People's Participation in Community Development Possibility and Challenge (A study of Walling Municipality, Syangja)

Abstract

Participation is one of the basic components in the development process of providing economic and social benefits to the people, It remains an essential ingredient of human progress and prosperity in the society. The country's economic development requires people's access to serve affordable and sustainable development. Now a days people's participation has become a sharp tool for developing such projects or programmes. It can be a useful and sustainable means. This study focuses in the institutional process people's participation in developmental activities, implementation of project and sharing its benefit and discusses affecting factors relation to people's participation. The main objectives of the study are: • To identity the possibilities and challenges of people's participation in community development • To examine the existing situation of local people's participation in community development • To find out the possible motivating and inhibiting factors for people's participation in the process of community development. To meet the objective of the study, the researcher has undergone in many literacy reviews such as dissertations, books, journals and reports. It was found that Socio- economic and demographic characteristics i.e. family income occupation, age, culture, gender, education and ethnicity affect directly or indirectly on the situation of people's participation. Further, people's participation is not a momental phenomena. It appears and disappears suddenly. Rather it is a continuous process which does not end with the completion of the development programme. The study is descriptive mainly based on primary source of data. Questionnaire for the interview schedule was the main tool used to generate the required information. Similarly, interview with key informants, group discussion and field observation are also carried out for generating the information for the research work. Out of 289 respondents, 95 respondents were randomly selected for the interview. Likewise data have been collected from five key informants and two group discussion have been held. Of the educational status of the study area, nearly 85 percent of the population are literate most families of the nuclear type. Average family size is 5 to 7 members. Major income sources of household is Agriculture, foreign remittance, livestock rearing and business. Respectively, situation of people's participation in various development activities was found medium despite the abundance of educated manpower. Politics was found very determinant factor in the generation of participation. It was concluded that people's participation is motivated by the balanced representation either by direct benefit or by people's faith towards leadership. Women participation in development group was found mainly for saving and credit purpose. Main emphasis should be paid towards making people's feeling of ownership upon the developmental activities.