More recently, instances of inviting community involvement in the implementation and monitoring of many schemes and programmes are commonplace. While these initiatives may appear to encourage community participation, they need to be recognised as operating within the framework of “bettering the delivery system”, and being based on a preconceived understanding of communities and their needs. Such efforts leave little or almost no opportunity for communities to articulate their needs or to develop a system to respond to specific needs of different communities. Stemming from such a paradigm, the corresponding processes designed have also invariably been 'for' or 'to' the community, not 'with' or 'by' them.
A worrying consequence of such efforts is its impact on the outlook of communities. Having been regarded for the last many years, either as recipients or as consumers of various initiatives, this disposition as recipients has eclipsed the communities' inherent capacity to identify issues faced by them and to evolve appropriate strategies. As a result, on the one hand, the existing system keeps people alienated from the decision-making process or limits their role to tokenistic participatory measures and on the other, the communities do not regard themselves as significant players in the decision-making process.
MAYA's own experience over the last few years has clearly indicated a greater impact when communities begin to identify and prioritise issues faced and assume responsibility to address them. Concurrently, it has also recognised the need to facilitate new institutional arrangements that legitimise this process and enable a partnership of different stakeholders (State, civil society and private sector) for the change sought.
The organisation is strengthening and consolidating its efforts in this direction; taking cognisance of the fact that though the process involves working with existing structures and mechanisms, it moves beyond making superficial, tokenistic changes therein : instead redefining the very premise on which structures, processes and roles of different stakeholders are formed; from that of a delivery mechanism towards one that is determined by the communities' articulation of their needs.
