சமூகமும் நானும் : எழுதப்பழகும் ஒரு முயற்சி

Mahaweli Development Project Mahaveli basin covers 9 provinces and total 15% of the country’s population.  Started in 1977, the Mahaweli development project aimed to convert the Mahaveli River to cultivate in the dry zone of the country to boost rice production and to generate hydropower.  This project covered over 900,000 acres land area.  The initial plan was started with the help of World Bank with the idea of building a 5 mile tunnel and a hydropower station at Ukuwela.  The project was initially planned for 30 years (Mahaweli Development Programme, Sri Lanka, n.d.). Figure 1 shows the planned reservoirs along the Mahaweli River, from hill country towards the low lands of dry zone, under the Mahaweli development program. Figure 1. Plan of Reservoirs along the Mahaweli River obtained from Ceylon Electricity board’s knowledge centre. Accelerated Mahaweli Program The new government viewed Mahaweli Development program as a long term project and decided to...

Gay Oya valley is in the Uwa and Eastern Provinces. It includes the famous Senanayake Samudraya and Bird Island too.  Started in 1949, Gal Oya development project is an irrigation project based on the Tennessee valley project in the USA. The project in the USA was introduced in 1933 and was to provide navigation, electricity generation, flood control, fertilizer manufacturing and economic development of the Tennesee Valley region.  It was a success in the USA as it decentralized power and increased the living slandered of Tennessee valley inhabitants. Figure1. Plan of the Tennesee Valley project in USA. The government of Sri Lanka aimed a similar effect by starting Gal Oya project.  It was initiated to provide water, produce sugar, hydro power and agricultural products. 42, 000 acres land was expected to use for irrigation. The Gal Oya Development Board was given all the rights for design, construction, operation and maintenance.  This project had a c...

Community mobilization is recognized as the foundation of community development projects. Community mobilization is a process of building relationships among community members in order organize and take actions to pursuit common interests of the community. Community mobilizations target sustainable development. Figure 1 shows the process of a community mobilization program . Figure 1. Action cycle of a community mobilization program. The community mobilization involves four important stages. Those are building partnerships, developing a community plan, implementing community action plans, and evaluating their effectiveness. These stages are further explained in figure 2 given below Figure 2. The community mobilization model There are both strengths and weaknesses in following community mobilization as a foundation of community development projects.  Strengths include the direct involvement of the participants in decision making and implication processes....

There are four elements of community development (Sanders, 1958). We can look at community development as a process, method, program and a movement.  1.       Community Development as a Process Community development is viewed as a process which helps to move from existing state to a desired state. Usually community development aims for a better state than the existing state, it is a process of moving from a lower point to an upper point in development.  This process involves a total transformation of everyone in the community both mentally and behaviourally. There are several models and frameworks used for community development processes. Figure 1. Shows the general stages of a community development process starting from preparedness up to reinvestment. However, not all the community development processes follow these steps in given order, some skip some of the steps and some steps are performed simultaneously . Figure 1. General stages o...

Social capital is viewed in three main dimensions; bonding, bridging and linking. Bonding is the connections between people in the similar cultural, family, educational, religious, and socioeconomic background.  Bridging is the connections in-between two or more similar groups.   Linking refers to the connections between people in different social strata and hierarchy. Most people have access to all three types to greater or lesser extent. Figure 1 given below shows the three main dimensions of social capital. Figure 1. The dimensions of social capital Bonding helps for the survival as it is the strong ties among people very similar to each other. Friends, family and close neighbors who belong to similar social strata and hierarchy are connected through bonding relationships. This gives strong mutual commitments among them making the trust among them very strong. Bonding relationships are also important in performing day to day activities. Bonding relationsh...

Social capital has been there since the initial formation of a society, but the notion of studying and defining social capital started in early 1950’s. Ever since, several sociologists have came up with several definitions for social capital. The diversity presented in the definitions was very remarkable as researchers from different disciplines had different way of defining social capital. Economists, political sociologists, organizational sociologists, Information Technology specialists and many more experts from various different disciples had a different way of defining social capital. Even the definitions tend to change over time with the social changes of the world. In this paper we will look at three of such definitions. First definition is from a book published in the United State in early nineties that had a clear definition of social capital. It says that social capital is “those tangible assets [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely goodwill, fellow...