INTRODUCTION
Modernization promoted by western countries, followed by economic rationalism, has shown remarkable achievement. The presumption to its unquestionable success was based on the attaining of high performance of economic growth due to the high rate of investments in industrial sector. The development strategies following this approach is the achieving a maximum production by maximally managing resources with the purpose for people benefit. The principle of this strategy is that the increase of production would automatically increase the benefit for community. However, a range problem, including poverty, environmental deterioration, and the isolation of people from the development process, came up together with this sophistication. It clearly indicates that this success unable to fulfil the most essential need for human being socially, economically and politically, which are the need for community to live with their environment harmonically, and the need for them to live in harmony with the others, (Ife 2002).
The existence of multidimensional crisis including ecological, economic, political, social and cultural instability which are currently overwhelming nearly all global community indicates the inability of the modern community to cope with these basic needs. Under the circumstances, finding new strategy to solve this gap becomes a critical issue since the development which is based on national interests obviously unable to address problem regarding ecological degradation and the spread of social injustice. Then community based development or people centred development becomes an alternative way since it is considered enables to meet the human need and the interaction with the environment viability and sustainability and places substantial value on local initiatives and diversity. This strategy, called community empowerment, aims to empower people to manage their own lives and resources and attain their own livelihood from their own resources. However, there is still a gap between theory and practice or expectation and reality on the implementation of this new strategy since many contemporary institutions, including governments, NGOs, private sectors and even the institutions which claim them selves as representative of democracy, tend to disempowered community and replacing the people role to control their lives. This essay will try to elaborate the gap between community development theory and the real condition in the field, and what factors contribute to this gap, and try to formulate recommendation or possible solution based on the current demand of global community.
THE IDEA OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
The idea of community development covers a wide and diverse area and fundamentally it exists within the problems of people. Community is interpreted by a range of meanings as well. In community development activities, it is commonly defined as “a group of people who shares a common identity, such as geographical location, class or ethnic background, or who shares a special interest …” (Kenny 1994).
The term development has a various interpretation as well. It is usually associated with the idea of ‘a better life’ and measured by economic achievement, standard of living and sophisticated technology. In terms of community development, it emphasize on the importance of social changes. So, implicitly, the idea of development is the notion of transformation, ((Kenny, 1994).
Another definition of development is given by Korten (1990). He states, “Development is a process by which the members of a society increase their personal and institutional capacities to mobilise and manage resources to produce sustainable and justly distributed improvements in their quality of life consistent with their own aspirations.” It is plainly apparent that this definition sees development as a process and mostly focus on personal and institutional capacity. It explicitly represents the principles of justice, sustainability and comprehensiveness. It also recognizes that only people themselves can set up quality standard of improvement in their lives.
The combination of these two words, community and development, has reproduced also a range of interpretation. Some writers define community development as social movement. Others approach it as work field of rural community organizations in effort to improve their life. Some view community development based on their experience as methodology which can be used by social workers dealing with community.
As field of work, the UN has given definition that community development is “the processes by which the effort of the people themselves are united with those of governmental authorities, to improve the economic, social and cultural conditions of communities, to integrate these communities into the life of the nations, and to enable them to contribute fully to national progress.” (Perlman and Gurin, 1972). In this concept, it implicitly recognizes that the government has responsibility to provide public services based on the initiative of the community themselves.
According to Kenny (1994), community development is related also to the notion that community has more responsibility for determining their own needs and setting up their own direction by managing their own resources based on principles “sharing resources, social interaction and participation, self help and mutual support activities”. In this stage, community development workers act to assist community to identify their needs and empower them to utilize their own resources in order to control over their lives. They are also involved in addressing problems emerging within groups of community including those who have limited resources and marginalized from development process. Community development also related to the empowerment of indigenous people to choose their own future. Therefore, community development concerned with the existing decision maker in society and to what extent the decision produced by decision maker impact to community.
