Participatory rural development often ends up with pseudo participation instead of involving communities in the development processes. Meanwhile, challenges of rural development become more complex and require the active involvement of greater actors. Nowadays, villages play a pivotal role in sustainable development. Thus, this research intends to find the relations of rural governance, SDGs, and social cohesion of villagers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Multi-sited ethnography case study and framework analysis will become the approaches. Theoretically, the expected outputs are insights into participatory rural development and deliberative democracy and reconceptualizing "gotong royong" as an impetus of social cohesion in rural development. Practically, this research will provide comprehensive policy analysis and recommendations for strengthening rural development and SDGs implementation in Indonesia.