Introduction

The trajectory of community development has been a tumultuous one: a path defined by radical potentialities yet able to claim only limited success. Even during those phases when radical philosophies were less prominent in community development, it stood for relatively ‘fair’ and ‘just’ processes and outcomes. Arguably, we have witnessed a simultaneous expansion and constriction in our understandings of the transformative potential of ‘community’ over several decades, and this in turn necessitates a closer examination of the changing expectations and make-up of community development's subjects. This chapter highlights the evolution and maturation of community development in India. It attempts to explain how ‘community’ has been variously construed in India's processes of community development and how those constructions have been challenged, revised and improvised by practitioners and activists. The chapter thus emphasises that community development's subjects have shown a potential for transformation and agency. For example, subjects have questioned the idea of ‘community development’ itself and, through self- and collective organising, they have become more ‘political’. This phenomenon is referred to here as ‘community organising’ (CO) and by that I mean organising and collectivising processes that redefine power relationships in society. In India, the conception of CO has evolved away from a model of community development that was critiqued as statist, and that mainly referred to government- and/or NGO-guided or facilitated development programmes. CO, on the other hand, has been regarded as far more progressive, with mobilisation and collectivisation generating strategies of contestation, along with the potential for collaboration with the state and its agencies.

The chapter analyses community development from the standpoint of its constituents, that is its subjects. By ‘subject’, I am referring to two contrasting situations: the first, where the ‘subject’ is seen as dissolving into a non-sovereign product of social and discursive construction, devoid of any stability, autonomy or unity of self; the second, where the ‘subject’ can be regarded as self-sufficient, enduring and sovereign, from which all consciousness and action springs. Since ‘subject’ implies both an actor and one who is acted on, this chapter traces movements from one situation to another. More specifically, it is interested in the processes that have led to the emergence of ‘political subjects’ who demonstrate a capacity to influence their lives and circumstances. Communities, acting as ‘political subjects’, consciously challenge the situations whereby they are made subjects of power, asserting their rights, entitlements, freedom and dignity instead.