Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

6 SUMI KRISHNA
urged governments to link macro-economic development policies with
the needs of poor women to ensure that development did not adversely
affect them; to address the structural causes of persistent poverty; and to
provide adequate safety nets, and strengthen state and community-based
support systems so that women living in poverty could ‘withstand adverse
economic environments and preserve their livelihoods, assets and revenues
in times of crisis’ (Para 58g: 41). It urged multilateral financial
and development institutions to create ‘an enabling environment that
allows women to build and maintain sustainable livelihoods’ (ibid.: 43).
In the late 1990s, these concerns provided the impetus for the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other agencies such as
the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the British
government’s Department for International Development (DFID), and
international non-government organisations (NGOs) such as Oxfam to
adopt their own versions of a Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) Approach.
The UNDP defines SL as ‘the capability of people to make a living and
improve their quality of life without jeopardising the livelihood options
of others, either now or in the future’. It advocates a poverty reduction
strategy in the context of sustainability. This is a narrower definition than
that of Chambers’, and has resonances with WCED’s sustainable development
approach.
Development often reinforces local power structures. This has been
documented for many different socio-cultural and ecological contexts,
exposing the myth of equity in community resource management (see
Gujit and Shah 1998; Krishna 1995, Krishna 2004a). The introduction of
citizenship into the debate provides an important integrating concept to
re-envision development as participatory and people-driven, and to view
livelihood as a political right to dignified living rather than simply as a
welfare need.
The Construction of Citizenship
Unlike concepts of development and sustainable livelihoods, which are
of relatively recent origin, the idea of citizenship has engaged rulers for
ages, with political philosophers having attempted to define and categorise
citizens. While Buddhist texts of BC sixth to fourth century reflect a dynamic
concept of social stratification by which slaves too could become