Doctoral Dissertation Improvement: Democracy and Adaptation Effects of India's Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA)

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Countries around the world are gearing up to respond to anticipated climate change by developing plans for adaptation. In order to be effective, these efforts must facilitate participation of local beneficiaries in project planning as well as provide equitable distribution of benefits from public investments. Past experience with development initiatives has shown that effective participation is uncommon, however, and outcomes are often highly inequitable. Little is actually known about factors that enable communities to channel development projects towards addressing climate-related vulnerabilities. This doctoral dissertation research project will investigate factors that (1) encourage participation of marginal social groups in development project selection, (2) enable such groups to receive equitable benefits from project outcomes, and (3) enable citizens to design development initiatives for reducing vulnerability to climate impacts. A recent policy in India, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), provides an excellent opportunity to explore these themes. NREGA is expected to provide a social safety net through provision of minimum-wage employment generated through state-funded rural development activities. Projects are ostensibly selected at the local level through democratic deliberation. The doctoral student will draw upon a diverse array of scholarship examining local democracy, rural development, common-pool resource management, and climate change adaptation to study participation, equity, and climate vulnerability reduction outcomes in NREGA project selection and implementation. Working in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, he will employ a two-tiered analytical approach. He will use qualitative approaches to identify the processes that generate positive outcomes in a small number of case studies, and he will derive testable operational hypotheses for quantitative analysis. In the second phase, he will test the hypothesized relationships among specific factors and a suite of outcome indicators across a larger universe of cases through quantitative modeling. The student hypothesizes that more equitable and democratic project implementation is the outcome of the dynamic interactions of multiple actors traversing the state-society divide. He also will assess whether access to critical adaptation knowledge and capacity to influence development decisions are likely to be bolstered by homogeneity of endowments and interests, a vibrant civil society, human capital, access to mass media, and a local history of coping with climatic stresses. The expected flow of resources from the global community towards climate-adaptation assistance has great potential to ameliorate the current living conditions of the world's poor while increasing their ability to withstand future challenges. The findings from this project will enhance basic knowledge regarding how the structure of adaptation policies can influence their effectiveness, and they will enable decision makers to make more informed choices about allocating scarce resources towards appropriate interventions. The project also will produce a large database that combines project-level outcomes with data dealing with sociopolitical, economic, institutional, and environmental variables. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.