From the range of interpretation on community development, Kenny (1994) summarizes that the term of community development refers to a job or profession, a method or approach in social and economic development, a component in human service work, a philosophical an intellectual approach to the world and a political activity which refers to principles of participation, empowerment, and decentralization.
THE CURRENT PROBLEM OF GLOBAL COMMUNITY
Twenty century was characterized as awakening of ‘new social movements’ in form of political action which demanded social change. These movements concerned on social, cultural and environmental issues including gender, peace, anti-nuclear, conservation, human rights, civil society, sustainability, democratization, accountability, equity, and efficiency. These movements exist to respond the three basic problems currently faced by human globally, which are poverty, environmental destruction and communal violence.
Based on the Northwest Report (1996), in 1970 the number of world population living in absolute poverty estimated 650 million. In 1995, it has increased dramatically to 1.2 billion, nearly doubled in twenty years. Those people live in very inappropriate situation of diet, shelter and clean water. Today, there are about 5.8 billion people on the earth; one of every five person lives in absolutely poor. This number of population is predicted to double in the next 50 years. Overpopulation is already a serious problem, particularly in developing countries. With 4.3 billion people, these countries account for 78 per cent of the world's population yet have only 15 per cent of the world's wealth and income, and use only 12 percent of its natural resources and 27 percent of its energy each year. One implication is that 40 million absolute poor people die each year (110,000 per day) caused by malnutrition or related diseases or from contaminated drinking water. These inequities not only bring crucial problems for many segments of the earth's population, they also generate social conflict.
In case of environmental destruction, we have all heard a lot about threats to the future of the Earth's environment. Global warming, acid rain, ozone destruction, massive species extinctions, pollution, and toxic contamination, excessive land filling of solid wastes, deforestation, and other environmental problems have major impacts on human life.
Communal violence has taken place nearly in all part of the world whether it is done by state with state through its armed forces or by communal group with the other group of society. This situation has contributed to the increase number of refugees, (Korten 1995). These phenomena indicate that there has been increasing disintegration of social fabric. According to the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues, “We live in a time of violence… Ethical barriers have broken down. Fundamental moral values are questioned and man is engulfed by waves of fear and insecurity.” (cited in Korten 1990).
This crisis has reached the peak in the early 1980s since the welfare state has experienced crisis. During the period, social policy writers have substantially agreed that there has been insufficiency, insecurity and ambiguity of the welfare state, and it was persistently unable to fulfil the human needs. The welfare state promoted by western societies clearly was not able to provide social equality and even it was suspected contributing to widen social inequality and injustice. The fail of the welfare state to lead the community to a better life was generated by the monetary crisis due to the slowing of economic growth. Consequently, governments were in difficult positions because at the same time the people demanded welfare state service due to the increase of unemployment and poverty rate, (Ife, 2002).
Meanwhile, new trend of global economics commonly called economic rationalism has emerged. This trend emphasizes on private sector and demands governments to reduce or even withdraw their intervention on community development programs and give more opportunity to private sectors to manage the programs regarding community with such reasons efficiency, effectiveness, productivity and unrestrained competition.
However, this demand cannot run effectively since the governments are still reluctant to hand over all these business with the concern that it can harm their interests to gain support from the grassroots in effort to maintain its legitimacy, credibility and reputation, (Heyzer 1995). This is contributed also by the situation in the private sectors, including financial institutions of society, are deregulated. Consequently, public health, welfare and education institutions not only face financial problem but also they are often controlled and interfered by authoritarian governments, (Kenny 1994).
According to Korten (1984), the failure to meet the basic needs of human caused by continuously implementing the development action based on development theories which is not oriented to three development priorities: poverty, environmental deterioration and people empowerment.
It is immediately apparent that the form of community development which is required to solve the existing problems within the community must respects principle of social justice, sustainability, democratization, accountability, equity, decentralization and efficiency.
