Deepening Democracy or Driving Disadvantage?
In: Citizenship as a ChallengeSearch for other papers by Tamara Nair in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Abstract
It can be argued that one of the principal aims of democratic decentralisation is to promote sustainable development where communities prioritise projects and are closely involved in the planning, and at times even the implementation, of those projects. Such local level participation allows marginalised groups in society to be part of the political process and allows them to exercise their rights as citizens, giving them a legitimate space for greater involvement. However, it has been revealed that decentralised governance does not always benefit marginalised groups and can in some cases symbolise an exercise of power over these disenfranchised communities. Using the state of Kerala as an example, I demonstrate how the pursuit of decentralised governance has had effects on building social capital and ideas of citizenship. Informed by empirical data gathered from fieldwork, furthered by Michel Foucault’s ideas on discourse creation and governmentality, I argue that the effects of reservation in India has galvanised disadvantaged groups to be organised as effective proxies through whom existing power dynamics prevail. Ideas of citizenship and its rights become centred on the bodies of the marginalised in society and fail to represent individual rights and freedoms that citizenship encompasses. In deepening the critique of such forms of political inclusion, strategies of deepening democracy and the identity of the citizen has at times served to further marginalise disenfranchised communities.