As cities across the U.S. recovered from the Economic Recession, numerous families and households in urban communities were faced with increasing rent for their homes and local businesses. This was the result of gentrification, which involves increased capital investment in – and the development of – disenfranchised communities. When this investment occurs, the market value…
Tag: development
Oral Democracy
The voices of the poor are often not heard. Governmental systems devised to assist the poor focus on top-down poverty identification through definitions, biometrics, surveys, and measurements, over which people have little say. And programs to assist the poor are administered through opaque and difficult to navigate bureaucracies. Gram sabhas have the potential to change that by facilitating what we have termed “oral democracy”, a political system powered by citizens’ voices, where direct verbal engagement is the modality and narratives are the main currency.
