Last week, I saw the funniest thing I could ever imagine. I was not, however, attending one of the stand-up comedy shows frequently being hosted at the five-star hotels in our fair city. Rather, I was glued to my television set, watching the news on ETV.
The correspondent seemed to be so excited and energetic. Even though his black suit somehow diminished its intensity, his happiness was visible from his body language. It all happened as he announced that residents of Ethiopia’s capital city could now put forward their vote to select the colour of the locomotives for Addis Abeba’s light train project, which is currently under construction on two major routes across the city.
What better joke could be cracked by the ruling elite than this?
It does not require knowledge of the complex models of social science to understand that the colour of the locomotives is the least important aspect of the project. It is not, as such, important enough to require a vote.
Indeed, it seems to be poking fun at the concept of participation. Born after World War II, the concept of community participation in development projects has evolved immensely in both methodology and knowledge base.
Our world has already gone beyond mere ‘participation’ and moved on to ‘involvement’. Differences within the varying types of community participation in development projects emanate from the amount of decision making power authorities leverage to communities.
Conducting thorough community participation and review sessions is considered as a fundamental tasks of project preparation in developed nations. Let alone city-wide projects, district and county level endeavours are also expected to pass through a series of public scrutiny sessions. Central and local governments have detailed guidelines on how community participation in development projects is handled.
An example of this could be the framework in the United Kingdom. Since public participation is perceived as an essential element of development projects, each tier of the UK government has detailed guidelines on where and how the community should take part in the decision making process of a given development project. These guidelines empower the community so much so that it could even reject a project, if it deems it unviable.
This is not typical only of the UK, however. Countries – from Australia to Brazil; Venezuela to the United States and China to South Africa – have detailed community participation frameworks.
It is not the case, however, in our fair nation and city. None of the mega projects that are under construction have passed through public scrutiny. Their preparation was undertaken solely by the authorities. As if they are to be implemented on another planet, some of them were even held in secret from the public until the start of implementation.
We – residents of the city – come to know about them after the authorities have already decided on how and when to implement them. None of the design aspects were open to discussion with the various sectors of the community. It is nothing but a joke to give participation a lip service through opening the determination of the colour of the train for public voting.
There seems to be a misjudgement from the side of the authorities. They seem to think that the public knows nothing about the technical aspects of projects. Instead of implementing direct participation whenever an opportunity avails itself, they opt to brag about the classical theories of representative democracy.
But no modern theory of participation takes their lip service as something justifiable. It is widely accepted that community participation in projects should happen at every step of the project – from inception to post-impact evaluation. And the public ought to have the power to even reject a project.
It remains a puzzle for me that the ruling elite could continuously seek to defy globally accepted principles and live in their own fantasy world. It is this same denial that led them to the latest outsourcing of selecting the colour of the light train to the public, despite knowing that this is the least important aspect.
Time and again, the ruling elite show us that we are not important stakeholders in the development of the nation. They continue to tell us that we only deserve to have a say in the insignificant aspects of projects.
It is saddening to see community participation taken as unimportant. And I wonder when these kinds of reprehensible jokes will stop.
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