Forms of Social Capital in India: A Case Study of Jhabua District

Abstract

This paper derives literature-based components of social capital. Since social capital changes form given the context, the paper uses the theoretical concepts of social capital to observe how they play out in rural tribal India. A qualitative data-coding software is used to sieve through the literature as well as to analyze the empirical data from Jhabua. The coding procedure combines theoretical codes based on previous literature and emergent codes derived from interview data. The paper suggests that not all forms of social capital are positive. However, each component must be clearly understood to promote community-driven actions towards development.

Keywords

Components of social capital contextualizing social capital social capital tribal India

Introduction

The literature does not indicate one clear definition of social capital. But there seems to be a general agreement that social capital has two broad divisions; first, structural social capital which includes social structures, organizations, institutions; second, cognitive social capital which is based on mental processes and psychology in the domain of ideas and includes particularly norms, values, attitudes, and beliefs (Cattell, 2001; Forrest and Kearns, 2001; Lin, 1999; Woolcock, 2001). Therefore, the structural (embeddedness), opportunity (accessibility) and action-oriented (use) aspects of social capital reinforces an identity and recognition to an individual (Forrest and Kearns, 2001; Lin 1999). The main essence of social capital, as observed from the definitions, is using the strength of networks to create a unique communal identity which helps to mobilize individual resources toward achieving a common goal. In the context of education, this could be a parent–teacher association coordinating their activities to promote student learning, or a local government body discussing the quality of education in local village schools. In a larger context, this community-driven action could translate into economic or political development.

This paper will first empirically derive the components of social capital from an extensive literature base of 64 articles. The literature review helps remove some of the existing fuzziness in the definition of social capital. The following section describes the context of the Jhabua district followed by the sampling and data collection procedures. The analysis section uses the Grootaert and Bastelaer’s (2002) framework to align literature-driven components of social capital to the empirical components of social capital. The discussion and conclusion section follows. Prior to this study, there have been very few studies that have contextualized social capital in the Indian setting (Krishna, 2002; Pantoja, 2002). This study will help to widen the literature base and craft out the definition of social capital in a tribal rural Indian setting.

Literature Review

Social Capital and its Components: Methodology of the Literature Review

To be able to contextualize social capital to the Indian setting, the first step would be to understand what constitutes ‘social capital’ and how it has been defined in the literature so far. The purpose of this section of the literature synthesis is to parse different components of social capital. This literature review is a synthesis of 64 articles from journals, edited books, book sections, etcetera. The method used is as follows. I categorized the definitions of social capital using the following framework – very general and complex statements describing broad categories of the concept were placed under the ‘constructs’ category. Note that the constructs are not mutually exclusive and may tend to overlap. More specific elements of the definitions were placed under the ‘domains’ category. If the author presented examples on how these domains were operationalized, they were placed under the ‘indicator’ category.

For example, Wu and Pretty (2004) describes social capital in terms of ‘relations of trust, reciprocity and exchanges, common rules, norms and sanctions and connectedness, networks and groups’ (2004: 1). This was defined as a social capital construct. The author further sub-classifies connectedness as ‘Three types of connectedness have been identified as important for the networks within, between and beyond communities. These are called bonding, bridging and linking types of social capital’ (2004: 2). Therefore, bonding, bridging and linking types of social capital are the domains in my classification category. The author further provides indicators of connectedness which show how these domains are measured or become visible:

households with greater connectedness have been shown to have higher incomes (Krishna, 2002; Narayan and Pritchett, 1999; Wu and Pretty 2004), better health, educational achievements and longevity (Fukuyama, 2000), improved social cohesion (Baron et al., 2001) and lead to more honest government (Putnam, 1993). (Wu and Pretty, 2004: 2)

These were categorized as indicators. It is not necessary that all three categories need to be complete for each author, as it depends on the details provided by the author in each category. I used in-vivo text to do the classification and created an excel database for these classifications.

Following the creation of the database, I used QSR NVIVO 8 software to code the constructs and the domains. The coding procedure is used as a data reduction strategy which helped to synthesize the classification and also map out the frequency of each of the constructs and the domains. I used in-vivo unstructured coding for this process.

Literature Synthesis: Overview of the Results

Table 1 helps to define each of these components.

Table 1.

