as the Bank's hand to pursue poverty alleviation objectives through the enhancement of rural development. Cernea had been very instrumental in propagating "social" awareness to the predominant economists at the Bank through organizing various meetings and publishing collected articles about various topics of development from the social perspectives.
The publication of "Putting People First" (1985), which consists of various topics on people's participation in development, was the early building block of the growing understanding about the importance of social variables in development. Strong criticism against the devastating social and environmental impact of Narmada Dam project in India on thousands of lives of the rural population along the Narmada river bank also reiterated the central point of social aspects in the whole process of development. The creation of a Social Development Department in 1997, following the formation of a Social Development Task Force proposed by Cernea in 1996, facilitated the continuous advancement of the ideas of social development within the internal structure of the Bank.
The notable work of the political culture expert, Putnam (1993), about social capital theory had given a new possibility for the World Bank to move further. The approach provided a new direction for the World Bank to pursue development purposes by understanding the roles of social relationships within the community that may allow its members to build strong bonds with each other and thus facilitate the members in participating in the development process. The concept of a social capital that puts strong emphasis on "trust" and "relationships" was perfectly matched with other cultural concepts of "community", "participation" and "empowerment".[18] Woolcock and Narayan (1999) have attempted to map out and identify the ways through which the theories of social capital can be adopted to inform the re-conceptualization of development within the World Bank. They identified four different views of social capital theory which include the communitarian, network, institutional and the synergy views.[19]
These different views of social capital reflect that the theory can be appropriated for different contexts and purposes; and hence, they reveal that "social capital" possesses a high-powered theoretical attraction for development literature. The emphasis on the components of "trust," "relationships" and "voluntary participation" (Putnam, 1993) are the most meaningful merits of the concept to be offered as a new alternative argument to the highly criticized centralized development strategy. The efforts to reconstruct development thinking can now partly rely on the emerging social capital theoretical framework. Woolcock and Narayan (2006) concluded that social capital "offers a way to bridge sociological and economic perspectives".[20] They, unfortunately, are less successful in envisioning the benefit of social capital as more than adding a "social dimension" to the orthodox infrastructure development projects. In other words, social capital has just allowed the economists in the World Bank to find a politically correct word, "social something," that did not exist in the past.[21] Despite the remaining unresolved contentious evidence concerning the relationship of social capital to economic development[22], its theoretical framework is still valuable to frame the celebration of a more democratic and participatory development processes that take place at the "local" and small community levels. This theoretical framework has also made the reinvention and the use of local knowledge and values to inform development processes possible.
The adoption of the concept of CDD tied with the celebration of the deployment of social capital theory into the language of the World Bank has, therefore, been the product of two complicated drives in the forms of strong criticisms posed by many development students and environmental activists, and in an internal struggle among actors within the World Bank. These diverse drives, however, took place in the context of the reemergence of the neo-liberal thinking that shapes the current world economic order. The reemerging "culture" in the center of development discourse has made it possible for the recreation of development discourse at the large development agencies such as the World Bank to occur. The concepts of community and social capital, particularly in their core norms, values and associations, are the language of culture par excellence.[23]
In the context of the World Bank's CDD development initiatives in Indonesia, the initiative of the Social Development Department to conduct a study in 1996-1997 was particularly important. The study focused on the expression of social capital at the local-level and its relation with development. The study had boosted the visibility of CDD and the interest in utilizing the newly celebrated social capital theory in development. Indonesia, which, at the time, was struggling with a financial crisis, was selected as one of the study sites for conducting an Local Level Institutions (LLI) study, and the result was used as the basis for developing the proposal and design for KDP and UPP projects. The following section discusses how the struggle for meaning in the World Bank, in the form of the creation of space for the ideas of CDD and social capital, has taken place in a perfect site in a country that is striving to survive economic depression. The study and the implementation of the pilot project, following up the study, allowed not only the creation of space for maneuvering but also accumulated a new knowledge base on community-driven development.
