Dissertaton Research: Decentralization and Social Capital: Implications for Institutional Innovation in Forest Management and Development Planning in India

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This proposal aims to contribute to understanding decentralized forest management by examining, the role of social capital in the success or failure of the decentralization efforts in comparative perspective. In addition, my objective is to analyze the links among decentralization, development, and forest conservation. I do so through a focus on three questions.The first question involves how the level of social capital influences decentralization in forest management in the communities. This question allows us to relate interaction among people and networks to the efficient functioning of organizations. I refer to this as the operational level. The second question pertains to the importance of linkages between organizations in the two domains of forest management and development planning for the functioning of forest-related committees. The important point here is that the specialized forest-related committees are nested within more generalized development planning committees. Answering this question allows us to explore and analyze whether the de facto linkages between the two bodies are beneficial to the smaller and more specialized organization. I refer to this as the complementary level. The third question asks how inter-departmental linkages at higher levels in the state government hierarchy affect the performance of the decentralized forest management bodes. This question helps us to move from the operational level to the collective choice level. Many studies show that the operational rules are important to overcome collective action problems. However, there has been very little inquiry into the links between the operational and collective choice level. The third question attempts to undertake this inquiry. The research is conducted in Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling districts in North Bengal, India.