“Social support mechanism needs to be strengthened for effective implementation of development programmes.” Comment. (2011)
A development programme is only a design; it is delivered through social structure — the collectives, kin networks, local bodies and frontline cadres that stand between the state and the household. “Social support mechanism” names precisely this, and sociologists study it as social capital. The statement is largely correct, but it needs an important qualification: such mechanisms are not neutral.
Why the statement holds
- Theoretically. James S. Coleman located social capital in the relations between people — norms, trust and obligations that make collective action cheap. Robert D. Putnam (Making Democracy Work, 1993) found that identical institutional reform in Italy produced good government only where dense civic networks already existed. That is the claim in the question, stated as a research finding.
- India’s own evidence is strong. Kerala’s Kudumbashree (1997), with over 2.5 lakh neighbourhood groups organised in a three-tier structure up to the local body, reaches poverty, nutrition and livelihood programmes deeper than a line department could. Nationally, 90.90 lakh self-help groups now serve as the delivery rail for credit, insurance and livelihoods.
- Embedded frontline cadres — accredited social health activists and anganwadi workers — are effective because they are of the village, translating a scheme into locally intelligible terms; this is why immunisation and institutional delivery targets moved.
- Accountability is also a support mechanism. Section 17 of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act makes the gram sabha the auditor of works, and the Audit of Scheme Rules, 2011 fund independent social audit units. Community oversight, not departmental inspection, has recovered misappropriated wages.
- The negative proof: the Community Development Programme of 1952 failed largely because it was built from the top and bypassed the poor; Panchayati Raj (1957) and later the 73rd Amendment were the corrective.
Where the argument must be qualified
- Social capital is stratified. In a caste society, networks exclude as efficiently as they include. Putnam’s “bonding” capital can be the dominant caste’s capital; the alliance of rich farmers with block-level officials hollowed out early Panchayati Raj. Strengthening community institutions without reservation, quorum rules and grievance redress simply strengthens the locally powerful.
- Coverage is thin where it is most needed. Social audit itself remains uneven — only a handful of states crossed half their gram panchayats, while Kerala achieved full coverage, and follow-up on findings is weak.
- Community cannot substitute for entitlement. Amartya Sen showed that deprivation is an entitlement failure — legal and institutional. Kerala’s community capacity rests on prior land reform, literacy and public health, not on communitarian spirit alone.
- A neo-liberal risk: invoking “community participation” can become a route to shifting the state’s obligations onto unpaid, largely female, local labour.
Conclusion
The statement should be accepted with an amendment: support mechanisms must be built and democratised, not merely assumed. Where they are constituted as rights-bearing institutions — mandated audit, reserved representation, recognised collectives — they convert schemes into entitlements. Where they are left to existing social relations, they convert schemes into patronage.