Ordering a New Space/Place for CDD in Indonesia
The financial crisis during 1997-1998 dropped the Indonesian economic capability to hold on to previous growth. The huge rate of inflation made the Indonesian economy fall into the lowest rate since the last quarter of the century. The structural adjustment program urged by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to deal with the sharp decline during the financial crisis had resulted in the increase of the unemployment rate and a sky-rocketing rate of poverty[24]. The crisis, in short, had turned the previously just-celebrated success of an economic miracle upside down and left the country in despair. This frantic situation, nevertheless, had opened up many new opportunities for dramatic change. The changes indeed occurred most obviously, among others, in politics and economy. The crisis soon stimulated the political uncertainty that forced the New Order regime to end, and thus opened new fertile ground for planting the seeds of liberal democracy, decentralization (redistribution of power and governmental authority from the central government to the district level of governments). In the economic arena, the forced structural adjustment programs and deregulation policies prescribed to help the country recover from the crisis unleashed the supremacy of neo-liberal economic streams in Indonesia.
The impact of the financial crisis on the increase in poverty rate was indeed contentious. There was no single agreement about how much the increase in poverty rate and unemployment was.[25]But indeed it had an impact on the shrinking of the formal labor wage market in urban areas as well as on the informal subsistent agricultural jobs in rural areas. More importantly, these uncertain conditions provided a perfect ground for the World Bank to regain its legitimacy and to rebuild the reasons for its existence in Indonesia. The growing interests in the use of social capital for development matched the promising land to test the arguments empirically.
The CDD project was initiated along with a social safety-net project which was implemented as an emergency response to the financial crisis. Guggenheim (2006), the intellectual leader of the World Bank in Indonesia, recognizes three contextual variables that have made the initiation and the expansion of CDD in Indonesia possible. These are the crisis of the political leadership under the New Order regime; the crisis within the World Bank, particularly pertaining to the impacts of big development projects on the community and environment; and the crisis of leadership in Indonesian villages. The particular attention to the crisis of village level leadership was indeed intriguing. Guggenheim was quite cautious in explaining the success story of CDD in Indonesia. He confesses that the implementation of the CDD in thousands of Indonesian sub-districts and villages was simply "a matter of historical coincidence"[26] with crises occurring in the three institutions.
The World Bank's interest in the local level institutions and social capital in Indonesia, however, was neither accidental nor coincidental. The interest traveled directly to Indonesia from the heart of the World Bank in Washington DC, particularly through the newly established Social Development Task Force, in 1996, where Scott Guggenheim worked under the leadership of Gloria Davis (later the Director of Social Development Department). The will to deepen theoretical and empirical reflections on social capital theory, particularly how social capital in the forms of local institutions affects community development, had led the task force to organize a special study on Local Level Institutions (LLI). Therefore, the decision to include Indonesia as one of the sites of LLI study was not random. The early 1990s was also the period when the roles of the World Bank was being questioned, following the impact of large dam project in Central Java that resulted in serious social impacts to the communities and environment. The study on LLI may feed a new academic trend, which is based on careful empirical analysis, to construct new alternatives and possibilities for sustaining the roles of the World Bank in development. In other words, the study was designed to initiate the process of recreating a new space for maneuvering, using the newly celebrated language of social capital.
The LLI study was conducted using survey (covering 1200 respondents) and ethnographic (in 48 villages) methods during 1996-1997 in six districts (kabupaten) in three provinces (2 districts in each province). According to Bebbington et.al (2006), this study was, "aimed to generate descriptive information on the role that local institutions played in villager's lives; trace the relationships between these institutions and household level welfare; and understand the interactions between state-sponsored groups and non-state organizations in the process of rural changes.[27]" Ethnographic study was particularly aimed at understanding "the nature and quality of social capital, community capacities and village government".[28]
The findings from the study generally confirmed the fundamental assumptions of social capital theory. Guggenheim (2006) summarizes four major findings. The first finding reveals that community-owned projects had proven to be more participatory, with higher contribution from the community and, in general, perform better than similar projects run by either government or NGOs. The second finding reveals that democratic mechanisms are more likely to happen in community-based organizations than in government-sponsored organizations. The third major finding shows a strong disconnection between the community organizing capacities and the government. The government was found to be less supportive to communities that were able to organize themselves. The last major finding reveals the success of the involvement of sub-district level of government in project management. Groothaert (1999) sees that these findings reflect significant potential for reconstructing rural development within the framework of social capital theory.[29]
