In the days, the role of ‘social capital’ in economic development is being widely discussed. The surge in the interest on this topic is, possibly, reflected by the considerable amount of literature built around social capital, as well as its ramifications in terms of sustainable development. The question could be asked as to why there is the sudden surge in interest later than putting it on the side lines for a pretty long time? The answer would, possibly, be found in the new “institutional economics” framework delivered by Douglas North as well as also in the “aggregated social capital” argument orchestrated by Olson.
The basic argument for invoking interest in social capital is that, distribution of productive resources per capita cannot fully imprison the differences in per capita income across countries. A division of the explanations lies with institutions, different forms of social money, public policies etc., that are deemed as no less important contributing actors to growth than physical or human capital. Thus, in explaining the differential financial performance - across countries, communities as well as kinships even with similar endowments of ‘conventional’ capital, social capital came to the forefront as an explanatory variable. World Bank also picked it up as a useful organizational idea.The hitherto hidden factors, such as government polices, institutional arrangements as well as organizational designs as well as cooperation between government as well as industry all under the umbrella of social capital – also cropped up as considerably powerful factors in explaining the levels as well as variations in economic growth as well as development. Second, in a study of Italy, Putnam argues that the higher density of voluntary associations in northern Italy explains the region’s economic success relative to southern Italy, where such associations are less frequent.
Third, after the 1991 fall of Somalia’s government – in the face of civil disorder as well as falling income trade flourished as well as incomes improved only in the port city of Boosaaso, where a local warlord organized a security force as well as a council of clan elders with support from local people. As well as, finally, in Gujarat (India), confrontation between government officials as well as local people over the management of forest resources led to economic stagnation. However, after communities were mobilized as well as joint forest management was instituted, conflicts declined as well as village income rose. The above examples, thus, point to the ‘missing social capital’ from the mainstream discourse on development.
This chapter takes up the issue of social capital, first, for enlightening readers about social capital as well as its various aspects, as well as second, for a snap shot on the status of social capital in Bangladesh. In the following paragraphs, we shall try to go during a definition of social capital, the genesis of the concept called ‘social capital’, the various definitions that shrouds its true meaning, a brief overview of the terminology as it passed history as well as the advantages as well as disadvantages of ‘social capital. Finally, we shall attempt to connect the theoretical underpinnings to the Bangladesh context.policy implications
Policy implications promising from the study address the three major issues. One relates to the target oriented approach of NGOs, that iswas found effective in organizing the poor as well as bringing them under a mutually supportive network. However, existing studies show that internally diverse associations generally yield higher levels of benefits than others. Moreover we also found that collective action depends to a large extent on higher level of education, income as well as physical assets. Under the situation, whilst target orientated approach of NGOs helps them to serve poorer groups better, they must also seek for an effective as well as more interactive platform for bringing diverse groups for mutually beneficial action. Second, it is heartening to locate that every village has an energetic school committee as well as the villagers considered it as the most important institution. In order to strengthen this institution we recommend that the school committee can be more broad-based as well as active to have regular meeting with service providers in order to make the later accountable to the people. We found that neither NGOs nor LGBs who are the major service providers in rural areas are accountable to people in implementing their policies. Hence a village based institution like broad based school committee or Polli Samaj as initiated by BRAC to protect the interest of the rural poor is needed to hold all service providers accountable to the common people as well as for working together toward improvement in the quality of services. Third, infrastructure development was conducive for social capital as well as economic growth. Hence, it is important to emphasize on infrastructure development in such a way so that a village can be linked with its nearest urban centre for all practical purposes be it selling rural products in town market or seeking better paid employment opportunities or better health or educational services. As the study shows that greater links of Bhabanipur with city as well as other district headquarters enabled the villagers to maintain social contact outside the village. Information provided by key informants while preparing community profiles revealed that by virtue of their links with one of the bureaucrats in city who was born in this village, the villagers managed to get registration for the school that they established collectively. The study also showed that where a large number of villagers were excluded from the basic services such as health, education as well as safety net exposure there is lower social capital as well as poorer economic growth. Therefore, to nurture as well as sustain social capital it is important to have greater release of basic services as well as establish channels of contact between different categories of villagers as well as accountability of the service providers to the common people
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