Constructs and domains with their respective excerpts

Construct	Sub-construct	Domain	Excerpts and sources
Civic engagement			‘Varshney uses the term civic engagement to refer to voluntary associational networks which include both Hindus and Muslims, such as those formed for specific professional or issue purposes, communal and political interest groups, and supported by everyday social interaction’. (Narayan, 1999: 7).
	Structural group memberships and networks		‘. . . group membership and interaction influence the development of social capital for individuals’ (Astone et al., 1999: 15)
		Density of membership	‘Indeed, Jacobs’ (1961) reference to the conditions which contribute to “civilized self-government” was precisely in relation to the dense social networks and living conditions of poorer, urban neighborhoods’ (Forrest and Kearns, 2001: 2137).
		Horizontal and vertical organizations	‘Putnam’s (1993) seminal analysis of civic traditions in Italy focuses primarily on “horizontal” associations in which members relate to each other on an equal basis . . . Coleman (1988, 1990) has argued that social capital can include “vertical” associations as well, characterized by hierarchical relationships and unequal power distribution among members.’ (Grootaert, 1999: 5).
		Inclusiveness and diversity	‘Different network structures dense and weak, homogeneous and heterogeneous- were involved in the creation of social capital and had implications for well being-social networks differentiated by structural and cultural characteristics’ (Cattell, 2001: 1501).
		Intensity and nature of activities	‘Dense interlocking networks of relationships between individuals and groups’ (Onyx and Bullen, 2000: 2) It depends on a proclivity for sociability, but a spontaneous sociability, a capacity to form new associations and to cooperate within the terms of reference they establish’ (Fukuyama, 1995 in Onyx and Bullen, 2000: 2).
Cognitive abilities			‘Social capital evolves into the shared knowledge, understandings, and patterns of interactions that a group of individuals adopts in dealing with each other’ (Woolcock, 2001: 63).
Cooperation and coordination			‘Those features of social organization, such as trust, norms and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions’ (Putnam, 1993, in Onyx and Bullen, 2000: 2).
	Diffusion of innovation		‘Diffusion of innovations might be facilitated by greater linkages among individuals’ (Narayan and Pritchett, 1999: 873).
	Economic development		‘Economists tend to approach the concept of social capital through the analysis of contracts and transactions. This analysis links institutionalized trust to the efficiency of markets’ (Woolcock, 2001: 3).
	Efficacy of collective interest		‘Institutional dimension of transactions, markets and contracts. It determines the ways in which reliable, stable relationships and shared information among actors can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of both collective and individual interests’ (Woolcock, 2001: 1).
	Information		‘Greater associational activity may lead to less “imperfect information”‘ (Narayan and Pritchett, 1999: 873).
	Political efficacy		‘To analyze the nature of state-society interactions, Peter Evans (1996), drawing upon the work of several others, introduces the idea of synergy between government and citizen action’ (Narayan, 1999: 11).
	Problem solving		‘. . . the role of group or community cooperative action in solving problems with local ‘common property’ elements is potentially important’ (Narayan and Pritchett, 1999: 4).
Neighborhood-ecological effects			‘The neighborhood has always been an important unit of spatial aggregation for studying social interactions and the etiology of social problems’ (Smith, 1980, in Garner and Raudenbusch, 1991: 252).
	Informal horizontal relationships		‘“social capital”, as measured by household membership in formal and informal groups. The hypothesized mechanisms by which group membership affects household welfare’ (Maluccio et al., 1999: 1).
	Level or density of social ties		‘. . . the influence of community heterogeneity has been repeatedly discussed, based on the idea that different societal environments imply varying limitations or possibilities with respect to the development of associations, bonds of solidarity, and generalized trust’ (Hart and Dekker, 2003, in Coffe and Geys, 2006: 1055).
	Within family		‘Within-family social capital is measured a number of proxy variables including (1) presence of father in home, (2) frequency of activities involving child and parents, (3) parents’ expectations of school performance. (4) mother’s encouragement of child, (5) mother’s attendance at school meetings (6) number of child’s friends a mother knows’ (Durlauf, 2002: F418).
Psychological sense of community			‘citizen’s psychological involvement with their communities aggregate concept that has its basis in individual behavior, attitudes, interpersonal trust and predispositions’ (Bhrehm and Rahn, 1997: 1008).
	Attitudes		‘Economists have problems incorporating into their theories motivations such as friendship, loyalty, and empathy’ (Uphoff, 1992, in Woolcock, 2001: 12).
	Behavior		‘Unless the behavior becomes institutionalized (i.e. becomes part of behavioral norms), it cannot be properly designated as “capital”‘ (Woolcock, 2001: 76).
	Expectation of reciprocity		‘Material or symbolic exchanges within these relationships produce obligations and mutual recognition…’ (Edwards et al., 2003: 3).
	Group identification		‘Social capital is generally recognized as necessary to a functioning social order, along with a certain degree of common cultural identifications, a sense of “belonging”, shared behavioral norms’ (Serageldin and Grootaert, 1997: 196).
	Interpersonal trust		‘Social capital is generally recognized as necessary to a functioning social order, along with a certain degree of common cultural identifications, a sense of “belonging”, shared behavioral norms’ (Serageldin and Grootaert, 1997: 196).
	Predispositions		‘citizen’s psychological involvement with their communities aggregate concept that has its basis in individual behavior, attitudes, interpersonal trust and predispositions’ (Bhrehm and Rahn, 1997: 1006).
	Shared values and beliefs		‘Fukuyama (1997) argues that only certain shared norms and values should be regarded as social capital. Social capital can be defined simply as the existence of a certain set of informal rules or norms shared among members of a group that permits cooperation among them. The sharing of values and norms does not in itself produce social capital, because the values may be the wrong ones . . . The norms that produce social capital . . . must substantively include virtues like truth-telling, the meeting of obligations, and reciprocity’ (Durlauf and Fafchamps, 2004: 378–9).
	Social cohesion		‘In this model of society, social cohesion is viewed as a bottom-up process founded upon local social capital, rather than as a top-down process’ (Forrest and Kearns, 2001: 2137).
	Social relationships		‘Much of the literature and the empirical evidence on social capital focuses on the community or ‘grassroots’ level, where the social relationships among people with common neighborhood, ethnic, religious, or family ties can constitute important sources of security, mutual help, and conviviality’ (Woolcock, 2001: 7).
Routine activities			‘Routine activities: A concern for institutions suggests a fourth, often overlooked factor in discussions of neighborhood effects-how land use patterns and the ecological distributions of daily routine activities bear on children’s well-being. The location of schools, the mix of residentiaL with commercial land use (e.g., strip malls, bars), public transportation’ (Sampson et al., 2002: 145).
Civic norms			‘Social capital can be simply defined as an instantiated set of informal values or norms shared members that permit them to cooperate with one another’ (Durlauf, 2002: F418).
Social control			‘A second component of ecological differentiation stems from socioeconomic disadvantage and racial and ethnic segregation. Economic stratification by race and residence thus fuels the neighborhood concentration of cumulative forms of disadvantage, intensifying the social isolation of low income, minority and single-parent residents from resources that could support collective social control’ (Sampson et al., 1999: 446).
Structural institutional mechanisms			‘Structural social capital includes the composition and practices of local level institutions, both formal and informal, that serve as instruments of community development. Structural social capital is built through horizontal organizations and networks that have collective and transparent decision making processes, accountable leaders, and practices of collective action and mutual responsibility’ (Bain and Hicks, 1998, in Krishna and Shrader, 1999: 10).
	Diversity of institutions		‘Institutional resources, at least in theory, refer to the quality, quantity, and diversity of institutions in the community that address the needs of youth, such as libraries, schools and other learning centers, child care, organized social and recreational activities, medical facilities, family support centers, and employment opportunities’ (Sampson et al., 2002: 459).
	Efficacy		‘Mutual learning about how to work better together’ (Woolcock, 2001: 7).
	Institutional resources		‘Institutional resources, at least in theory, refer to the quality, quantity, and diversity of institutions in the community that address the needs of youth, such as libraries, schools and other learning centers, child care, organized social and recreational activities, medical facilities, family support centers, and employment opportunities’ (Sampson et al., 2002: 459).
	Vertical hierarchical organization		‘. . . vertical hierarchical organizations of the second, this view encompasses formalized institutional relationships and structures, such as governments, political regimes, the rule of law, court systems, and civil and political liberties’ (Serageldin and Grootaert, 1997: 46).

Note: The excerpts are the best representative quotes from a database of 64 articles which were used to empirically derive the components of social capital.

Table 2 presents the coding patterns using the NVIVO software. It shows the constructs or labels, sub-constructs, if any, and the corresponding domains. The literature based-references (first two data columns) are the number of instances the particular construct, sub-construct and domain have been referred to in the 64-article database.

Table 2.