The LLI study also pays detailed attention to the predominant impediments for rural development that lay on the formal village leadership. A particular measure of rural governance during the New Order regime was the Village Government Law No.5, released in 1979. The law was enacted to simplify the span of control over the lives of the village communities to ease the transmission of orders and to implement various development and political programs. The older regulation was deemed to be inadequate to manage the diverse local organizations attached to diverse cultural and colonial origins. Each area and ethnic group had their own method of village governance and some of them maintained their ancient noble hierarchy. The new law guaranteed the uniformity of village organizations throughout the country. It is important to note that the period between 1975 and 1981 was the period of New Order Government reconsolidation due to the expansion of national development. The significant oil revenue had made the government able to fund more diverse and large development projects, both in urban (industrial estates) and in rural (agricultural) economies. The creation of the law No. 5/1979 was the attempt to make "village institution functional to national programs of rural development and political surveillance".[30]
The law identified two types of village head, namely Lurah (head of village in urban or sub urban areas) and Kepala Desa (head of village in rural areas). They are responsible for managing and administrating the village life, particularly businesses that require direct involvement of the government, including tax collection, managing development projects, land administration and the administration of civil law. A Lurah is usually a civil servant appointed by the District Head (Bupati) or Mayor (Walikota); while a Kepala Desa is generally elected by the community through a one-man one vote mechanism. However, both Lurah and Kepala Desa are not accountable to the people they serve or to the people who have voted for her/him. Since their leadership legitimacy comes from the head of district or mayor, they are accountable directly to the head of district and the mayor. Within village organizations there existed the so-called consultative council (Lembaga Musyawarah Desa/LMD-village consultative council) and Lembaga Ketahanan Masyarakat Desa (LKMD-village resilience council). The members of the two institutions were usually community leaders or elites representing different kampung or dusun (hamlet), so that they ideally represented the forum for community participation. However, their roles in village governance were just little more than a stamp for the village head's decision.[31]
The above local elites were deemed to be one of the primary impediments for community participation. They often captured the most of the benefits of development programs directed to improve rural communities. Among the most appalling experiences of elite capture encountered, the process of the Social Safety-net (Jaring Pengaman Sosial/JPS) program, during the early period of Indonesian economic crisis (1998-1999), was particularly notable. The failure and the disproportional distribution of Social Safety-net benefits to the deserving poor in rural areas were due to corrupt village bureaucracies. Breman and Wiradi (2002) noted that most of the people in their fieldwork studies in a northern province of West Java were not informed, or consulted, in the decision-making of distribution of JPS benefits. Despite the stated guidelines for the program's implementation, which stated the necessity of the involvement of community representative and voluntary organizations, the village bureaucracy remained practicing the "command style of administration practiced under the New Order regime"[32]. These experiences embolden the need for some strategic changes in rural development, including the need for adjusting the institutional and organizational structures that may provide enough space for everyone to take a hold and participate in development processes.
Despite a detailed description about village governance, the study also envisions the dichotomous views of state versus society. Nonetheless, the study indeed recognized the roles of arisan (rotating saving) groups that remain existent and even proliferated long after Clifford Geertz's (1962) study. These groups provided some sort of social protection to their members in times of adversity. However, although the study carefully portrays the degree of participation of the community in religious associations, it does not explore in greater detail the type of community-based associations that may extend their services beyond the village level. The roles of Islamic-based voluntary organizations such as Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Islamic organization, founded in 1926 and Muhammadiyah, the second largest Islamic organization, founded in 1912, were not sufficiently explored. In several parts of the country the branch or sub-districts units of the organizations were even more influential in shaping the lives of the community, more than formal government organizations. A current study on the political culture and voting behavior in Indonesia shows that these large Islamic organizations contribute significantly to the promotion of democracy and social cohesion (Mujani, 2004).
Furthermore, although the study regards historical analysis as an important component in understanding village governance, it pays too much attention to the New Order period. It may be insufficient to understand the lives of Indonesian villages merely from the New Order government period. The pattern of village governance and the efforts to improve the village life was indeed rooted in the Dutch Colonial period, particularly in Java. The subsequent Indonesian governments had actually preserved the legacy of the colonial rural improvement projects. Tania Li[33] traces the history of improvement projects in Indonesia since the Dutch colonial era in the late 18th century and found similar patterns of improvement strategies. The so-called adat (indigenous customs) and desa (village level government) were the inventions of colonial social scientists to create differences between the indigenous peoples and the colonizers. Furthermore, the creation of the discourse of culture in the form of adat gave strong legitimizing power to the traditional power. The most stunning argument presented by Li was the similarities between the practices of improvement in the colonial period that had allowed the "indirect rule" of the colony through the self-governing villagers and the current CDD projects in thousands of villages in Indonesia.
