Communitisation in Education: A SBCC Success Story from Nagaland

In 2002, the state of Nagaland did something that most governments rarely do: it handed control of its public schools over to the very communities they served. Not to a corporation, not to a private trust – but to parents, village elders, teachers, and church leaders. The result was one of India’s most striking turnarounds in public education and a textbook example of how Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) can shift not just behaviour, but an entire community’s relationship with its institutions.

The crisis that demanded a radical response 🔗

Before 2002, Nagaland’s government-run schools – particularly in rural areas – were in a dire state. As documented in research published by NCERT’s Regional Institute of Education, public institutions across the state suffered from a lack of maintenance, inadequate accountability, and systemic corruption. The Nagaland Journal reports that teacher absenteeism was chronic, school buildings were deteriorating, dropout rates were high, and the wider community felt completely disconnected from the schools in their own villages. The state government was trying to run thousands of schools remotely from Kohima, with predictably poor results.

The core problem was structural: the employees delivering the service had no direct stake in its quality, and the community members most affected by poor schooling had no authority to demand better. This gap – between those responsible on paper and those who bore the consequences – is precisely what communitisation set out to close.

What communitisation actually means 🔗

The concept was coined by R.S. Pandey, then Chief Secretary of the Government of Nagaland, who chose the term “communitisation” deliberately over “decentralisation” to better capture what the scheme actually involved. It is not privatisation – which transfers assets to a profit-seeking entity. According to the Nagaland Journal’s analysis, communitisation represents a unique partnership built on shared ownership between the government and the user community in the management of public institutions. The government retains responsibility for funding teacher salaries, setting curriculum, and providing grants – but the community takes over day-to-day management, supervision, and accountability.

The framework rests on what Pandey described as the “triple T” approach: Trust, Train, and Transfer – building community confidence, equipping people with necessary skills, and then legally transferring powers and resources to them. Under the Nagaland Communitisation of Public Institutions and Services Act, 2002, all government-run primary and middle schools were communitised, making elementary education the largest and most significant sector under this government-community partnership.

The Village Education Committee: governance at the grassroots 🔗

The operational heart of communitisation is the Village Education Committee (VEC). Every village with a communitised primary or middle school formed a VEC, which became the legal authority for managing elementary education within that village’s jurisdiction. The committee includes a chairman elected by the Village Council, parent and guardian representatives (at least one of whom must be a woman), two teacher representatives, a church denomination representative, and community members – preferably with an educational background. Members serve three-year terms and are required to meet at least once every quarter.

The functions of the VEC are comprehensive. On the administrative side, VECs are responsible for ensuring the regular functioning of schools, maintaining buildings, compiling annual reports, and making free textbooks and uniforms available to students. On the financial side, the government deposits teacher salaries directly into VEC bank accounts – a current account for salary transactions and a savings account for development funds – and the VEC disburses these on the first of each month. Crucially, the VEC holds the power to withhold pay under a strict “No Work, No Pay” policy for teachers who are absent without reason.

This single mechanism – putting salary control in local hands – changed teacher accountability overnight.

Communitisation as an SBCC campaign 🔗

Passing legislation is the easy part. Changing a community’s mindset – moving people from passive bystanders to active owners – is where SBCC becomes essential. According to Wikipedia’s overview of SBCC, behaviour change is influenced not only by external motivators but by an internal sense of ownership. When people feel ownership over something, their relationship to it transforms. This is exactly the shift that Nagaland’s communitisation strategy had to engineer at scale.

The programme faced three predictable barriers: apathy (“this is the government’s job, not ours”), distrust (“this scheme will disappear in a year”), and lack of capacity (“we’re farmers, not administrators”). The SBCC approach taken by the Nagaland government addressed each of these head-on.

Leveraging existing social structures 🔗

Rather than introducing foreign institutions, the programme worked through Nagaland’s existing social fabric. Village Councils, tribal networks, church communities, and youth organisations were already trusted, well-functioning bodies. As noted in a peer-reviewed study published in the Zenith International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, communitisation directly involved Nagaland’s traditional forms of local governance – Village Councils and Village Development Boards – which carry community legitimacy built over generations. The message framing was also crucial: it was not “the government requires this of you” but “this is our village, our children, our school.”

Community dialogue over information delivery 🔗

This was not a conventional Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaign, where officials arrive with printed posters and deliver one-way lectures. Facilitators and NGOs conducted extensive dialogues in villages, surfacing fears, answering questions, and letting communities arrive at their own conclusions. UNICEF’s Communication for Development framework in India recognises this approach as central to effective SBCC – genuine community engagement requires two-way communication and participatory processes, not just information delivery to passive recipients.

Capacity building as communication 🔗

To counter the “we don’t know how” barrier, the programme invested heavily in training. VEC members were trained in basic accounting, how to conduct formal meetings, how to verify teacher attendance registers, and how to manage a bank account – practical skills that most committee members had never needed before. This was not merely skill-transfer; it was a confidence-building exercise that told communities: “You are capable of doing this.” In SBCC terms, this addresses what researchers call self-efficacy – the belief that one can successfully perform a new behaviour.