Constructs and domains with their respective references in the literature and empirical data

Construct	Sub-construct	Domain	Literature based		Empirical data based
			Coding Instances	Percentage	Coding instances	Percentage
Civic engagement			10	1.4	0	0
	Structural group memberships and networks		47	6.58	16	3.22
		Density of membership	9	1.26	2	0.4
		Horizontal and vertical organizations	19	2.66	3	0.6
		Inclusiveness and diversity	22	3.08	8	1.61
		Intensity and nature of activities	26	3.64	11	2.21
		No participation structural groups			13	2.62
		Participation in structural groups			17	3.42
Cognitive abilities			11	1.54	0	0
Cooperation and coordination			28	3.92	0	0
	Diffusion of innovation		2	0.28	0	0
	Economic development		23	3.22	15	3.02
	Lack of economic development				11	2.21
	Efficacy of collective interest		15	2.1	0	0
		Negative action			4	0.8
		No action			18	3.62
		Positive			20	4.02
	Information		17	2.38	24	4.83
	Lack of information				26	5.23
	Low crime rate				14	2.82
	Some crime incidents				4	0.8
	Political efficacy		24	3.36	19	3.82
	Lack of political efficacy				4	0.8
	Problem solving		7	0.98	0	0
		Community dependent			23	4.63
		Self dependent			17	3.42
Neighborhood-ecological effects			42	5.88	0	0
	Informal horizontal relationships		32	4.48	9	1.81
	Lack of informal horizontal relationships				11	2.21
	Level or density of social ties		11	1.54	1	0.2
	Within family		28	3.92	0	0
Psychological sense of community			10	1.4	0	0
	Attitudes		10	1.4	0	0
	Behavior		10	1.4	0	0
	Expectation of reciprocity		27	3.78	0	0
	Group identification		10	1.4	14	2.82
	Institutional trust
		Inconclusive			2	0.4
		Negative			19	3.82
		Positive			20	4.02
		Somewhat positive			10	2.01
	Interpersonal trust				0	0
		Negative			6	1.21
		Positive	56	7.84	28	5.63
	Predispositions		2	0.28	0	0
	Shared values and beliefs		27	3.78	0	0
	Social cohesion		20	2.8	16	3.22
	Negative social cohesion				2	0.4
	Social relationships		7	0.98	0	0
Routine activities			2	0.28	0	0
Civic norms			51	7.14	9	1.81
Social control			49	6.86	2	0.4
Structural institutional mechanisms			17	2.38	0	0
	Diversity of institutions		1	0.14	0	0
	Efficacy
		Negative			19	3.82
		Positive	8	1.12	19	3.82
	Institutional resources		16	2.24	20	4.02
	Lack of institutional resources				21	4.23
	Vertical hierarchical organization		18	2.52	0	0
Total			714	100.00	497	100.00

Source: A database of 64 articles is used for coding the literature-driven component of social capital.

The data presented in the table are the number and percentage of references corresponding to their constructs and domains using the unstructured coding. Percentage are calculated out of the total number of references coded (total number of referenced coded = 714) from 64 articles. Please note that the number of references for the construct labels is not a summation of the number of references for the domains under the same construct. The constructs are coded independently of the domains, since some articles do not break down the construct into its corresponding domains. For example, for the cooperation and coordination construct, there are 28 references that were coded; their corresponding article sources did not break the construct down into its domains. But there were articles that described the sub-domains in detail, which have been coded and reported independently. In other words, the number of references for the construct will not match the summation of the references to the corresponding domain.

Table 2 shows that, among all the constructs and the domains, the most references were for interpersonal trust (with 56 references), followed by social and civic norms (with 51 references), social control (with 49 references), structural group membership (with 47 references) and neighborhood-ecological effect (with 42 references). The data indicates that mutual trust, structural group membership and neighborhood factors form an important part of the social capital construct. Social capital is also explained by social and civic norms and a means to exert social control which is in line with Bourdieu’s (1970) concept of cultural capital. This analysis presents the importance given in the literature to certain aspects of social capital over others.

Context of Jhabua

Jhabua is located in the western most part of Madhya Pradesh, touching the state of Rajasthan in the north, Gujarat in the west and Maharashtra in the south. The district is primarily rural with about 1,313 inhabited villages and has almost 89% tribal constitution. On development indicators such as literacy, age of women at (first) marriage, infant mortality, and nutritional status of women, Madhya Pradesh in central India is counted among the least-developed states in India. Madhya Pradesh hosts the largest tribal¹ populations in India (10 million – i.e., one fourth of the total state population; Adak et al., 2000). Jhabua is the seventh least-developed district in India with an overall adult literacy of about 36.9% and female literacy of 25.7% (Government of India, 2009). Fifty nine percent of the residents live below the poverty line.

The history of Jhabua started to emerge in the 16th century when the Islamic rulers started a mission to suppress the local residents, the Bhils, under Emperor Jehangir (Bajaj, 2008). The Bhil leader Jhabbu Naik (who has lent his name to the region) vigorously fought against the Islamic empire. Since then the Bhils have fought many battles with the Mughal rulers, the Marathas and later the British (1817–18). Bhil uprisings continued until the First Indian war of Independence (1857) where Bhil leaders sided with the Indian freedom fighters. However, the rulers of Jhabua took the side of the British. The known history of Bhils is thus of vigorous struggles against any external influence or domination (Bajaj, 2008).

The two most predominant tribes in Jhabua are the Bhil and the Bhilala.² The Bhil are organized into a number of patriarchal exogamous clans. They include 11 sub-groups. Traditionally they practiced polygamy. The Bhilala are a mixed tribe which sprang from marriages between Rajput³ men and Bhil women and are divided into four sub-groups. They speak the ‘Bhili’ dialect mixed with Malwi Hindi (Shrivastava, 2006). The tribal numbers are fast declining because of the influence of Christianity, Buddhism and other religions. For many, Christianity is a way to escape from being treated as ‘untouchables’ and ‘impure’ (Sedwal and Kamat, 2008). Their main occupation is agriculture and cattle rearing but, because of the development of roads in the area, the agriculture and cattle rearing areas have reduced (Shrivastava, 2006). There is seasonal agriculture in the region and, because of the lack of water in the summer months, most families migrate to the neighboring state of Gujarat. Poorly-designed poverty elimination programs of the government, corruption at various levels of the compensation distribution channels and lack of awareness and education have resulted in a poverty trap for the tribals. Indebtedness is common among the tribals of Jhabua, which often leads to exploitation by the money lenders (Amanullah and Sharma, 1987).

The resident tribes of Jhabua have a very active community life; all their rituals and festivities are conducted in the public sphere (Bajaj, 2008; Shrivastava, 2006). Symbolic of popular culture is the haat, which is a weekly market in larger villages and towns in the district. Along with its economic significance, the haat is an important ritualistic and festive occasion for the tribals, which is accompanied by dancing wearing silver jewelry, fine clothes and also the use of weaponry.

The tribal community’s most important festival is the Bhagoria spring festival. This festival is closely associated with the haat. Bhagoria is the name of the dance that is performed in a group. It is said that many young men and women find partners while performing the dance. Bright red and florescent yellow are common color clothes for this occasion. Festivals in Jhabua are celebrated as community events; the festivities are held in common places, in the weekly haat, village squares or village temples (Bajaj, 2008; Nahar, 1981; Shrivastava, 2006). The day after Bhagoria is celebrated by the community praying to the deity Gal-Bapji for the protection against all diseases (Shrivastava, 2006).