Nonetheless, the LLI study had reached its intention to map out the relations between social capital institutions at the village levels with development. The findings had given sufficient space to the ideas of community-driven development with the primary focus on the roles and contribution of social capital institutions to blossom, not only within the World Bank but also in Indonesia. The emphasis on the positive correlation of participation and decentralization with the outcome of development not only resembled the need to improve development processes, but also fit with the anxieties of Indonesians in general. The anxieties include many fundamental aspects of the political changes from centralization toward decentralization; the demand for larger community participation in development processes; the demand for changes in leaderships both at the national and local levels; and the demand to construct new political and economic behavior that may reduce corruption and nepotism[34]. The concept of CDD and social capital, with its emphasis on participation in decision making, good governance, targeting to the poorest member of the community, and democratic processes, gave the direct answer for many of the Indonesian people's political and economic anxieties. In other words, the results of the study benefited both the World Bank and Indonesian government. For the World Bank, it created room for new development thinking and lending policy; and for the Indonesian government it provided a politically sound simple recipe to cope with the many interconnected anxieties.
CDD and the Production of New Villages
Despite strong references to the various kinds of social capital in the community, the implementation of CDD did not rely on these organizations. Instead, the project experts preferred to introduce a new approach to community organizing together with its new cultural language and behavior. The organizing principles and culture are applied homogenously in all sites of KDP both in countryside of Java and in remote villages in Kalimantan and Papua. This practice generates an important question as to the extent to which the claimed social capital associations that existed in the community are genuinely engaged and directly participating in the process of development. Otherwise, the existence of local-level institutions serves as merely the backdrop for a new project without properly taking part in the game. This section shows how CDD reproduces the culture and organization of the villages through the installation of new organizational behavior, governance, and the creation of Badan Keswadayaan Masyarakat (BKM/Community Self-reliance Board). BKM was created as a new community-based organization to facilitate participation of the community members in development processes; it thus represents the core of CDD practices.
The reproduction of the village can be seen clearly in the emphasis on creating a new culture (in the forms of norm, routine and procedure) of the community and leadership at the village level. The recreation of the village should be done through the reproduction of democratic, trusted and participatory elected village organization. The new language being introduced has been the "representation" and "election". The project required the formation of a new organization at the village level and disregarded the existing village structure. Although there are many kinds of organizations or associations in the village, either attached to religious activities, self-help groups, micro-cooperatives or rotating savings and credit associations, the projects do not count them as eligible to play a significant role in the project implementations.
In the context of the Urban Poverty Project (UPP) the only way for the villagers to participate in the project is through the formation of Badan Keswadayaan Masyarakat (BKM or Community Self-reliance Board). BKM should be formed through a democratic election. Nevertheless, there was a restriction that in the process of election the old "elites" were not expected to be elected. The election procedure, of course, is not designed by the community themselves, but prepared by the project consultants and facilitators. The new procedure of leadership selection is aimed at facilitating the emergence of a new community leadership and not the "old community leader". The old community "elite" may still be involved in the BKM but not as the main person responsible for running the organizations. The whole procedure of the formation of BKM is the necessary process "to democratize the space".[35]
The roles of BKM are indeed central in the CDD and now in NPPE. The members of the board will assume a big responsibility inrunning the whole process of planning, implementing and evaluating the project. The newly established institution will facilitate the community in participating in development, with the proper application of the expected culture of good governance. BKM, first of all, receive special training and continuous accompaniment from the field facilitators assigned by the contracted companies hired by Central Government (the Department of Infrastructure and the Department of Home Affairs). The training includes the basic principles of good-project-governance, participatory project planning, project monitoring and evaluation, and book-keeping. The training also includes the introduction of different kinds of techniques to facilitate democratic community participation and to maintain public accountability, dealing with corruption, facilitating participation and conflict resolution skills.