EXPECTATION VERSUS REALITY
The effort to fulfil the need of community, actually, has been endeavoured by different institutions with a range of mechanisms throughout year. Some used ethnicity, religion, village and even state as media and target of development. Nevertheless, those approaches have proven unable to expand and dynamite their roles to follow the social demand resulted from a massive change thorough the infusion of external ideas, management and technology and get difficulties to implement their current role against with the new order. The crisis in the welfare state also sourced from the failure of the state to provide new form of social, economic and political structure and the consistency using its inadequacy method.
It is immediately apparent from this experience that the existing approaches used by state or community development workers do nothing to cope with crisis of welfare within community. Many countries particularly community development workers got confusion facing this situation. According to Onyx (1992), one of the main reasons for this confusion is the fact that the current concept of community development has been unable working thorough the new trend of economic rationalism. In many countries, the inability of governments to optimally manage natural resources, affording basic infrastructure and assuring basic needs of society within dynamic social, economic, and political spheres has led to the search for a kind of new alternative form of social provision which can consistently follow the change of new economic and social demand. In the last decade, there has been significant shift to respond the demand; supply-driven has changed to demand-driven approaches, from centralization to decentralization of resources and services management. This shift aims to increase efficiency, equity, empowerment and effectiveness, (Narayan 1995).
Based on the collective social invention, it is found that in order to cope with the existing problems, the development agenda must be guided by a new paradigm based on alternative ideas, values, social technique, and technology. It seems that community based development or the other experts call people centred development approach will be an alternative method since this new paradigm has accommodated new trend of development which oriented to balance of ecology and human growth in terms of realizing human potentials.
The notion of community based development simply implies empowerment and decentralization of decision making process. This means, decision makers must be rely on the community based on its aspirations and needs. Therefore, it is important to understand the shift within community in order to easily define its needs at more distant level. As a main idea of community development, empowerment practices should be consistently established as theory states. In this case, individual or communities need to be given and take more power to manage their own resources. Therefore, it is required to established trust that the community or persons are able to handle and care resources as well as allow them to be more creative and innovative as long as it is not destructive.
Apart from this problem, the gap also has been contributed by the inability of the organizations, both established by government and non government to cope with the increase scope of responsibility which demanded professionalization of activities in which they have been involved, (Korten 1990). The presence of new development paradigm based on the principle of good governance which promoted civil society, sustainability, democratization, accountability, equity, and efficiency, ideally should be responded by all agents of development, particularly NGOs which are known as the most effective development agent in dealing with community, (reference). NGOs have to establish investigation how natural resources are being explored, who is exploring what and for what purpose, how economic growth is created and who benefits from it. Nevertheless, in reality this is sometimes neglected. Moreover, the change of NGOs role from delivery service to advocacy and even political action has worsened the relationship between governments and NGOs, whereas the success achieving this kind of development really depends on the cooperation between the government as policy maker and NGOs as independents institution which can contribute to operate the policy which is established by the governments.
The other factor is misconception of community development. Many organizations which claim themselves as community development worker has a limited idea and consider community development as a simple idea, whereas it is complex idea and not only cover social aspect as mostly people think but also it includes economic, political, environmental, cultural and even spiritual aspects, (Ife, 2002). Due to the misconception of community development, many community development programs establish strongly emphasize a certain aspect and ignoring others. Many projects aim to improve the quality of life of community focus only on economic aspect with the assumption that the success of community economic development will impact the other aspects. Yet, this assumption is always different with the reality because it ignores the complexity of human life and community experience. I believe that the usage of the inappropriate approach which is always utilised by community development workers is the main factor of failure in applying principles of good governance in terms of community empowerment within the project community development workers. It is commonly found, the attempt to empower community, the development workers usually strongly emphasise on the economic approach rather than the other aspects. For example, giving direct loans, in terms of funds, to the community in order to improve their life, sometimes fails. In fact, they do not utilize the funds to increase their welfare but spend the funds to meet their daily needs. Ideally, before applying the economic approach, it is very important to identify the real condition of the society.
