Social Capital and Participation: The Case of Social Forestry Policy in Bangladesh
Journal of Society and Development, Vol. 1, December 2007 (Published in 2008)
10 Pages Posted: 18 Feb 2012 Last revised: 15 Jul 2014
Date Written: July 16, 2008
Abstract
People’s participation is involved in community development as a very important concept. Increasing people’s voice and influence in the Social Forestry policy in Bangladesh is believed to be an effective way of improving the condition of the forest sector as it ensures access to services to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. This article is based on a survey that carried out to measure the role of social capital in ensuring people’s participation in the SF policy of Bangladesh. Here it is hypothesized that the more the dominance of personal trust than institutional trust the less will be the attainment of policy objective. In the study areas it is found that SF farmers distrust institutions like bureaucracy and the Union Parishad but they have trust to the persons like the Union Parishad Chairman and the bureaucrats. This lack of trust to the institutions like Union Parishad and bureaucracy is one of the reasons to push the SF farmers to go for personal trust from which patron-client relationship was derived and it impeded the extent of people’s participation in the SF project.
Keywords: social capital, participation, social forestry, trust
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