The BKM is also expected to develop the ideas about development and poverty alleviation for their respective villages. With the help of field facilitators, of course, BKM will develop a document about medium term program for poverty alleviation (Program Penanganan Kemiskinan Jangka Menengah/Pronangkis JM) for the village level. This document contains problem identification, particularly poverty, how the community can overcome the problem, and how much these programs will cost. On the basis of this document, BKM can develop a project proposal to be submitted to a project management team at the Sub-district government office. The sub-district office of project management already had a list of projects, including the total budget allocated for different items of project (mostly infrastructure). The BKM is not, however, guaranteed to get their project funded, because it is competitive. Only about 60% of the proposals that meet the list of projects priorities with clear implementation procedures will be selected as the winner by a team of consultants and the government official working at the sub-district level.
The above processes create a boundary between "the new" and "the old" elites in the village leadership. The new is associated with the new norms, new behavior, and the new processes of inauguration. The new organization and the new elites are associated with democratic values, responsibility, participation, and the ability to manage community interests through the principles of "good governance". "The old" organizations and elites, on the other hand, were regarded as the remnant of the "ugly" authoritarian New Order regime. They are associated with corruption, little or no participation, and preferring to please the superior in the hierarchy of power instead of representing the interests of the community members. The whole set of new norms introduced to the executive member of BKM signifies the clear boundaries between "the new" and "the old".
Both KDP and UPP are highly critical and cautious about the roles and involvement of the existing local leaders, who are called "elite". This term was used to designate individuals who had assumed a leadership position in the community, either due to their economic conditions (more prosperous than the average), attachment to the government (civil servants or part of the government organization), or traditional "noble" families. The interest in the role of "old elite" was theoretically justified by the large body of literature about "elite capture". The local elite was deemed to be among the most serious threats to community development since they might impede the true participation of the ordinary people and thus they might prevent the ordinary people from obtaining the maximum benefits from the project. The threat of "elite capture" implies the embedded cautions to the possible intrusion of the project from the "old local elites".[36]
Nonetheless, the precautions about local elite capture inform the importance of elaborate administrative mechanisms in project implementation, improved book keeping and increased openness to participation. The mechanisms of project management have developed since the early project inception in 1999 at the local communities was believed to be effective in reducing the elite capture. In contrast, the mechanism allows greater participation of non-elites individuals to participate in the project decision making processes. Fritzen (2007) shows that the specific project design, such as democratic selection procedures for the community boards (BKM) responsible for managing the project funds, has actually reduced the risks of elite capture.[37]
This finding reveals that in this regard, the project's attention and intervention in capacity building through close engagement of the local project staff and the BKM members emerges as a predictor of the degree to which the BKM can perform the project's tasks properly. In this instance, the effort of reducing elite capture, the project remains dependent on the whole project's technicalities, procedures, and tight control of the facilitators. Project design seems to be the major predictor more than the "local value" or the so-called existing social capital. Furthermore, Dasupta and Beard (2007) also found that the roles of the elite in CDD are not necessarily hazardous. It is important, therefore, to distinguish between elite control and elite capture of project benefits, since elite control may indeed be beneficial to the success of the project implementation to target the poor.[38]
Despite the spoken rhetoric of "community driven development," these situated practices of village development are inherently hierarchical, placing the "trustees" of experts and project planners at the top of it, similar to the "White men Tasks in Tropical Africa" (Luggard, 1926) and speaking up for the "oppressed or backward villagers." Although literally stated in the project manual (Departemen Pekerjaan Umum, 2007) that the group of villagers have a space for participation in planning and implementing the project, they certainly do not set the agenda.[39] The agenda, in the form of a manual, procedure, the type of approved and unapproved projects, and administration procedures, was predetermined by the "project experts" and not by the group of villagers. The group of villagers organized in the BKM, under the guidance of the field facilitators, will then follow the "participatory procedures" set out for them. The facilitators and project experts also exercise disciplinary mechanisms. The failure of the BKM to follow the procedure will result in the suspension or exclusion of the group from participating in the project.
The reproduction of the village is clearly directed toward the creation of difference. The newly remade village is placed in direct contrast and opposition to the previous village leadership, which had been stigmatized as the product of "undemocratic" processes and an "authoritarian regime". The new village, together with the whole set of democratic mechanism and leadership selection procedures, is judged to be a good village governed by the good participatory organizations. While the "old village," together with the package of leadership and administrative procedure produced during the New Order regime, was considered an evil practice and should be thrown away.