As the holistic perspective emphasize that all these aspects are important and interconnected as well as affects each other. So, whoever connected with community development project must take into account and integrated all these aspects. For example, in establishing community economic development project, it is important to raise questions in relation with the other aspects. Will it strengthen social integration? Will it bring benefit for environment? Will it be appropriate with local culture? If these questions have been fulfilled, then it may establish the program.
Besides, the growing consensus on the important of community based development still gets difficulties to implement in formulation development strategy in the national level. Most Non-government organizations, which are known have unquestionable development experiences, suffer from ‘a limited vision’, (Korten 1990). Most of them focus on village development level where the grassroots lives with small scale program, and just a few of them involve in policy level where national development strategies are formulated. Consequently, their activities very often do not correlate with the national and global trends. Some of them are very exclusive and just concentrate on their own projects away from others in a certain location, and even sometimes they work with unclear strategy concept.
The symposium on “Development Alternatives: The challenge for NGOs” held in London in March 1987 points that the widening of poverty throughout the world caused by the missing re-examination of development policy and redefinition of governments and non-government organizations roles to respond the multidimensional crisis. Many NGOs just focus on fixing the grassroots problems and never question the essential social, economic and political structures which generate inequalities, imbalanced development, poverty and environmental destruction. In such situation, NGOs as agent of development should establish leadership roles by involving in formulating development policy issues, questioning the inequitable, profit-oriented and materialistic development and promoting sustainable development in terms of social justice and environmental concerns, seeking new directions for their own organizations, and actively taking a part in making networks and coalition with other NGOS to establish joint action, advocacy and strategy in effort to address local, regional, national and even international issues.
Another factor contributing to the gap between the theory and practice of community development is the belief that development is a task of government. This belief has strengthened authoritarianism and generated gap to establish true development process. Due to this belief, the people have been ‘forced’ relying their resources to be managed by government, whereas there have been other agents of development which have important development role, including NGOs and private business.
According to Korten (1995), these three groups of development agent have different role to development process. Government focuses on the use of threat power due to its ability to implement genuine force in maintaining public order and security. It has also right to command resources. Nevertheless, it tends to be less efficient and innovative due to its diverse constituencies which often arises conflict interest. The other agent of development is private sectors which focus on economic power. Its particular role is to generate new wealth thorough value-added activities and oriented to market forces. For this reason, this group is more responsive and becomes primary source of economics for society. While Voluntary organizations or commonly called non government organizations focus on integrative power. They are more independent and closer to community than the others. For this reason, the people contribute their resources to them because they believe that it will be shared to society.
I believe that the cooperation of these agents is very essential in effort to gain development. However, the expectation on these agents of development sometimes different with the reality since there has been conflict interest both internally and among the agents. Some evidences from several countries obviously show that many rulers, politicians and bureaucrats individuals who control state power have used their positions to promote their own interests and gather their own wealth without noticing the public interest. They monopolize resources and control every economic activity. Individuals or organizations outside of the bureaucracy boundaries have fewer opportunities to participate in economic activities. As a result, they have little opportunity to build self-confidence or achieve economic independence. It is very often also states limit individual participation in decision making by applying top down approach which generates a negative impact that the community does not have incentive, commitment and motivation to respond to the development programs, (Ndiaye 1999).
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
It is immediately apparent from the explanation above that there has been a gap between theory or expectation and the reality of community development practice. Instead of the remarkable success achieved by modernization, in fact it has also brought disaster to human life. A range problem including poverty, environmental degradation and violence being faced by the global community currently is viewed as result of imbalance development. Community based development which is expected to be solution of these problems seem unable to follow the demand of social changes. Unprepared ness of three pillars of development including governments, NGOs, private sectors and others to follow the social change and ineffectiveness community development workers work together to gain the same aim to improve the life quality of the community have complicated the problem face by the community. For this reason, the solution for the current community development problems must be begun from the agent of development themselves thorough internal introspection.
