Politicization of community organizations and development process in rural Sri Lanka: a case study of Northwestern Sri Lanka

Abstract

In Sri Lanka, policy makers and political authorities take serious steps to empower rural areas and ensure active participation of rural masses in the development process, because a majority of the population is concentrated in rural areas. In this endeavor, different community level organizations are established at the rural level. And the government channels various collective and individual state resources to rural areas through several organizations, local and international. In this context, the role of the community level organizations in rural development becomes very significant, because the development agencies and related organizations are to implement their rural development projects through the community based organizations. However, the expected goals of the community level organizations in rural development have remained largely unachieved for the recent decades. The major factor behind this failure is found to be party politics or politicization of rural community development organizations. Politically motivated social groups at the rural level have become the key players of those organizations. They have used their power for acquiring and appropriating resources and benefits from external development organizations. As the anticipated goals of development are hindered by these community level organizations in the development, the situation has become a bitter source for conflict among the villagers very often. This paper monitors the impact of politicization of the community organizations and thereby its implications of on the contemporary development process in rural Sri Lanka. Concerned study area of this research belongs to Puttalam district in the Northwestern Province. This study has applied the case study method within the ethnographic tradition consisting participant observations, in-depth interviews as data collecting techniques.