The experience of Aid and Development Interventions among exHunter-Gatherers

This research was part of my PhD titled: "‘Developing’ Relations: Rethinking the experience of aid and development interventions, a case study from the Nayaka of South India" (2018, University of Haifa) which has been carried out under the mentorship of Nurit Bird-David.

The work of ‘the aid industry’ involves intentional interventions aimed at generating social, economic, and political change among those deemed ‘underdeveloped’, often by attempts to replace existing local norms and practices and promote assimilation into the state’s dominant society. In recent decades, many marginalized small-scale societies, including those previously classified as hunter-gatherers, became the ‘beneficiaries’ of aid and development initiatives conducted by governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). My research examines the experience, perceptions, interactions and impact of development interventions on such community in South India.

My work concentrates on the complex and entangled experience of ‘development’ in general, and in particular among a community formerly classified as ‘hunter-gatherers’. It examines how people, targeted as ‘beneficiaries’, perceive and engage with development interventions conducted in their hamlets, and explore the relationships that form the social environment of those subjected to development initiatives.

My focus is on people’s view of their social and physical environment and of their own position within it, as they increasingly consider themselves as active participants in larger-scale nation states. The aim of this work is to elucidate how such views shape the understandings and actions of those termed as ‘beneficiaries’ in varied situations, and how this in turn affects the projects and the actors involved.

Through an examination of daily reality of development projects and their aftermath, I explores the gaps between the ideas motivating development projects, their materialisation when delivered to the hamlet, and the ways in which they are received, understood and take shape in the long term. My study reveals why, even in a case of collaboration and positive communication between different actors, great frustration is often expressed by both ‘developers’ and ‘beneficiaries’ regarding the outcomes of development projects. It also highlights why such projects are often used differently than expected even by ‘beneficiaries’ who happily welcome them, and do not feel that they resist or misuse them.

Offering an alternative approach to the examination of development projects in general, this study is relevant to broader contexts beyond the research of hunting and gathering peoples. It offers new implications for understanding the experience of life under development of many people worldwide who are commonly classified as poor, passive, weak or grateful beneficiaries. It also demonstrates the serious consequences of the authorities’ obliviousness to local senses and practices and the effect that this has on the lives of beneficiaries and the fate of development initiatives.