MYRADA’S Capacity Building Intervention : Creating Social Capital in the Communities in Southern India

Capacity building is a recent concept that emerged in the lexicon of international development and is included in the programmes of most international organisations that work in development. However, no shared definition of what capacity building means has yet been developed. Probably this concept calls for a fundamental rethinking in the form of practice and approach. Arguing that capacity building, more so in the context of working with rural marginalised and poor communities cannot be studied in isolation, the purpose of this paper is to focus on capacity building and social capital simultaneously. To this end, it first outlines the fundamental shifts in the meaning of development through the evolution of the concept of capacity building; critically analyses the capacity building intervention by MYRADA, a South Indian development agency; and finally presents a framework which could be used in a developmental work with communities. The study indicates that community capacity building is enhancing social capital, more importantly they are mutually reinforcing in the South Indian State of Karnataka.