Promoting Good Governance among Tribal Inhabitants in Bangladesh (PROGGATI)

The project assumed that conditions for the poor tribal communities could be improved through increased awareness, capacity building and better communications. These elements can certainly contribute to improvements for marginalized groups and for strengthened governance, but the problems in the region are highly complex and the actors themselves are not homogenous within groups. For example, some groups have not accepted the 1997 Peace Accord and still want a separate state.

The project adopted a one-size-fits all approach to its activities. However, the needs and capacities of the different stakeholders and participants were vastly different. A programme better tailored to these different actors might have yielded better results. Similarly the training could have included a component to ensure application of the knowledge acquired during the programme to the participants’ everyday work would have had more impact.

The project’s focus on safety net issues was important, however, more focus on the critical issues of land and indigenous rights as provided for in the Peace Accord, could have made this project more relevant for the communities. There are still issues of peace and integration that remain unresolved which are directly affecting the governance in the region and its ability to respond to the tribal poor.

The community organization members who served on the governance committees are still active in the indigenous communities and could serve as a continuing resource for community members. However, the committees themselves were not sustainable as most participants linked them to the project, rather than to a continuing community institution or system.

The project met its outputs however the extent of its impact is unclear. It did undertake a baseline in Year 1 that provided some descriptive but useful information on the targeted communities. However, this baseline was not repeated so there is no end-of-project data that it could be compared to.

The cascade nature of the project structure made it possible for the grantee to reach the grass roots, but the distances – in terms of time to travel – were great, which limited the ability of the grantee to monitor activities and provide mentoring at the community level. The project did not develop synergies with other ongoing projects, several of which were governance related and which could have helped extend its reach and increased its impact.

These communities are marginalized and lacked the understanding needed to participate more effectively. The project’s approach was to create alternative leaders to advocate on behalf of their community rather than working directly to engage these indigenous communities. The project also could have focused more on issues of critical concern to the communities, such as land tenure which is essential to their livelihood and traditional way of life.

The project’s implementing structures were efficiently established because of the grantee’s existing relationship with many of the community based organizations in the region. About a quarter of the 240 community based organizations included family members working in the grantee’s existing water and sanitation projects. The existing links between these members and local officials, many of which worked on other projects together also facilitated project start-up and implementation.

Exchanges between traditional tribal communities and government officials had been rare prior to the project. The efforts to link traditional with local government officials established some lasting individual relationships, and these types of exchanges may continue as the project activities have set an important precedent.

The project used existing networks to establish a project structure. This proved an effective way to reach down to the grass roots level within a relatively short period of time. This allowed for a quick mobilization of the project despite the dispersed nature of the communities. These communities were able link to the local governance officials as many of them had already worked together on other issues.