IRM DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE NOTES
Institutions, Community Systems & Development Practice
Published by the Institute of Rural Management (IRM) │ Islamabad, Pakistan
Field Notes from Mountain Contexts
Context, Dignity & First Impressions
Practice-based reflections on community engagement in remote and post-transition societies in Tajikistan.
| AUTHOR Khaleel Tetlay Rural Development Practitioner | PUBLISHER Institute of Rural Management Islamabad, Pakistan │ www.irm.edu.pk |
| ABOUT THIS SERIES The IRM Development Practice Notes are an open, evolving platform for practitioner learning and applied knowledge, documenting field-tested insights on institutions, incentives, relationships, and adaptation from across the Global South. IRM welcomes contributions from practitioners, programme teams, and partner organizations worldwide.
These field reflections draw on experiences from 1998 TO 2001 during the early years of community-based work in the mountain regions of TAJIKISTAN. They are not formal evaluations or programme reports. Rather, they capture moments of interaction, dialogue, humor, misjudgment, correction, and learning that shaped how community initiatives evolved in practice. |
SERIES INTRODUCTION
Why This Series?
Development practice is often presented as a technical enterprise. Toolkits are designed, models are refined, frameworks are codified, and replication is encouraged. Yet field experience across diverse regions of the Global South repeatedly reveals a more demanding reality: programmes do not succeed because they are technically elegant. They succeed because they are contextually translated.
The IRM Development Practice Notes are conceived as a continuing platform for practitioner learning and applied knowledge, documenting field-tested insights on institutions, incentives, relationships, and adaptation from across the Global South.
This inaugural Note draws on experience from mountain and other marginalized regions in post-transition and fragile contexts. Future Notes will bring together reflections from practitioners working across different geographies, sectors, and institutional settings.
Together, the series advances a simple but enduring proposition: development is institutional before it is technical.
EMERGING THEMES IN THE SERIES
| • | Context, dignity, and first impressions DPN 26-01 |
| • | Institutions, leadership, and community trust DPN 26-02 |
| • | Assets, markets, and economic opportunity DPN 26-03 |
| • | Participation, planning, and scaling DPN 26-04 |
| THE UNIFYING THREAD Institutions absorb shock. Where institutions are thin, technical design erodes. Where institutions are strong, adaptation becomes possible. This insight, validated across mountain societies, post-conflict settings, and transition economies in every region of the Global South, echoes the work of Dr.Akhter Hameed Khan, Shoaib Sultan Khan, and Fazle Hasan Abed. |
| DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE NOTE 26-01 Context, Dignity & First Impressions How assumptions, framing, and humility shape what development practice can achieve |
| This inaugural Note sets the tone for the series by focusing on how first encounters between programmes and communities shape everything that follows. These four stories originate from mountain regions of Central and South Asia, but similar dynamics are encountered across Africa, Latin America, and other parts of Asia where community institutions are being rebuilt or introduced. Together they make a simple argument: what we assume about a place, before we have listened to it, is usually wrong. |
PART I — FROM THE FIELD
Four Stories
Story 1 — “Lunar Societies Development”
During a visit to a high-altitude plateau community, a visiting expert was introduced to local officials as a specialist in mountain development from another region. The expectation was clear: he had relevant experience and answers they could use.
He looked around at the stark, treeless, wind-scoured landscape, a setting with a social and institutional history entirely unlike his own. He replied:
“Yes, I have long experience of social development in mountain areas, but believe me, I have no experience of lunar societies development!”
The laughter that followed reset the conversation, from expert advice to shared learning. The most dangerous practitioners, it turns out, are those who arrive already certain.
Lesson: External experience has limits. Elevation is not context. History is.
Story 2 — Make Them Smile, Win the Communication Battle
At a village meeting held outdoors in summer, the visiting programme representative found himself in direct sunlight while community members sat comfortably in the shade. After light but unsuccessful attempts to raise the issue, he finally remarked:
“You are the hosts in the shade. I am the guest in the sun, what is my fault?”
The gathering burst into laughter. Mats were rearranged. What had been formal and slightly guarded became open and participatory.
That village organization later became one of the strongest in its area.
Lesson: Humor dissolves hierarchy. Social mobilization is relational before it is procedural, and relationships begin in the small moments, not the formal ones.
Story 3 — From Mega Projects to Village Projects
A visiting delegation accustomed to large, state-led infrastructure initially dismissed small-scale, community-managed projects as insignificant. They had come from a context where the state had delivered development to communities, not through them. The idea of village-level institutional planning and management was unfamiliar.
Yet once community-based approaches were introduced in their own context, local institutions demonstrated strong planning, management, and accountability capacity, often exceeding the expectations of those who had been skeptical.
Lesson: Our assumptions about community capability are often more limited than the communities themselves. The ceiling is almost always ours, not theirs.
Story 4 — Framing and Dignity: Norway, Not Pakistan
Early community mobilization efforts used examples from another developing country to explain the concept of collective organization. The response was persistently muted. Participants, many of whom had high levels of formal education, did not find a developing country peer an inspiring reference point.
When facilitators shifted to examples of cooperative and collective traditions from Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Japan, engagement changed immediately. The same institutional model, an entirely different symbolic register.
