Development, Decentralization and Democracy: Exploring Social Capital and Politicization in the Bengal region

This book explores the controversy in political science over the civil society/social capital paradigm, which in its main argument claims that 'the more social capital a society possesses, the better will a democratic government work' (Putnam 1993).
The first part of the book explores the critical debate on civil society and social capital from the present structural and post-marxist perspectives. Thereafter, the performance of decentralized governments in West Bengal and Bangladesh is examined, to find out whether any variation in institutional and/or democratic performance, could be explained by higher levels of social capital and a stronger civil society, or if these variations rather follows from differences in the politicization of civil society. This second part of the book is based on studies of a few gram panchayats in West Bengal, and the socio-economic effects following from CPI(M)'s choice of political mobilization strategies and local actions. In Bangladesh, Gonoshahajjo Sangstha (GSS), a quite radical NGO and its activities for social mobilization and electoral participation in local level union parishads have been used as comparison.

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