ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on multi-faceted attempts undertaken in developing nations to address the issue of rural empowerment. While the extant measures have achieved considerable outcomes, there is an urgency to reflect on the attempts by taking into account communitarian needs. The preceding chapter articulated our notion of rural empowerment and highlighted how agency, social capital and enhanced opportunity structure, being facilitators of empowerment, are intrinsic to the process of building an integrated and active rural community. This chapter, on discussing the extant measures undertaken in developing nations to attain rural empowerment, traces their inadequacy in terms of exogenous (development from outside) nature of these initiatives. To mark a departure from conventional models of rural empowerment, the chapter concludes by proposing an idea of an inter-connected empowering ecosystem, which will facilitate endogenous development (development from inside) through purposive knowledge exchange by integrating and connecting different social actors.