Some principles below may be important to be taken into account by development agents, including government, non-government organizations and private sectors in operating their roles in order to avoid conflict interest among them in afford to reach the grassroots. These principles are as follows:
Need for cooperation among agents of development. As governments, NGOs and private sectors have the same purpose in establishing their development programmes to lead the community to a better life, these agents of development rightly can strengthen, enhance one another and build partnership to reach the needs of grassroots based on their own ways, and not regard one another as rival. Especially for governments, they must realize that the other agents of development, particularly NGOs, have unquestionable experiences to achieve more sustainable development which is required to address problem emerging within community, and they have been recognized closer to grassroots.
For this reason, both governments and NGOs are required to seek common ground in establishing their collaboration in order to avoid classing in managing their role. According to Riker (1995), the common ground can be such as the following table:
Main dimensions of political space
NGO strategy and government strategy vis-à-vis each other
DIMENSION OF POLITICAL SPACE | NGO STRATEGY | GOVERNMENT STRATEGY |
ISSUE ORIENTATION | Influence development agenda, and critique propose alternative issue areas | Set development agenda and priorities, and monitor acceptable content of issue areas |
FINANCIAL | Mobilize sufficient financial resources to be self-supporting and self-determining (autonomous of GO or donor control) | Monitor NGOs’ financial resources, and regulate and approve their use for development activities |
ORGANIZATIONAL | Maintain sufficient autonomy from GO in NGO’s administration decision-making processes, operations, and field activities | Monitor NGOs’ administration, and regulate their operations and field activities |
POLICY | Influence policy dialogue and decisions through advocacy to improve policy environment at various levels | Monitor policy dialogue, regulate access to policy making process, and maintain control over the policy environment |
Need for NGOs to form national and international alliances. Realizing the broader roles of NGOs, internal introspection and improvement are required within the NGOs. To articulate principles of community based development also requires democratization process among NGOs themselves because there are some NGOs still implement centralized policy in their organizations. To strengthen their position and bargaining power, they are required to build alliances and cooperation among NGOs locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Besides, they are required to learn new skill of analysis and negotiation in effort to gain greater political space due to the change of their role and the most important thing that required to be considered is maintaining their independency. For this reason, they have to exclude from bureaucracies boundaries in order to run their role effectively.
As a main idea of community development, empowerment practices should be consistently established as theory states. In this case, individual or communities need to be given and take more power to manage their own resources. Therefore, it is required to established trust that the community or persons are able to handle and care resources as well as allow them to be more creative and innovative as long as it is not destructive. Supporting community based development also require all institutions to encourage adoption of goals and processes which strengthen the capacity of community; reorientation of bureaucracies to support community empowerment in decision making including rule formulation; and achieving the need of community or the ability of development agencies including government or other community development workers to match between the social demand and the supply
The success of community development depends on mutual aid or cooperation among the elements of society: governments, non-profit community groups, the private financial and development sectors and community in effort to manage the community’s potencies and provide three important factors, which are: economic, social and political aspects. Economic aspect in terms of the ability to provide fund investment using for physical construction projects, like infrastructure, housing, and entrepreneurial funds which is usually provided by governments and private business. Social aspect in terms of the activeness of community to participate in making public interest decisions and in development. It includes also the ability to optimize community organizations and community collective wisdom. Political aspects in terms of the ability to compromise different interests and idea emerging among the agents of development and within community itself to have the same perception in effort to improve the quality of life for community.
In order to meet the most essential need for human being which is the need to live with their environment and others, principles of good governance and sustainable development including participation, law enforcement, transparency, responsiveness, equity, strategic vision, effectiveness and efficiency, professionalism, accountability, and supervision, must become guidance for all agents of development in managing their roles.
References can be provided upon requested
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