Not only do the tribals celebrate and pray together, they also work together. During the harvest season, the farmer community collectively decides on a schedule of harvesting all fields in the village. That is, instead of working on their own fields, they all harvest a field and move together to another field, until all are harvested. This practice is repeated every year and is called the halama. The associated custom of arji-paraji denotes that labor is loaned for urgent agricultural purposes, and the family receiving such a loan needs to pay back when required. Such exchange allows the Bhils to avoid hiring labor for money. Even the irrigation system, called the Pat of Sakri, is constructed and maintained jointly by farmers. The Bhils also have their own judicial system which they call the jati-panchayats. These are un-official village meetings that settle the disputes within the communities. It is believed that the faith in these panchayat proceedings is such that even in the cases that are settled in the secular national judicial courts system in India, the parties do not believe that full justice has been done until the verdict is passed by the jati-panchayats (Bajaj, 2008). The Bhils have a belief that disputes must not be continued and must be settled by the jati-panchayats. These customs emphasize social discipline and cohesion within the Bhil society (Bajaj, 2008). Thus, Jhabua showcases a community with a strong social capital factor and therefore makes it an interesting case study.

Method

A case-study approach is useful since the cases (individual respondents) are in a bounded system, which are the villages, and situated in a context (Creswell and Clark, 2007). There are six existing blocks⁴ in Jhabua District. To get a representative sample, villages were selected from all the six blocks. Two to three villages were randomly sampled from an exhaustive list of all the villages provided by the Census of India 2001 (Government of India, 2001). Data is collected from a total of 14 randomly-selected villages scattered across all the six blocks. Purposeful sampling is used to select the village leader from each village, followed by convenience sampling to select the cases in the village (Richards and Morse, 2007). The main data collection techniques involved group interviews and semi-structured individual interviews, along with field observations, village mapping, etcetera. Each interview lasted for 45–50 minutes. The protocols for the interviews are adapted from instruments used in previous social capital literature. QSR NVIVO 8 software is used to analyze the data. The coding procedure combines theoretical codes based on previous literature (Glaser, 1978, in Ezzy, 2002) and emergent codes derived from the data.

Villages are typically hamlets (also called phalias) comprised of scattered sub-communities based on their castes. From the villages selected, all sub-communities were included in the data collection to gather information on forms of collective organizations such as local government bodies (village education committees, village panchayats⁵) and parent–teacher associations existing in the village will either be a part of the structured individual interviews or group interviews. In each village, the typical data-collection activity would include meeting the village leader who is usually a panchayat member or someone educated in the village – more often it was an elderly person in the village. The meeting was in the open and attracted other members of the village. The discussion in the interviews included guided and unguided conversations, formal meeting interactions and multiple-respondent interviews. This was followed by a transect walk (Rietbergen-McCracken and Narayan, 1998) across the village to draw a map of the village with the help of the village members.

Analysis

Forms of Social Capital in Jhabua

The empirically-driven components of social capital are given in Table 2 (last two columns). Here the theoretical concepts are contextualized using the interview data from Jhabua district. This section helps to draw links between the conceptual concepts of social capital to the empirically-drawn patterns from the sample villages in Jhabua. The concepts are organized using Grootaert and Bastelaer’s (2002) framework of social capital as given in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Forms and scope of social capital

The framework is modified by including the non-cognitive outcomes along with the cognitive outcomes on the X axis, where the cognitive aspects would be covered in quadrant II and the non-cognitive part is included in quadrant IV. Apart from governance-related factors in quadrant II, the quadrant is extended to include other positive and negative outcomes of social capital like cognitive abilities, social control, routine activities and co-operation and co-ordination. This framework is useful as it presents a macro overview of social capital. The discussion on the constructs follows.

Sub-Classification in Terms of Constructs and Domains

Quadrant 1: Institutions of the State, Rule of Law; At the Intersection of Macro and Structural

The constructs or labels drawn from the literature synthesis that correspond to quadrant 1 are: structural institutional mechanism and social and civic norms.

Structural and Institutional Mechanism

The domains under this construct, as derived by the conceptual coding process, are the diversity of institutions, efficacy of the institutions, institutional resources and the vertical hierarchical organization. Institutions in the social capital literature are defined in terms of their hierarchical structure. Please refer to Table 1 for descriptions of each domain in the literature review section. Quadrant I comprises of higher-order institutions with authority, most likely with the state involvement. As defined in the literature ‘the structural category, broadly speaking, is associated with social organization of various kinds and particularly with roles and rules’ (Carroll, 2001: 7).

The interview data from Jhabua suggests that the central social organization in the village that has the responsibility of all development work is perceived to be the panchayat. Upon being asked the question, ‘for any development work in the village, like digging up a well, or constructing a road, whom will you go to first?’, the respondents in most villages usually replied ‘I will ask the sarpanch [head of the panchayat] and then go to the panchayat meeting’. The panch or the five heads of the panchayat are perceived to be the main ‘problem resolvers’ in the village. All matters in the village are reported in the panchayat meeting, but there is also a belief that their problems go unattended. In a village that needed a pond to be deepened before summer, they requested the panchayat and the respondent complained that the matter was dismissed by authorities. ‘The sarpanch does not listen to us. He does what he feels like doing’, indicating that the efficacy of the structural mechanism was questionable. The relationship with the panchayats is an excellent depiction of Coleman’s (1988, 1990) notion that social capital includes ‘vertical associations characterized by hierarchical relationships and unequal power distribution among members’ (Grootaert, 1999: 5). The indicator of the vertical and hierarchical organizations ‘encompasses formalized institutional relationships and structures, such as governments, political regimes, the rule of law, court systems, and civil and political liberties’ (Serageldin and Grootaert, 1997: 46).

However, these vertical and hierarchical linkages weaken when it comes to education. I asked them ‘if the teacher stops coming to the village primary school or is absent for many days, what would you do?’. Only a handful of respondents indicated that they will complain to the Sarpanch (head of the panchayat), whereas most of them said that they will not do anything nor complain to the school principal. Therefore there is a clear disconnect between the central authoritative power of the village and education.

Diversity, efficacy and resources of institutions are important domains under the structural and institutional mechanism and play a vital part in the development of social capital. The inefficiencies of the government-delivery system are evident from the interview data. Upon being asked the three most critical problems in the village, most of the respondents complained that there was infrequent electricity (only one or two hours a day) as it hampered their work. They also complained about the great distances they needed to travel to visit the nearest hospitals for humans and their cattle. They complained that the hospitals charged them the full rate for medicines and were not subsidized and usually had a shortage of medicine and hospital beds. The third main problem that they often mentioned was the lack of employment in the village because of which they needed to travel to other states and become daily wage earners. Inadequate water and roads were also mentioned. Again, very few people mentioned that the low literacy rate was a major problem in the village. Upon being asked if the teachers were sufficient in number in the school, they readily replied that there were two teachers for grades 1 to 5 and that this was sufficient. Large class sizes had become a norm in the village.

