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Abstract
This article provides a critical study of a national poverty alleviation program in Sri Lanka, analyzing the inherent tension between its stated goal of "participatory development" and its actual function of "policing the poor." It examines the design and implementation of the program, which, while framed in the language of empowerment and participation, often operates as a top-down mechanism of social control and surveillance. The study, likely based on ethnographic research, explores how the program's conditionalities and monitoring mechanisms can disempower rather than empower its beneficiaries. The research critiques the paternalistic assumptions that often underlie such programs. The paper argues that for participatory development to be genuine, it must cede real power and decision-making authority to the poor themselves, rather than treating them as objects of a state-led poverty management strategy. The analysis concludes by calling for a fundamental rethinking of the design of poverty alleviation programs to ensure they are truly empowering.
Full Text
The language of "participatory development" has become ubiquitous in the world of poverty alleviation, but what does it mean in practice? This paper offers a critical case study of a major national poverty program in Sri Lanka, arguing that behind the participatory rhetoric often lies a logic of "policing the poor." The study begins by outlining the official goals and design of the program, which, like many of its kind, emphasizes community participation and empowerment. The core of the article is a deep, critical analysis of the program's implementation on the ground. It explores how the program's mechanisms for targeting, monitoring, and delivering benefits can function as a form of social surveillance, reinforcing the dependency of the poor on the state and conditioning their access to resources on their adherence to certain behavioral norms. The paper uses the concept of "policing" not in a literal sense, but to refer to a broader set of disciplinary practices that seek to manage and regulate the lives of the poor. The findings suggest a significant disconnect between the empowering language of the program and the often-disempowering experience of its beneficiaries. The paper concludes that there is a fundamental contradiction between the logic of top-down, state-controlled poverty management and the logic of genuine, bottom-up, participatory development. It calls for a paradigm shift that recognizes the poor not as problems to be managed, but as active agents in their own development.