Sustainable Community Development: A Case Study of Meegahahena Resettlement Unit in Relation to Community Participation in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This thesis examines the effectiveness of Community Participation (CP) in relation to people's engagement in Community Development (CD) activities with respect to establishing a sustainable community in the Meegahahena Resettlement Unit. Meegahahena is an agricultural resettlement situated in System 'C' of Sri Lanka's Mahaweli Development Project. The recent Accelerated Mahaweli Development Project (AMDP) included a river basin development project incorporating dam construction, irrigation and biggest human resettlement project undertaken in the history of Sri Lanka, a CD approach for settlers has been implemented by government authorities but many problems remain with respect to promoting CP. Researchers indicate that the reason for the relative failure of many development projects like the AMDP is the lack of effective CP in CD activities. This research focuses on these issues. Examination of an existing CD model is undertaken to develop a wider theoretical context along with an empirical study. The 'four-stage theoretical framework' for sustainable resettlement after Scudder (2005) was adopted as a model and standard in this study. The methodology used is a qualitative case study. Data were collected using both anthropological and sociological methods involving focus group discussions, observation, document analysis, semi-structured interviews and a survey. The data were analysed by themes, using a grounded theory 'thematic analysis' method.