Social and Civic Norms

Social and civic norms as described in the literature are conditions that help to foster collective action. Durlauf states that ‘social capital can be simply defined as an instantiated set of informal values or norms shared members that permit them to cooperate with one another’ (2002: 1). Edwards et al. (2003) narrate that ‘social capital leads people to act in the interests of collective “public” good not just self-interest’ (2003: 85). The Jhabua data presents a negative side of social norms. For example, one of the questions was ‘do men and women both attend the panchayat meeting?’, and a respondent replied that ‘they call the women if there is a special meeting on women’s programs. They are called then’. This norm has been institutionalized, which deters the women to participate in any village level decision. In a Janpadh⁶ meeting in Ranapur block, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO, earlier called the Block Development Officer [BDO]) presided over the meeting with the elected Janpadhs. A government mandate requires 33% of elected members to be women. In the meeting, the elected Janpadh women came with their husbands who occupied the front row and made all the decisions, while the women kept silent. During the data-collection process, gender norms were made clear when I was not allowed to talk to women directly without the men of the households being present. Female respondents first checked with their husbands whether their answers were correct or not. Norms included restriction on meeting people; for instance, I asked a female respondent if she spoke with others in the village, she replied ‘no, I don’t go outside. Men go outside, women stay at home’. In another instance, I asked ‘if there needs to be some development work in the village, who will you contact?’. The reply was ‘my husband will go to the Janpadh’. Women with posts are also not regarded with much esteem. In one of the villages, I asked if the panchayat meetings were held regularly and the respondent replied by saying ‘No. A lady is the sarpanch and she has no clue, her husband does everything’.

An unsaid civic norm is not to visit the hamlets where the Dalits reside. The Dalits, also called harijans are among the ‘lower’ categories of Hindus and have been traditionally been referred to as the ‘untouchables’. During my transect walk in one of the villages, I was asked if I needed to go to the Dalit side of the village. It was sort of a warning signal as they wanted me to be aware that the area is not visited frequently. Civic norms in Jhabua foster a negative form of social capital which promotes collective action, but at the same time excludes women and some sections of the society.

Quadrant II: Governance; At the Intersection of Macro and Cognitive

Grootaert and Bastelaer’s (2002) framework defines this quadrant in terms of governance. For the analysis in this paper, I have adopted a broader view which incorporates the potential uses and benefits of social capital. Woolcock (2001) defines social capital under two dimensions: first, by the sources of social capital (e.g., through networks, groups, etc.); second, by the potential uses of social capital (e.g., cooperation, trust, etc.). Quadrant II is best suited to describe the potential uses of social capital that fit the macro and cognitive lens. Potential uses of social capital divided into the following constructs: cognitive abilities, cooperation and coordination, routine activities and social control.

Cognitive Abilities

The conceptual coding indicated a limited role of this domain with only 11 references in the literature database on this construct, validating the fact that there is a gap in the literature that shows the impact of social capital on cognitive abilities. This domain highlights the link between education and social capital which was first studied by Putnam (1993), followed by some of his later extension to the study (Helliwell and Putnam, 1999; Putnam, 1995). His analysis shows that education is one of the most important predictors of political and social engagement. This insight had multiple forms in Jhabua. I visited a school in Ranapur block with only a handful of children sitting in a classroom with no teacher. I asked one of the parents who came to school when they saw me.

Interviewer:

Do they feel that the children will benefit from coming to school?

Respondent:

It has been 2–3 years and the children don’t even know all the alphabets. Then what is the point of sending the children to school.

Interviewer:

They don’t teach in school?

Respondent:

No. The teacher, she teaches, but the head master does not.

Interviewer:

Can’t you complain about the master?

Respondent:

We don’t understand how to do it. We are not educated.

Interviewer:

So now you don’t send your children to school?

Respondent:

There is no benefit. At least in 12 months, my son should be able to write his name. But he still doesn’t know all the alphabets, then what is the point in sending the children to school.

The helplessness of the uneducated parent is evident from the response, which increases the probability of his child dropping out of school and promoting the dysfunctional school by this action. The main reason for a lack of interest towards the school system is the low literacy levels of the parents in the village.

Cooperation and Coordination

This construct is further broken down into the following domains: diffusion of innovation, economic development, efficacy of collective interest, information dissemination, political efficacy and problem solving. Economic development, or lack of, was a dominant theme in the Jhabua data. Economic development was linked to cyclical migration which the families undertook each year because of lack of employment. Migration is dependent on the networks with agents who guarantee employment to the migrants in the neighboring states. These agents would visit the villages in Jhabua and would promise jobs to potential migrants. When the agricultural cycle ends, the villagers contact the agents and decide on their travel schedules. There was a general belief that over the years their standard of living has increased and this is made possible because of better education. ‘Earlier when a letter used to arrive, we had to go to the nearest town 10 kilometers far for someone to read the letter. Now the situation has improved’. There are more literate individuals in the village now as compared to past years. But job opportunities have not kept pace with the growing needs. The theoretical concept of political efficacy in the data was in the form of going to cast a vote at the time of elections. Almost all the respondents, most of whom were not educated, went to cast their vote.

Information dissemination had both formal and informal sources. The informal sources of information were through the ration shop of the village or in the haat (local market places), where people generally met. In one of the villages, the women said that they would know if the teacher turned up in the school or not. While drawing water from a hand pump near the school, they kept a close watch to see what the children were doing in the school. Other respondents mentioned that to get any information about the school, they would go to the school itself and ask the headmaster or the teacher. None of the respondents relied on the parent–teacher associations or village education committee to gain information about the functioning of the school. Nor did any respondent have any informal or casual conversation about their child’s education with each other. Most respondents were not even aware if their local schools had a parent–teacher association. A few mentioned that they were aware of a self-help group which consisted of parents that helped with the midday meal at school.

In contrast, to get information about a government scheme they would be more proactive to take the help of structural government systems like the Sarpanch or the panchayats. Most villages did not have a community hall (panchayat bhavan) or a common place to watch television. Other sources of information like newspapers, radios and private television were rare.

Multiple authors refer to cooperation and coordination in the literature with the main essence being that ‘strong networks enable communities to solve collective action problems by breeding cooperation and easing coordination’ (Bhrehm and Rahn, 1997: 999). However, the Jhabua data presents an interesting division between tasks that require coordination and cooperation and tasks that do not. For instance, any school-related problem is usually dealt with individually or within the family. But if the family or individual needed to borrow money, they would ‘ask the neighbors first, if they can’t give [the money] then will go to the market or to some money lender’.

Routine Activities

Sampson et al. (2002) discuss that social capital helps people perform their routine activities. If we take into consideration the festivities, yearly carnivals, and activities at the temple, which form a part of their routine activities as described, many elements of social capital are incorporated.

Social Control

This construct taps into aspects of negative social capital. The concept shares some aspects of Bourdieu’s (1970) concept of cultural capital. In Jhabua, the Sarpanch has the power to exert control over the village. In an interview, I asked ‘have you ever got together to work on some issue?’. The villager leader’s response was ‘No one goes to the sarpanch, I am the only one who speaks up. The people get suppressed easily, so there is no voice’. In the same village, another respondent mentioned that ‘we don’t attend the panchayat meetings since we don’t get along with the Sarpanch’. The village Sarpanch had a notorious reputation of exploiting his power.

