Unpacking and Making Sense of ‘Capacity Building’

In 2009, while visiting a remote village in Shahpur, Betul (in the state of Madhya Pradesh) an interesting visual came up right next to the road. It was the new सरकारी (government) building painted in bold saying ‘क्षमता भवन’. Our enquiries revealed this was ‘Capacity Building’ under the Food for Work Program and would be used for storing Minor Forest Produce! In the days before Google Translate, many development workers have seen and heard such creative interpretations of ‘Capacity Building’!

So what is Capacity Building? What is Capacity? How did this become standard intervention in development projects? Can anyone in real sense build someone else’s capacity? If yes, then how? How to know if ‘capacity’ is being built ‘up’ ‘down’?

Building the capacity of communities to manage a comprehensive set of public services and creating thriving, resilient economies is now a major developmental goal.

I have grappled with such questions all my life in as a development professional. Here, I will attempt to place the conceptual underpinnings to the subject and my reflections on it, and the effort will be to invite readers to immerse, reflect and declutter for themselves this important area of action in the social sector.

Defining Capacity and Capacity Building

On the one hand the word capacity can be used for things like Potential and Ability; whereas on the other hand it is also a synonym of Capability and Performance. I highlight these two different sets of meanings of the word ‘capacity’.

The concept of ‘capacity building’ is one of the most abstract ones that development agencies deal with. This term derives from, and depends on, the variously interpreted, multi-faceted conception of ‘development’,that is largely understood intuitively but seldom unpacked into concrete, uniformly agreed upon aspects.

We need to ground the idea of ‘capacity building’ in real-world engagements of development agencies, constraints and aspirations. The Hindi words काबिलीयत and क़ुव्वत – together beautifully capture the essence of capacity in context of development practice. Central to these words is a sense of control/power that one has to leverage available opportunities in achieving a set of purposes set by oneself.

By ‘ability’ we usually refer to what ‘you can do’ in present as compared to ‘potential’ which is what ‘you can do’ in future. Capacity is potential available in the present, what you can do now, it is the ability to carry stated objectives. ‘Capability’ is what a person can do, ‘Performance’ is what you actually deliver on your stated purpose(s). Capacity refers to those capabilities in a specific task environment or directed towards attainment of defined purpose.

In broad terms, capacity building refers to processes or activities that improves the ability to carry out stated objectives. It is used in the context of an individual, organization, or system.

It is an internal process of improvement in functions and abilities, especially in terms of specific skills which may be stimulated or enhanced with external assistance.

Capacity building is now well understood as an internal process driven by those whose capacities are to be developed. External assistance is better understood in terms of its components, strategies, dimensions, and intervention.

In recent times, ‘capacity development’ is often preferred to the term ‘capacity building’. Underlying this is the premise that capacity exists and can only be stimulated or strengthened from outside. The concern here is that, by presuming to build capacity, we may be implicitly referring to an assumption that no capacity exists to begin with.

In this article we will use capacity building interchangeably with capacity development, underlining the belief that capacity exists in individuals, communities, institutions. External capacity building efforts can only stimulate or strengthen intrinsic existing capacities. This assumption and understanding underscores a fundamental fact that people are not the problem, they are the solution.

Conceptual Underpinnings

Capacity building needs to impact multiple dimensions of a disadvantaged person’s life. Material resources alone cannot bring the desired change. Communities themselves must be willing to take charge of the change process with the belief that human beings have the potential to change one’s own lives and that of others, and that it is possible to facilitate the realization of this potential through alteration in one’s self view.

Capacity building/development thus is a deeply human-centered process anchored on self and interaction of the self with its environment. The process of change is understood to have two distinct parts; a personal dimension and the environmental dimension. Capacity development takes place en when personal dimensions such as aspirations, self-belief and sense of agency are triggered and each person is provided with an ecosystem that supports fulfilment of these aspirations.

Processes to trigger ‘capacity building change’ at community level is best supported with peer support groups.

Practice over the years has shown that the most critical process for capacity building which is internal to an individual or a group is the action-reflection process. Triggering processes for action-reflection within safe-spaces provided by support groups of disadvantaged communities is a key process which links the intervention with psycho-social change.

Repeated cycles of concrete experiences followed by reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, leading to experimentation of new behaviour and practices facilitate the process of questioning age-old held beliefs about one’s self and the society.

Examples of such negative self-beliefs are: “I am a tribal and tribal person can never be a progressive-prosperous farmer;” “We as women are subordinate to men;” etc.

Another inspiration to the way we understand capacity has been the capability approach articulated by Amartya Sen. This has two important components: (a) freedom to achieve well-being; (b) and, well-being understood in terms of people’s capabilities and functionings.

Capabilities are the doings and beings, such as being well-nourished, being educated; and functionings are capabilities that have been realized. The key capacity question is how someone can convert a set of means – resources and public goods – into a functioning.

Capabilities have also been referred to as real freedoms as they denote the freedoms that have been cleared of any potential obstacles, in contrast to mere formal rights.

Capacity Building as an Integrated System

As discussed earlier, capacity development is a contextual process. It is rooted in specific development objectives. Design of effective capacity development program has to be tailored to specific priorities and issues.

Therefore, it is helpful to think about capacity development clearly by asking the following set of questions:

• Who: Whose capacities are planned to be developed? Which communities’?
• What: What is the purpose? To what end do we need to develop capacity?
• When: What milestones indicates when ‘capacity’ is deemed to have been ‘developed’?

Capacity development is a perpetually evolving process of growth and change. The three points of action/intervention are: system, in organizations and within defined communities or individuals.

