Tracing participation from the global to local roots: The international, Indian and the ‘Bengali’ politics of participation

The notion of ‘participation’ and its association with the concept planning and governance has got the spotlight in recent times. There has been a broad consensus among the major international donors and agencies on the effectiveness of this approach. The paper attempts to trace the root of participation both at a temporal level as well as a spatial level from the global map to the state of West Bengal, India which has been widely acclaimed for its decentralization initiatives and all its experiments of participatory planning. Treating the topic of participation through the prism of space and time brings forth a set of issues which focuses on the sustainability of the global mantra of participation allowing the discussion to be conclusive and evidence based rather than one set on a hypothetical scenario.