Other reported instance of exploitation by the Sarpanch included a case where a household with income below the poverty line⁷ was not given government-subsidized food grain from the ration stock, claiming that they were above the poverty line.

Interviewer:

You didn’t get ration card?

Respondent:

No we didn’t.

Interviewer:

Why?

Respondent:

Because the sarpanch is corrupt.

Interviewer:

Do you collect together and demand for something?

Respondent:

No one can go and demand for things collectively as the sarpanch uses violence.

Interviewer:

Did you go to the panchayat meetings?

Respondent:

No I didn’t go. They are not useful. If I complain, the sarpanch gets drunk and does violence [sic].

Schools are not devoid of using their way of exerting control. The respondents in many villages reported that the headmaster would take bribes from the funds that were allotted to the self-help group to prepare the meals. He would take the present representative to the bank and ask him to draw money and the parent not being able to read or write would not know the reason for drawing the money. Other government schemes which promised middle-school girls bicycles to trek to school every day did not come through. Or in some cases, the bicycles would be built using cheap materials and would wear out in no time. Edwards et al. (2003) state that ‘here, social ties constitute a means for social control through the generation and sustenance of norms of approved social behavior, and the sanctioning of disapproved behavior’ (2003: 85). Here corruption is actually leading to social reproduction, despite the state’s attempts to mitigate it through social programs for the marginalized. Such behavior would help the education system to maintain its status quo of providing poor-quality education and other linked facilities at the cost of the parents and the children.

Quadrant III: Local Institutions, Networks; At the Intersection of Structural and Micro

Quadrant III is shared by two constructs: civic engagement and neighborhood-ecological effect. Woolcock and Narayan (2000) would characterize this quadrant under the ‘institutional view’ of social capital. The institutional characterization of social capital suggests that ‘this approach argues that the very capacity of social groups to act in their collective interest depends on the quality of the formal institutions under which they reside’ (North, 1990 in Woolcock and Narayan, 2000: 66). In the case of Jhabua, the efficiency of the local government agencies like the panchayat plays a critical role in the participation and trust of the villagers in this formal institution. The following are some of the categories in this quadrant.

Civic Engagement

The structural group membership construct is further broken down into domains which present different dimensions of the group characteristics: density of membership, type of horizontal and vertical organizations, inclusiveness and diversity and intensity and nature of activities. Civic engagement or social participation is further classified into structural group membership which ‘includes the composition and practices of local level institutions . . . that serve as instruments of community development. Structural social capital is built through horizontal organizations and networks’ (Bain and Hicks, 1998 in Krishna and Shrader, 1999: 98). These local organizations are unlike the formal institutional structures as described in quadrant 1, but can still be categorized into horizontal and vertical organizations. Indicators of the local organizations are ‘local religious organizations; neighborhood watch programs; block groups, tenant associations, or community council; business or civic groups; ethnic or nationality clubs; and local political organizations’ (Sampson et al., 1999: 207). Jhabua data shows that many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are working on primary and adult education, micro-credit activities, vocational training, agriculture related activities like wormi-culture, etcetera. The government has also been active in some of these areas and initiated their work by forming self-help groups that focused on specific social issues. In one of the villages, the key informant was a woman who headed a women’s self-help group formed with the help of the Jhabua Forest Department. The group’s activities included lending money to a family in need, saving a Rupee a day in the combined pool. It was interesting to find gender roles prominent here again, where the women had to take permission from their husbands to be a part of this group. But the group gave them a sense of confidence that they could help their family financially if the need arose. The membership in most NGOs was open and inclusive and diversity in the group was celebrated.

Interviewer:

How did you decide that these are the things on which we can take a loan and we can work accordingly? Did you always have formal meetings?

Respondent 1:

First we had a meeting and decided if we will be able to do this or not. All of us said that we can do this and we can work together. We also asked our husbands that they should not drink alcohol and fight with us. They also agreed that we can do this work. We also decided that if any man drinks alcohol, we all women will get together and fight with him.

Respondent 2:

The group made a lot of social improvements in the village.

Since most of these initiatives were instituted through government policies that changed when different parties came into power, the continuity of the program was thus affected. The same holds for the NGOs as their programs are dependent on the funds they receive. Due to the lack of continuity in any of these programs, there is no sustainability of the activities these programs initiated.

Other local groups like the parent–teacher associations (PTA), self-help parent groups that oversee the preparation of the midday meals, and village education committees were not mentioned as a recognized part of local groups in the village. Some respondents reported that they were aware that a PTA and a self-help group exist, but they were not aware of their roles and duties. This finding is similar to a study in Madhya Pradesh which found that parents and school committees are neither aware of their oversight roles nor participated in school management (Pandey et al., 2008).

Neighborhood-Ecological Effect

Neighborhood effect has been widely studied in the literature. Social capital enhancement through neighborhood effect can occur through multiple pathways, one of which is through ‘kinship/friendship, ties [which] measures the number and relative proportion of friends and relatives that respondents reported living in the neighborhood factor’ (Sampson et al., 1999: 207). This ‘neighborhood activism’ is broken down into the following domains within family network and ties (indicator–parent–child interactions); informal horizontal relationship (indicator–neighbors chatting with each other); level and density of social ties. This construct attempts to tap into informal networks and associations through the attribute of spatial proximity. Jhabua data indicate a strong level of family ties. Since the family size is usually large (with more than two children each), the children with their families settle down in the same hamlet and work on their family-owned fields.

Regardless of the fact that the hamlets are extremely scattered, the residents of the hamlets had knowledge of their neighboring families in other hamlets. The families would often go to the haat together or take part in the Bhagoria festival together. Same cultural practices, rituals and festivals strengthened the social ties. In many of my meetings, informal discussions between individuals would mainly include agriculture-related issues. For instance, Jhabua witnessed one of its worst droughts in the year 2009. Discussions focused around plantations and how the drought was drying out the seeds. However, it was not surprising to find that neither the school nor education broadly was discussed at all. Since there was only a single school in the village, one would imagine that it would naturally be a common concern, but this was not the case.

Quadrant IV: Trust, Local Norms, Values; At the Intersection of Micro and Non-Cognitive

The label that best describes these attributes is the ‘psychological sense of community’ (Lochner et al., 1999).

Social capital, as defined by its principle theorists (Coleman, 1990; Putnam, 1993, 1995), consists of those features of social organization such as networks of secondary associations, high levels of interpersonal trust and norms of mutual aid and reciprocity which act as resources for individuals and facilitate collective action. (Lochner et al., 1999: 260)

This affective construct is broken down into the following components: attitudes, behavior, expectation of reciprocity, group identification, interpersonal trust, predispositions, shared values and beliefs, social cohesion and social relationships.

The literature treats this construct as an important component of social capital, of which institutional and personal trust are a large part. To tap into the institutional trust component, questionnaires used in Jhabua included questions on the trust the individual had on the following entities and their duties: politicians – to fulfill promises; military – to defend the country; police – to enforce the law; state government – to look after the people; newspapers – to print the truth; village panchayats – to implement public projects; schools – to provide good education; hospitals and doctors – to provide good treatment; courts – to meet out justice; and, finally, banks – to keep money safe. An overview of the responses is presented in Table 3.

