Abstract

Community participation has emerged as an important foundation of sustainable governance and inclusive development because development outcomes increasingly depend upon the ability of citizens and local communities to participate in decisions affecting their lives. Conventional governance models that rely primarily on centralised decision-making may face difficulties in identifying local priorities addressing context-specific inequalities and ensuring long-term ownership of development programmes. Participatory governance seeks to overcome these limitations by involving citizens community organisations local institutions civil society groups women youth and marginalised populations in planning implementation monitoring and evaluation. This paper examines the relationship between community participation sustainable governance and inclusive development from a social science perspective with particular attention to developing societies and the Indian context. The study adopts a qualitativ