Browsing by Author "Jain, Kalpana"

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Promoting Gender Equity in Community Institutions: Evidence from Indigenous Communities in Western India
(2002) Jain, Kalpana; Jain, Nihal C.
"In the present era of globalisation, the values of gender equity are being accepted and promoted in almost all regions of the world. There are inherent cultural differences in different communities. The level of disparities between both the genders is generally higher in developing countries and especially among indigenous communities. "The importance of gender equality for sustainable people-centered development is well accepted (SIDA, 1995) and it is widely recognized that gender inequalities create inefficiencies and hamper growth (The World Bank, 1995a; MFA, 1995; Byers et al., 1994). The Agenda-21 adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 laid emphasis on the country governments to review policies and adopt suitable changes to encourage greater participation of women in the decision-making process (UNCED, 1992). Women specially face an unusual number of obstacles that limit their participation (FAO, 1989; Sarin and others, 1997) and therefore, there is a special need for adopting pro-active approaches (The World Bank, 1995b; Sarin and others, 1997). It is in this background that several steps have been taken up by the Rajasthan Forest Department in India recently by making suitable policy amendments and adopting some proactive measures to encourage women participation in community institutions being promoted for joint management (JFM) of common property forest resources. This study analyses the impact of such recent policy changes and the proactive measures."
Promoting Sustainable Collective Action: Lessons from Behavioural Sciences
(2011) Jain, Kalpana; Jain, Nihal C.
"Several tools and techniques are used by psychologists and the counsellors for behaviour shaping. Some of the techniques such as contingency management of reinforcement, modelling procedures and rational emotive approaches have considerable relevance for community groups. In community development activities, rights and incentives provided for motivating community members act as reinforcement for collective management of resources. If the benefit flow from collectively managed resources increases, it further acts as reinforcer. The extension activities such as exposure visits to some exemplary cases or success stories provide as models for communities. The participatory exercises, community meetings and other sensitization activities act like rational emotive approaches of behaviour shaping. This study has been carried out in south Rajasthan where Joint Forest Management approach has been implemented for nearly two decades. The delivery and process of community development activities in selected villages were analyzed in each community to understand how they compared with the community behaviour shaping approaches. This was then related to the effectiveness of community institutions. The results indicated decline in effectiveness of institutions in many cases which was primarily associated with absence of proper scheduling of reinforcement while delivering development activities. While in some cases sustained collective action was observed where a combination of factors motivated community members. In overall, it was evident that collective action remained sustained when the combination of rights, incentives, benefits and sensitization processes was delivered in a manner that they acted as reinforcers of the desired behaviour. Based on these observations, a strategy of delivering a combination of development interventions is discussed to promote sustainable community institutions."