Table 3.

Psychological sense of community: Institutional and interpersonal trust

	Coding instances	Percentage
Institutional trust
Inconclusive	2	3.92
Negative	19	37.25
Positive	20	39.22
Somewhat positive	10	19.61
Total	51	100.00
Interpersonal trust
Negative	6	17.65
Positive	28	82.35
Total	34	100.00

Thirty-nine percent of the responses were positive, closely followed by no trust at all with 37% of the responses. If we look at the categories, they trusted the government, the panchayats and, with less or no trust at all, for politicians, hospitals, police, banks and courts.

A majority of the respondents reported that they trusted each other (82%) on matters relating to borrowing money in times of need, or if they needed some help, they believed that their neighbors would help them. In a few villages (not generalized to all), trust seems to be a function of the tribe. ‘Since there are Patlias here there is trust among people. Trust is the same’ and ‘Yes, I trust my own caste members and not others’. There is a general belief that Patlias are more honest and trustworthy than the Bhils. In a village with only Patlia residents, the respondents reported that they trusted each other because they were from the Patlia tribe. Whereas Bhils, who are said to have been victimized and exploited for many years, reported that they trusted each other while others said that there was no trust, but there were no tribe links to trust in these villages. In the interviews I asked if they trusted the money lenders, since the money lenders are known for charging more interest and thus practicing exploitative practices. The response was again linked to the caste ‘the money lender is from their own caste, so they trust him. Even if they go in the middle of the night, they get the money from him’. Apart from these tribe-based differences, which form a large part of group identification which attributed to social cohesion, the respondents did not complain about any other form of discrimination on the basis of education, income, landownership, etcetera.

In summary, Table 2 helps to observe the percentage of instances of each of the conceptual and emergent codes. The table indicates that, in each of the villages, there are higher incidences of the following codes: institutional resources, information, institutional efficacy, efficacy of collective interest, economic development and structural group membership and networks. Across all the 14 villages, civic engagement in the form of structural group membership had a considerable number of occurrences. Three villages show a high degree of participation in structural groups among all the villages. Development and lack of economic development also have a higher percentage of occurrences. Positive efficacy of collective interest has a higher number of occurrences for five villages out of the total of 14. Concurrently, four villages that report no action take as a part of the collective interest. Two villages also report negative action was taken as a part of the collective interest. More villages (four) indicate that there is a lack of informal horizontal relationships in the village and those that report presence of informal relationships (three). Social capital in the form of group identification shows higher percentage of occurrence in five villages. Interpersonal trust among the village residents is spread out to a larger number of villages as compared to incidences of lower level of trust. Incidences of social cohesion are present in more than five villages. Social capital in the form of civic norms is indicated in four villages. The efficacy of structural institutions has both positive and negative aspects, both of which have higher percentages of occurrence. Similarly, institutional resources and lack of institutional resources have a higher number of instances as well.

Discussion and Conclusion

As mentioned before, the theoretical coding from the literature indicates that, among all the constructs and the domains, the most references were for interpersonal trust (with 56 references), followed by social and civic norms (with 51 references), social control (with 49 references), structural group membership (with 47 references) and neighborhood-ecological effect with 42 references. The data indicates that mutual trust, structural group membership and neighborhood factors form an important part of the social capital construct. Please refer to Table 2.

The empirical coding data from Jhabua suggest social capital is reflected more in terms of social organizations and their functions. Structural institutional mechanisms including institutional resources and efficacy of the institution are important empirical factors of social capital in the given context. The more affective constructs such as the institutional and interpersonal trust also define social capital in Jhabua. It is interesting to note that the interpersonal trust is a common predominant dimension for both the theoretical as well as the empirical data. Unlike the theoretical data, cooperation and coordination had a higher frequency of occurrence in the empirical data. The main domains were the efficacy of collective interest, information transmission and community dependence for problem solving purposes.

It is worth noticing that the social capital in the context of Jhabua relies more on operational and functional components of social capital. These constructs are cooperation and coordination, institutional and interpersonal trust and the structural and institutional mechanisms where the interpersonal trust is a function of the caste. The structural and institutional mechanisms would largely rely on the constitution and functioning of the local government system, mainly the panchayat. A negative form of social capital exists in the form of a corrupt head of the panchayat, but he/she plays an important role in the community. Literature also points out that all forms of social capital that otherwise play a critical role in facilitating certain actions or resources may become useless or even harmful (Coleman, 1988, 1990; John and Renzio, 1997, in Pantoja, 2002). For instance, some social and civic norms – such as women interacting less with others in the community or voluntarily not participating in the village panchayat meetings – may not be beneficial for them or the society in the long run. Other local institutions such as NGOs also played an important role. However, groups linked to the school such as the self-help groups, PTAs and village education committees seem to be generally weak.

The strength of social capital depends on structural group memberships in formal institutional memberships and participation. The institution with multiple vertical and horizontal linkages has higher efficacy. For instance, participating in a PTA is not as effective as participation in the village panchayat as the panchayat has stronger linkages. Pantoja’s (2002) case study on similar lines suggests that civic society and its social capital matter for community development when the government institutions and the general institutional framework of society at large are functioning efficiently. Therefore social capital simply acts as a catalyst to promote development and improve efficiency, but only when other institutional resources are in place (Serageldin and Grootaert, 1997, in Pantoja 2002). Informal horizontal relationships and social ties improve social cohesion, but do not translate into development, political efficacy or school improvement.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Henry Levin and Professor Monisha Bajaj at Teachers College, Columbia University, for their extremely useful comments and suggestions which helped to shape this paper.

Notes

Radhika Iyengar is the Director of Education, Nigeria Scale-up Project at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in Economics and Education (with distinction) from Teachers College, Columbia University on her dissertation ‘Social capital as a determinant of schooling in rural India: A mixed methods study’. Previously she has a Masters degree in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, India. Her professional experience also includes working in an India based non-profit organization, Pratham, for multiple years. Her research interests are evaluation of educational programs and international educational development.

References

Adak

Bhattacharya

Ghosh

Pal

Bharti

Vasulu

(2000) The tribes of Madhya Pradesh: A brief ethnographic note. In: Adak

Bhattacharya

Ghosh

Pal

Bharti

Vasulu

(eds) Demography and Health Profile of the Tribals. New Delhi: Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd.

Amanullah

Sharma

(1987) Indebtedness Among Tribals of Jhabua District: A Case Study. Madhya Pradesh: Bhopal Tribal Research Institute.

Astone

Nathanson

Schoen

Kim

(1999) Family demography, social theory, and investment in social capital. Population and Development Review 25: 1–31.

Bain

Hicks

(1998) Building Social Capital and Reaching Out to Excluded Groups: The Challenge of Partnerships. Paper presented at CELAM meeting on The Struggle Against Poverty Towards the Turn of the Millennium, Washington DC.