Making ownership visible and tangible 🔗

The most powerful communication tool in the entire programme was arguably the VEC bank account. When community members saw their own neighbours – sitting on the VEC – receiving and spending government funds transparently, the old distrust of government “schemes” began to dissolve. When a leaking school roof was repaired within days of the VEC taking over – rather than waiting years for a state-level bureaucratic process – the community experienced the power of ownership firsthand. The change was concrete and immediate.

Results: what changed on the ground 🔗

Documented outcomes from communitised schools showed a clear increase in school enrolment, a reduction in dropout rates, better teacher attendance, and improved school infrastructure – the very indicators that had been most troubling before 2002. A research study conducted in Kohima district’s Tseminyu block found increases in both male and female student enrolment, improved punctuality and discipline among students, greater participation in co-curricular activities, and notably higher teacher attendance percentages.

Field reports documented in Kalpavriksh’s study on communitisation in Nagaland recorded village-level changes such as schools receiving weekly communal meals for children – organised by the VEC – which contributed to consistent 90% student attendance rates at some schools. Uniforms, bags, and books were distributed free, reducing the cost burden on families that had previously kept children away from school.

The state’s own Annual Administrative Report confirmed that since communitisation’s implementation, there had been considerable progress in enrolment, retention, and the provision of reasonable quality education to primary school children – making elementary education the largest and most successful government-community partnership in the state.

Internationally, the programme was recognised when Nagaland was selected for the United Nations Public Service Award in 2008 for its communitisation initiative, in recognition of its innovative application of community social capital to public service delivery.

Women’s participation and inclusion 🔗

One significant but often understated outcome of the VEC model was the mandatory inclusion of women in committee membership. Village Education Committees are designed to represent diverse local stakeholders, and Nagaland’s model specifically required at least one woman among the parent representatives and encouraged women from the broader community to serve. In a context where women had limited formal roles in village governance, VEC membership opened a structured channel for women to participate in decisions about public education – from budget allocation to teacher accountability. This inclusion had ripple effects, with women’s groups in several villages playing an active role in improving school hygiene and child health awareness.

Challenges and ongoing limitations 🔗

Communitisation is not without its difficulties, and honest assessment of the model requires acknowledging them. Researchers have identified ongoing challenges including teacher shortages in remote villages, the physical inaccessibility of many communities, poor transport and communication links, and the absence of a robust monitoring framework at the state level. At the village level, studies have noted that personality clashes within VECs, insufficient professionalism among some committee members, and the gravitational pull of urban schools – where families aspire to send their children regardless of improvements in local government schools – continue to limit the model’s full potential.

Experts and civil servants have also flagged that the communitisation policy requires periodic review – with recommendations for five-yearly policy assessments, stronger penalty clauses for non-performance, and capacity building not just at the grassroots level but also for department heads who need to understand and support the communitisation framework from the top.

Why this is a model worth studying 🔗

Nagaland’s communitisation experiment demonstrates something that top-down development programmes routinely fail to grasp: SBCC is most effective when communities are not merely recipients of information but are active participants in designing and owning the change they are meant to adopt. The programme succeeded because it aligned legal transfer of ownership with communication strategies that addressed real psychological and social barriers – apathy, distrust, and perceived incapacity – rather than assuming that legislation alone would change behaviour.

Research on communitisation published via ResearchGate frames it as a model of co-governance – a multi-actor partnership where power is shared creatively, institutional learning is built in, and outcomes are socially inclusive. It is a model with direct lessons for education reform, public health delivery, and community development programmes across India and beyond.

What do you think? If community ownership can transform school management and student outcomes in Nagaland’s remote villages, what structural or cultural barriers might prevent this model from being replicated in more urbanised or politically complex settings? And to what extent do you think the success here depended on Nagaland’s unique pre-existing social institutions like Village Councils – or is the underlying SBCC logic transferable anywhere?

References

1. https://www.pen2print.org/2017/02/communitisation-of-elementary-education.html
2. https://nagalandjournal.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/communitisation-of-education-in-nagaland/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_and_behavior_change_communication
4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261697584_IMPACT_OF_COMMUNITISATION_ON_ELEMENTARY_EDUCATION_-_AN_ANALYSIS
5. https://www.unicef.org/india/what-we-do/communication-for-development
6. https://vikalpsangam.org/article/communitisation-of-education-in-nagaland/
7. https://vikalpsangam.org/wp-content/uploads/migrate/Resources/nagaland_communitisation_neema.pdf
8. https://www.morungexpress.com/communitisation-brings-progress-to-elementary-education-in-nagaland
9. https://teachers.institute/dimensions-of-educational-management/village-education-committees-role/
10. https://morungexpress.com/nagaland-communitization-policy-becoming-languid-needs-revival
11. https://www.sbcguidance.org/understand/social-and-behaviour-change-communication
12. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224928479_The_Communitisation_of_Public_Institutions_and_Services_in_Nagaland_India