Collective organization was no longer associated with receiving aid. It was connected to recognized practice in high-performing societies. Participation rose. Questions became substantive.
Lesson: Communities engage when they see themselves participating with dignity, not receiving solutions designed for someone else. Framing is not communication strategy. It is programme design.
PART II — INTO PRACTICE
Design Implications for Donors & Programme Designers
Principle 1 — Humility Is a Technical Requirement
These four stories are not about soft skills. They are about programme effectiveness. For donors and programme designers, this means building humility into programme design structures, not just expecting it from field staff. Replication proposals should demonstrate translation, not just precedent. Expert advisers should be selected as much for their capacity to listen as for what they already know.
Principle 2 — The Symbolic Dimension of Programme Design Is Real
How a model is framed, what comparisons are made, what reference societies are invoked, shapes whether communities engage or disengage. Donors who fund community mobilization programmes should routinely ask: do the reference frameworks this programme uses convey dignity and agency, or dependency and deficit?
Principle 3 — Community Capability Is Consistently Underestimated
Capacity assessments tend to measure what communities currently do, not what they would do given appropriate institutional structure. The result is chronic under-investment in community agency and chronic over-investment in externally managed delivery. Donors should be asking: does this programme treat communities as capable, or does its design reveal a different assumption?
DIAGNOSTIC TOOL
Before Approving a Model-Transfer or Replication Proposal, Ask:
✓ What contextual analysis has been undertaken, specifically of historical and institutional memory, not only geography or livelihood systems?
✓ What comparative references does the programme use with communities? Do these convey dignity and agency, or dependency and deficit?
✓ What assumptions about community capability are embedded in the design? On what evidence are these based?
✓ Has the model been translated for this context, or simply replicated from elsewhere?
✓ Does the programme design allow for mid-course adaptation, or require fidelity to a predetermined model?
✓ Who within the programme team is responsible for learning and adaptation? Is this role clearly defined and resourced?
| DESIGN IMPLICATION Across diverse country contexts, these patterns repeat with remarkable consistency. Models do not fail because they are technically weak. They fail because they arrive without humility, communicate without dignity, and design without listening. The practitioner’s first task is not to bring solutions. It is to understand the place well enough to know which solutions are possible. |
PART III — FOR REFLECTION
Questions for Programme Review & Donor Dialogue
For use in programme design workshops, funding review meetings, and institutional learning sessions.
- In your current portfolio, how many programmes were approved on the basis of success elsewhere? What evidence was required to demonstrate that the model had been translated, not simply transplanted?
- When field staff encounter resistance or low engagement from communities, what is the organization’s default explanation? Does it locate the problem in the community, or in the programme design?
- What does your programme communicate to communities about their own capabilities? Does the framing signal that communities are capable agents, or that they need to be developed?
- When did your programme last change its approach based on something a community told you? What structures exist to make that kind of learning routine rather than exceptional?
INTELLECTUAL LINEAGE
Dr. Akhter Hameed Khan demonstrated at Comilla and Orangi that communities hold the knowledge for their own development, if practitioners are willing to listen rather than instruct.
Shoaib Sultan Khan built AKRSP on the principle that dignity and self-organization must precede technical assistance, and that the practitioner’s role is to create conditions, not deliver solutions.
Fazle Hasan Abed showed at BRAC that communities consistently outperform the assumptions made about them, given structured support and genuine institutional investment.
These insights also resonate with community-driven development practice globally, from Latin American participatory models to African community-based natural resource management.
LOOKING AHEAD
Future Development Practice Notes
Future Notes in this series will explore themes such as:
- How community institutions actually form and sustain legitimacy
- The relationship between local leadership and elite capture
- Linking community institutions to markets and public systems
- Designing for scale without losing participation and ownership
| CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS & FEEDBACK IRM welcomes comments, reflections, and feedback on this and future Development Practice Notes. Community development practitioners from across the Global South are encouraged to share their field experiences, lessons learned, and practice insights for broader dissemination through this series. Contact IRM at info@irm.edu.pk or visit www.irm.edu.pk |
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
| Institute of Rural Management (IRM) │ Building a Prosperous Pakistan
The Institute of Rural Management (IRM) is Pakistan’s leading capacity development and learning institution for the not-for-profit sector and the Rural Support Programmes. Over three decades, IRM has built the capacity of more than 1.3 million practitioners and community members. IRM’s work spans social mobilization, livelihoods, gender, health, education, natural resource management, and entrepreneurship, serving national and international partners including multi & bilateral donor agencies, Federal & provincial governments, corporation and foundations in Pakistan. IRM encourages dialogue and knowledge sharing through this series and welcomes engagement from practitioners, partners, and institutions working in development practice globally.
IRM Complex, Park Road, Islamabad │ info@irm.edu.pk │ www.irm.edu.pk |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
| Khaleel Tetlay Khaleel Tetlay is a rural development practitioner with over four decades of experience across Pakistan, Tajikistan, Myanmar, and other contexts. He has worked with AKRSP, MSDSP, RSPN, BRAC International, and international development partners. The reflections in this series are offered as practitioner knowledge for development practice across diverse Global South contexts, not as prescriptions, but as grounded lessons from field experience. Contact: khaleel.tetlay@gmail.com |