Bajaj

(ed.) (2008) Resource Atlas of Jhabua. A Celebration of the Land and People of Jhabua. New Delhi: New Delhi Madhya Pradesh Council of Science and Technology Centre for Policy Studies.

Baron

Field

Schuller

(2001) Social Capital: Critical Perspectives: Oxford University Press.

Bourdieu

(1970) Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In Richards

(ed.) Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change. London: Tavistock, 56–69.

Brehm

Rahn

(1997) Individual-level evidence for the causes and consequences of social capital. American Journal of Political Science 41(3): 999–1023.

Carroll

(2001) Social capital, local capacity building and poverty reduction. Social Development Papers. Manila: Office of Environment and Social Development, Asian Development Bank.

10.

Cattell

(2001) Poor people poor places, and poor health: The mediating role of social networks ad social capital. Social Science and Medicine 52: 1501–1516.

11.

Coffe

Geys

(2006) Community heterogeneity: A burden for the creation of social capital? Social Science Quarterly 87(5): 1054–1071.

12.

Coleman

(1988) Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology: 95–120.

13.

Coleman

(1990) Foundations of Social Theory. Boston, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

14.

Creswell

Clark

(2007) Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research. New Delhi and Delhi: Sage Publications.

15.

Durlauf

(2002) Symposium on social capital: Introduction. The Economic Journal 112(483): F417–F418.

16.

Durlauf

Fafchamps

(2004) Social Capital. Oxford: Mimeo University of Wisconsin and University of Oxford.

17.

Edwards

Franklin

Holland

(2003) Families and Social Capital: Exploring the Issues. London: Families and Social capital ESRC Research Group, South Bank University.

18.

Evans

(1996) Government action, social capital and development: Reviewing the evidence on synergy. World Development 24(6): 1119–1132.

19.

Ezzy

(2002) Qualitative Analysis: Practice and Innovation. London: Routledge.

20.

Forrest

Kearns

(2001) Social cohesion, social capital and neighborhood. Urban Studies 38(12): 2125–2143.

21.

Fukuyama

(1995) Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York. Free Press.

22.

Fukuyama

(2000) Social capital and development: The coming agenda. SAIS Review XXII 1.

23.

Garner

Raudenbusch

(1999) Neighborhood effects on educational attainment: A multilevel analysis. Sociology of Education 64(4): 251–262.

24.

Glaser

(1978) Theoretical Sensitivity: Advances in the Methodology of Grounded Theory. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press.

25.

Government of India (2001) Census of India 2001. Available at: http://www.censusindia.net/ (accessed 23 June 2008).

26.

Government of India (2009) Jhabua Statistical Profile. Available at: http://www.jhabua.nic.in/factfile.htm (accessed 25 August 2010).

27.

Grootaert

(1999) Social Capital, Hosehold Welfare and Poverty in Indonesia. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

28.

Grootaert

Bastelar

(2002) The Role of Social Capital in Development: An Empirical Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

29.

Helliwell

Putnam

(1999) Education and Social Capital. Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research.

30.

Jacobs

(1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

31.

John

Renzio

(1997) Policy arena: ‘missing link’ or analytically missing? The concept of social capital. Journal of International Development 9(7): 919–37.

32.

Krishna

(2002) Active Social Capital: Tracing the Roots of Development and Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press.

33.

Krishna

Shrader

(1999) Assessment of Social Capital. Paper presented at the Conference on Social Capital and Poverty Reduction, Washington, DC, 22–24 June.

34.

Lin

(1999) Building a network theory of social capital. Connections 22(1): 28–51.

35.

Lochner

Kawachi

Kennedy

(1999) Social capital: A guide to its measurement. Health and Place 5: 259–270.

36.

Maluccio

Haddad

May

(1999) Social Capital and Income Generation in South Africa, 1993–98. Washington DC: International Food Policy Research Institute

37.

Nahar

(1981) A study of the Economic Conditions of the Tribals of Jhabua (in Hindi). PhD Thesis, Vikram University, Ujjain, India.

38.

Narayan

(1999) Bonds and Bridges: Social Capital and Poverty. Washington, DC: World Bank.

39.

Narayan

Pritchett

(1999) Cents and sociability: Household income and social capital in rural Tanzania. Economic Development and Cultural Change 47(4): 871–897.

40.

National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) (2005) National Curriculum Framework 2005. New Delhi: National Council of Educational Research and Training.

41.

North

(1990) Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press.

42.

Onyx

Bullen

(2000) Measuring social capital in five communities. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 36(1): 23–42.

43.

Panday

Goyal

Sundararaman

(2008) Community Participation in Public Schools: The impact of Information Campaigns in Three Indian States. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

44.

Pantoja

(2002) Qualitative analysis of social capital: The case of community development in coal mining areas in Orissa, India. In: Grootaert

Bastelar

(eds) Understanding and Measuring Social Capital: A Multidisciplinary Tool for Practitioners. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 109–149.

45.

Putnam

(1993) Making Democracy Work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

46.

Putnam

(1995) Turning in, turning out: The strange disappearance of social capital in America. Political Science and Politics 28(4): 664–683.

47.

Richard

Morse

(2007) Readme First for a User’s Guide to Qualitative Methods, 2nd edition. London and New Delhi: Sage Publications.

48.

Rietbergen-McCracken

Narayan

(1998) Participation and Social Assessment: Tools and Techniques. Washington, DC: World Bank.

49.

Sampson

Morenoff

Earls

(1999) Beyond social capital: Spatial dynamics of collective efficacy for children. American Sociological Review, 64(October): 633–660.

50.

Sampson

Morenoff

Gannon-Rowley

(2002) Assessing ‘neighborhood effects’: Social processes and new directions in research. Annual Review of Sociology 28: 443–478.

51.

Sedwal

Kamat

(2008) Education and Social Equity with a Special Focus on Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes in Elementary Education: Create Pathways to Success. New Delhi: Consortium for Research Educational Access Transitions and Equity.

52.

Serageldin

Grootaert

(1997) Defining Social Capital: An Integrating View. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

53.

Shrivastava

(2006) A Description of the Social Aspects of the Damor Tribal Group Residing in Jhabua District (translated title from Hindi to English). Madhya Pradesh: Bhopal Tribal Research Institute.

54.

Smith

(1980) Neighbourhood effects on mental health. In: Herbert

Johnston

(eds) Progress in Research and Applications: Vol. 3 of Geography and the Urban Environment. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons.

55.

Uphoff

(1992) Learning from Gal Oya: Possibilities for Participatory Development and Post-Newtonian Social Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

56.

Woolcock

(2001) The Place of Social Capital in Understanding Social and Economic Outcomes. Printemps Spring: OECD.

57.

Woolcock

Narayan

(2000) Social capital: Implications for development theory, research and policy. The World Bank Research Observer 15(2): 225–249.

58.

Pretty

(2004) Social connectedness in marginal rural China: The case of farmer innovation circles in Zhidhan, North Shaanxi. Agriculture and Human Values 21: 81–92.