Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

16 SUMI KRISHNA
It has also been suggested that instead of seeing citizenship conventionally
as a means to realise rights, we should see rights as one of the means
to realise equal citizenship (Voet 1998: 73). This has resonances with
Amartya Sen (1999: 36), who sees development in terms of the substantive
freedoms of people, and the process of expanding these freedoms both as
the ‘principal means’ and as the ‘primary end’ of development. Perhaps
we could then argue that it is necessary to recast development to deepen
citizenship, even as citizenship is reconstructed to deepen development.
Concepts of inclusive, multi-tiered and gendered citizenship are especially
valuable in countering patriarchal approaches to development and
technocratic attempts to ‘de-politicise’ development.
II. RESOURCES, WORK, GOVERNANCE,
INSTITUTIONS AND AGENCY
Poor people’s livelihood rights are increasingly being subverted by the
state and powerful sections of society in concert with global capital and
market forces, resulting in the loss of economic spaces, livelihoods, resources
and knowledge, and often the suppression of ways of life and
culture. The livelihood rights of poor and marginalised people are inextricably
linked to their right to living spaces, as also to natural landscapes
and ecological-occupational niches. Because of the patriarchal ideologies
that prevail in much of South Asia, all of these spaces are gendered. In
many parts of the country women are primarily responsible for providing
the family food, but do not own and/or control the necessary resource base,
and may or may not have the right to take decisions about resource management.
Even among relatively gender-egalitarian groups, where women
manage resources, they are excluded from political, jural and religious
authority. Processes of modern development and state policies have reinforced
existing patriarchal ideologies or introduced new forms of
patriarchy, thus undermining women’s rights as citizens. Yet, the struggle
to build upon very narrow and eroding asset bases has also enhanced the
individual and collective strengths of different groups of poor and marginalised
women. They have responded to these diverse pressures in novel
ways and have fought to maintain their livelihoods, their work, and their
moral and cultural environments.