Beyond the technocrat? The professional expert in development practice

This article traces the use of the term ‘technocratic’ to describe development practice, and the concomitant use of ‘technocrat’ to describe professional experts who engage in development work. It locates the use of these terms as pejorative labels within understandings of professional experts as part of an apparatus of governmentality that depoliticizes development intervention. It argues, however, that such understandings miss the crucial point of engagement in development practice between these agents and other actors which opens ‘learning spaces’ that have the potential for a range of outcomes

Participation and power: poor people's engagement with India's Employment Assurance Scheme

‘Participation’ has become an essential part of good developmental practice for Southern governments, NGOs and international agencies alike. In this article we reflect critically on this shift by investigating how a ‘participatory’ development programme — India's Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) — intersects with poor people's existing social networks. By placing the formalized process of participation in the EAS within the context of these varied and uneven village–level relationships, we raise a number of important issues for participatory development practice. We note the importance of local power brokers and the heterogeneity of ‘grassroots’ (dis)empowerment, and question ideas of power reversals used within the participatory development literature