Professor Emeritus Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC Canada Professor Mahmood Hasan Khan said the relationship between the support and the community organisations is based on a reciprocal obligation and the sustainability of this relationship depends on its institutional framework which clearly delineates the sanctions and the rewards for commitment.
He said this while delivering a lecture on "participatory rural development: experience in Pakistan" held at the Lahore School of Economics on Monday. Khan analysed the underlying theory of participatory rural development and its practice in different areas of Pakistan, discussing challenges, failures and successes.
Khan said success of rural support programme depends upon development of financial, human, natural and physical capital and services. The support organisation is also responsible for enhancing links between the private sector and the community. Khan also said the knowledge of the people in rural areas should not be underestimated. Although they are uneducated, they have great capability to organise and endow themselves with resources which they would not have access to in an uncoordinated state.
He said the experience of rural development programmes in countries like Pakistan has revealed the problems that tend to hamper the development of a sustainable local delivery system based on the choices by people themselves.
For one thing, some rural communities are dominated by hierarchical structures, fictionalised on the basis of class or caste, without experience of cooperation at the village level, and dependent on state or elite-led programmes for their welfare. Professor Khan's study of the rural support programmes in Pakistan for over 20 years tends to substantiate this hypothesis provided the rural poor are the major actors in the play and the outsiders act as catalysts.
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