Another element of difference between the "old village" and the "new village" can be identified in their self-reliance. The "old village" was highly dependent on the initiatives of the central government channeled through the "undemocratic," "unaccountable" and "non-participatory" village leadership. Village leadership and organizations were considered passive actors because the real actor was the authoritarian New Order regime. All they could do was anything ordered or commanded from the upper hierarchy of power. On the contrary, the new village leadership represented in the BKM, was expected to change the old pattern of village governance. Through their participation in either UPP or KDP or NPPE they were prepared to manage the decentralized village governance. Member and leaders of BKM were also expected to represent the active and empowered citizens so that they would be able to work hand-in-hand with local government to address the problems of poverty and rural development.
The villages that participated in the NPPE, KDP and UPP projects have learned new behavior, new values, new norms and new way of governing communities. These new cultural and organizational packaging for village lives have not only signified the creation of new understanding of social relationships within villages but have also differentiated the pattern of social and political relationships between the community and the state institutions at the village level. These cultural and institutional arrangements allow community members, inclusively, to participate in development decision making processes, resources allocation and negotiation. They took back their legitimate vote to voice their choice.
The challenge for these new villages has been the extent to which they can perform their consent over the production and the use of resources for the benefit of their sustainable livelihood. Despite the fact that through the new culture and institutions the villagers can voice their choice, the choice was limited and predetermined by various actors (experts, bureaucrats) at the higher level of government offices. Their voice and their capacity to exercise consent over the production and the use of the resources for development, therefore, remain very limited. The following section outlines the possible remaining space available in the CDD initiatives for villagers to enhance their capacity to reclaim their right of consents through linking social capital with political economy.
Conclusion
The practice of decentralized community-driven development is situated within the larger context of political and economic neo-liberalization.[40] The language of "good governance" illustrated in the overall procedure of project planning and implementation procedures reflects very much the core pattern of neoliberal thinking which currently guides the direction of Indonesian political and economic policies (Hadiz, 2003). The introduction of the villagers to the new idea of CDD, together with the very principles of decentralization, good governance and the emphasis on accountability, may directly prepare the villagers to adapt to the new predominant language being used in the global political and economic terrains. The CDD approach, therefore, does not only alter "the old model" of village government, but also creates the new model of a village that will be capable of absorbing the new way of thinking and behaving. Nonetheless, embedded within the efforts of the recreation of the villages may still be a remaining space for further social transformation.
The production of space is particularly apparent in the emphasis on the power relation between the state and society. The whole processes of CDD have been centralized in an attempt to change the unidirectional top-down and patrimonial type of relation in development to reciprocal and participatory. The emphasis on participatory development processes, indeed, reflects a significant shift in development thinking from "ends oriented" to "means oriented." As Guggenheim (2006) points out, CDD is concerned more with the processes of development, the extent to which a large part of the community takes their stake in development, than with the result. The previous model of development thinking was leaning toward achieving certain degrees of economic growth which required total loyalty of the citizens to the command of the government's development strategy. The new approach to development does not deny the importance of economic growth, but insists that economic growth is not a justified reason to dwarf community participation. The proponents of CDD insisted that economic growth would be more meaningful if it were achieved through a meaningful degree of community participation.
The CDD has just reached the questions about participation in resource management and allocation. It does not cover, unfortunately, the questions of how the resources are produced, how the decision about resources production takes place in relation to different social, political and economic actors, and how they sustain the production of resources for their sustainable livelihood development. Despite the dynamic processes of project allocation at the sub-district level, described by Guggenheim (2006) as democratic and open negotiation processes among villagers, some of which involve women--the villagers were not given sufficient information concerning where the funds allocated for the project were coming from. Neither BKM members nor villagers were aware enough of the fact that the project was initiated and designed primarily by the World Bank as the result of a long process of intellectual contestation among experts both within and without the Bank concerning the legitimacy of previous top-down development projects and their impact on poverty and environmental degradation. Furthermore, the village communities had not been sufficiently informed about the sources of funds that were brought to them to fund some of their micro-infrastructure projects. Were they properly informed about the financial source for financing development project in their respective villages, they may have space to exercise their consents to either accept or to refuse the invitation to participate in the project.
END NOTE:
[*] Sirojudin Abbas is Lecture of Da'wa and Communication Faculty, State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta. He is PhD Student at the School of Social Welfare, University of California-Berkeley, the USA. Email: Sirojudina@yahoo.com
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[40] Craig, D. Porter, D. 2006. Development Beyond Neoliberalism: Governance, Poverty Reduction and Political Economy. London and New York: Routledge.
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