A gestão social descentralizada a partir do PRONAF Infra-estrutura e serviços municipais: avaliação da experiência do Conselho Municipal de Desenvolvimento Rural de São Pedro do Sul - RS.

Abstract

In the 90 s Brazil experienced an increasing process of decentralization of public policies which sought to institutionalize, through social management councils, the demand of social movements for the comanagement of local development. This notion referenced the frame, in 1996, of the PRONAF line infrastructure and services for municipal districts (PISM), seeking to improve Familiar Agriculture and rural development. Literature on PISM tends to consider both the recurrent limiting factors to the right conducting of the management process and the poor objective results concerning development relative. Thus, it was aimed to check the occurrence, how and why the limits of social management are produced or reproduced, having as reference the municipal district of São Pedro do Sul / RS and the Municipal Council of Rural Development (MCRD) during the introduction of PISM from 1997 to 2002. The primary data was collected from recorded interviews with the most active councilors in that period, complementing the minute analyses of MCRD meetings and other pertinent documents. The main decisions searching the reasons that orientated themselves were identified and assessed in order to establish relationships with the effective results aiming the strengthening of Familiar Agriculture and the promotion of rural development. The main limits identified by the research were the reproduction of excessive concern about deadlines and bureaucratic limits of the public policies by MCRD which, in association with little availability of human resources, concurs to centralization of decisions and actions, and to poor quality and importance given to the municipal planning of rural development. Also, the method of choosing the councilors produces a political alignment with the Mayor s positions, resulting in a sort of control from a material and methodological point of view which limits the autonomy and emergence of critical actions. Likewise the method of choosing the demands results in the majority choice for modern equipment, followed by services controlled by the City Hall and in scanty investments in basic infrastructure. The deliberative character of MCRD is accomplished only in the normative attributions, by ratifying decisions and in situations of conflictive potential, when it acts either as agreement generator or as conflict dissimulator. The work allows us to conclude that the decisive ascendancy of Familiar Agriculture does not occur over MCRD deliberations, taking into account that its most numerous segment, the peripheral familiar farmer modality, is sub-represented in the results. Reflection on the research data allows us to suggest the consideration of objective results with larger local involvement, investing in planning with national references, defining monitoring through indicators and publication of results with external and independent support.