Community and Economic Development in Pakistan: The Case of Citizen Community Boards in Hafizabad and a Japanese Perspectives

In 2001, a scheme called Citizen Community Board (CCB), a kind of community-based organisation (CBO), was introduced in Pakistan as a devolution policy, under which local people propose to the local government development projects through forming a CCB and upon approval the local government funds 80 percent of the project cost. Since 2001, however, both the number of CCBs and that of approved projects have been below the expected level. This raises a concern that the Pakistani society with limited historical experience in CBO-based development is too handicapped for the CCB scheme to be successful. Although the number of empirical studies on Pakistan’s CCB scheme has been increasing [e.g., see Cheema and Mohmand (2004), Cheema, et al. (2006)], our understanding on conditions for a success of such schemes is limited. This paper thus attempts to analyse the conditions in the context of community and economic development in Pakistan from Japanese Perspectives.