Description
Book SynopsisDiving into an original and unusually positive case study from India, Patching Development shows how development programs can be designed to work.How can development programs deliver benefits to marginalized citizens in ways that expand their rights and freedoms? Political will and good policy design are critical but often insufficient due to resistance from entrenched local power systems. In Patching Development, Rajesh Veeraraghavan presents an ethnography of one of the largest development programs in the world, the Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and examines NREGA''s implementation in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. He finds that the local system of power is extremely difficult to transform, not because of inertia, but because of coercive counter strategy from actors at the last mile and their ability to exploit information asymmetries. Upper-level NREGA bureaucrats in Andhra Pradesh do not possess the capacity to change the power axis through dire
Trade ReviewHow do you get cash payments for labor to the rural poor in the world's largest anti-poverty program? From the commanding heights of the bureaucracy to the front-lines of the village, from sophisticated software to grass roots social audits, Patching Development brilliantly shows us how the National Rural Employment Guarantee program in India has confronted the infamous problems of the last mile. The challenges and conflicts of implementing public policies to fight poverty have never been illuminated in such detail and with such analytic power. * Patrick Heller, Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs, Brown University *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Map Abbreviations Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. The Genesis of Rights-Based Governance Chapter 3. Patching Technologies of Control Chapter 4. Patching Institutions Chapter 5. Public Meetings at the Last Mile Chapter 6. Reading and Writing the State Records Chapter 7. Caste, Class, and Audits Chapter 8. Conclusion: Patching the Power at the Last Mile Appendix 1. Methodology: Using Ethnography to Study Political Economy of Information Appendix 2. Explanatory Note on Comparing NREGA Performance across States
