Network Externalities under Social Capital: Lessons from Gender Sensitive Forest Management Programme in West Bengal

This empirical exercise examines the impact of network externalities under social capital in a gender sensitive planning on joint forest management programme in West Bengal. One impact is that building up higher level of social capital has been more successful in programme participating villages as the network structure about the relational variables of social capital is comparatively dense in these villages. Albeit the overwhelming proportion of the households live below poverty line, food-livelihood insecurity cannot destroy the level of social capital of institutions as there already exists an underlying tendency for united actions derived especially from prior collective experience and reciprocal relation. Conversely, the positive complementary effect of network externalities is also higher for these villages. These two effects are more pronounced among poor category households in general and ‘female forest protection committee’ villages vis-àvis ‘joint forest protection committee’ villages as well as ‘programme nonparticipating’ villages in particular.