These three are inter-related and linked. ‘System’ refers to the broad social system within which people and organizations function e.g. the rules, laws, policies, power relations and social norms that govern civic engagement. ‘Organization’ refers to the internal structure, policies and procedures that determine an organization’s efficacy and effectiveness.

These include inputs, processes and resources. ‘Communities/groups/individuals’ are the agency, skills, experience and knowledge that allow each one to deliver or perform.

‘Being’ and ‘doing,’ functioning, self-view, self-efficacy, agency, and instrumentality of initiative and action are some of the internal aspects that are central to this.

Capacity Building: Evolution of a Core Strategy in Development

Capacity building or capacity development, is a fairly recent concept in the social sector. It started gaining lot of traction in 1990s, principally as a better way of ‘doing’ development. Capacity development is often used together with training, technical assistance, or policy advice. Capacity development now has emerged as a core function of the United Nations Development System. The Sustainable Development Goal Target 17.9 is the dedicated target for capacity- building.

The Hindi words काबिलीयत and क़ुव्वत – together beautifully capture the essence of capacity in context of development practice.

The dominant thinking in development engagement today can be summarized as capacity development, thus integrally linked to ‘human development.’ It is about change that empower individuals, communities, agencies and societies.

A good test us for engagements that constitute capacity building is whether it leads to change that is generated, guided and sustained by those whom it is meant to benefit. The shift has been towards agency, freedom, efficacy, capabilities and away from relief, training, technical assistance and program support approaches of the past.

Increasingly capacity building strategies are being advocated and implemented at the community level as well as at the individual level. Building the capacity of communities to manage a comprehensive set of public services and creating thriving, resilient economies is now a major developmental goal.

This has become known as Community led Development (CLD). It is the process of collaboratively striving together towards visions and objectives of systemic transformation that are owned by local communities. CLD tries to go beyond projects and tries to put people in control of their own process of development. It focuses on building up the entire system of public services and their governance.

Capacity building needs to impact multiple dimensions of a disadvantaged person’s life. Material resources alone cannot bring the desired change.

Processes to trigger ‘capacity building change’ at community level is best supported with peer support groups, which create the necessary conditions for exploration and understanding the skewed power dynamics around caste, class and gender, for joint identification of cross-cutting issues, and to start collective action.

Capacity Building: Some Indian Examples

One good example of this process is the women’s Self Help Group (SHG) movement in India. Modelled on the Alcoholic Anonymous, these are groups of 10-20 women drawn by affinity who come together.

Their similar socio-economic context provides a setting of examining existential realities of poverty. They explore ways in which each member could draw on support from each other to set an aspirational goal for herself and contribute collectively.

Women’s SHGs have over 70 million members across rural India now. This is the largest such peer-based organization of women collectives in the world. Women members of Self Help Groups often discuss cross-cutting concerns such as treatment of widows, issues surrounding the payment of wages under MGNREGS etc. They then attempt to start collective action leveraging the network of hundreds of primary SHGs in a compact geography.

This collective action could be around adoption of new normative behaviour. Examples of these include deciding to call widows by their names and thus reinforcing an independent identity; accessing public goods, services, and entitlements, e.g. full MGNREGS wages; engaging jointly with markets – e.g. setting up producer aggregations; and, dealing with social discriminations around gender or caste.

One powerful example of such collective action is the anti-arrack movement led by women collectives organized as part of the literacy movement. This process finally led to ban of arrack sales in Andhra Pradesh in 1995.

Similar groundswell by women SHGs forced similar legislative action in Bihar relatively recently. These were grassroots movements with no identifiable leaders. The raising of political and social consciousness led to the realization that collective action can help them control their own destiny.

Farmer Field Schools (FFS) are another good example of capacity development in the Indian context. FFS as a mode of collective action emerged as a farm technology extension approach including agro-ecological practices.

It is essentially a group-based learning process that is set in a field context and provides farmers opportunities of practical field exercises and learning by doing.

The FFS approach today reaches over two million farmers. In a village context local knowledge interacts with scientific insights, and these are tested, validated and integrated in farmers’ fields.

FFS facilitators start with community-based problem analyses and opportunities to develop a location specific curriculum. A growing range of technical topics are being addressed through FFS. These include soil management, crop and water management, varietal testing, and pest management.

In Conclusion

In the context of India, issues central to people’s lives such as patriarchy, caste, ethnicity, feudal agrarian and rural economy and disenfranchisement are anchored in power relationships and normative social practices.

Additionally, issues of poor governance, absence of basic public support systems and infrastructure, and lack of functional markets impinge on the context of capacity building engagements and their design process. In such an environment, capacity building processes over the years have started assuming important roles in transformative social action.

This is true of education as a sector as well. Increasingly one can mark a shift from ‘training’ to identifying capacity gaps and figuring out ways of addressing these. This shift is more marked in the case of nonprofits than in governmental organizations.

Building the capacity of communities to manage a comprehensive set of public services and creating thriving, resilient economies is now a major developmental goal.

At TRIF (Transforming Rural India Foundation) we have taken an approach of building peer networks in order to enable Teachers to share their experiences and also seek academic support from each other.

This has been through larger community enablement. Tools of such enabling processes include newsletters, reading materials, resource centres, learning camps for children (where teachers also participate), and Bal Melas where teachers and parents work together with children.

Teacher peer groups and localized resource centres have become important source of academic and motivational support. It is high time that the public policy discourse around education puts the capacity building of teachers as a learning community and that of schools as social organizations at the centre for a transformative vision for the sector in India. etc.