The forgetten Voice in the wilderness

by John Samuel



John the Baptist has always been an inspirational figure for me. His is the voice calling in the wilderness. He is the one who came to prepare the path, to facilitate the vision that every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill be made low. His clothes are made of camel's hair. He has a leather belt around his waist. He eats locusts and drinks wild honey. Apart from being so completely earthy, he is fearless of powerful establishments and vested interests. He has no qualms about calling a spade a spade. He will castigate self-seekers and opportunists as a "brood of vipers". John the Baptist, crying out the truth in the wilderness, is really a sort of primordial activist.

Beating a path towards positive change is the raison d'etre of social action groups. Theirs is the voice of justice in the wilderness of apathy and deprivation. But that is an ideal far removed from contemporary reality. In the flux of change, the role and identity of so-called development and social change institutions gets more and more muddled. In the midst of busy programme schedules, project implementations or service delivery, the modern activist scarcely has the time to ponder over disturbing questions about his/her own validity. Often we are not sure what path we are creating, where it shall lead, and what sort of change it will bring about. We are like Alice in Wonderland. As one of the characters in Alice in Wonderland says, "If we do not know where we are going, it hardly matters which way we take."

Though the gulf between rhetoric and reality is widening, the "change-managers" are by and large complacent with the "growth rate" (in terms of funds, staff and infrastructure) of their institutions, busy planning their institutional survival strategies for the coming years. For all their noble intentions, however, the ability of these institutional entities to influence the political process or people's attitudes remains limited. Somehow even the best efforts get trapped in a series of seminars, reports and news items which have little impact on people's lives.

Yes, there are some inspiring success stories at the micro-level, but their impact is largely confined to a very limited section of people, failing to influence societal perceptions or internalised feudal attitudes. The efforts of social change institutions at the macro-level are, meanwhile, limited to seminar rooms and the city editions of English newspapers. So that we have a situation where islands of action and seeds of hope at the village level are scattered too far and wide, while a similar gap yawns between urban efforts for macro change and rural activism. As a result, the whole effort is too fragmented to influence people's consciousness.

This often leads to a situation where people know more about the institutions and their high-profile leaders than the work they are doing. In the course of time, governments and policy-makers also learn to indulge these institutions and their "nuisance value". Mixed press reports and the diverse images of these institutions make the middle class view them either as a set of isolated do-gooders or development "racketeers". Even the best of efforts and institutions are beginning to be seen as still more baggage on the periphery of politics and government.
Surely such a situation calls for honest introspection within the social change or development sector?

There are at least 20,000 active voluntary development organisations, charitable trusts, social action groups, research and training institutions presumably working for positive social change. (The number of registered organisations is much higher.) Even by conservative estimates that's more than 200,000 people working with these institutions for social change. Why then is the total impact far less than the real potential? Why are social change initiatives unable to break through the growing indifference and cynicism within society?

There are broadly four trouble areas:

1) The predominance of institutional interests


In post-modern times, social movements are increasingly being replaced by institutions. While in the '60s and early-'70s, movements among students, peasants, women and trade unions influenced the political process and societal perception, in the '90s, various institutional entities have occupied that space. It's the reports of Amnesty International, the Red Cross or other international development organisations that get more weightage at macro-level discussions and debates. International relations and politics began to take a definitive turn after 1972, with the repositioning of the Bretton Woods institutions as the global merchants of development. Over 15 years (coinciding with the demise of the Eastern bloc), these institutions were practically turned into institutions of quasi-global governance. The '90s can be called a decade of manufacturing institutions and consent.

This was partly due to changing international power relations and strategies, and partly to the vacuum created in the absence of proactive or ideologically-driven social movements. Middle class activists or public-spirited individuals who either came out of the earlier movements or could not find any such option began to find spaces in these institutions. The entire social change sector began to acquire a mixed and often perplexing identity, with diverse ideological affiliations and institutional priorities. Given the changing strategies of Bretton Woods institutions, Official Development Assistance (ODA) programmes of the rich countries and a few international development organisations, the character and priorities of social change initiatives and institutions also changed.

With the flow of funds and a growing infrastructure, institutional interests and profiles became the major preoccupation of change-managers. Instead of social issues and problems determining the priorities of these institutions, the interests of the institutions began to dictate their agenda. Many of these institutions were formed by visionaries with the best of intentions. But as the staff and infrastructure grew, the scramble among change-managers to get more funds and build bigger development enterprises began. The seductive power of importance began to lure the chieftains of these enterprises. And in many cases, ideals were banished as institutions won the battle. The delusion of power made it very difficult to go back to the wilderness of the villages or the congestion of slums to shout for justice. Morchas were more conveniently replaced by the seminar-report-seminar-report syndrome. The streets became too hot and dusty for any dharnas. It was far easier to exchange pleasantries with policy-makers and powerbrokers on the cocktail circuit of the rajdhanis. In the quest to acquire a place in the rajdhani, the place in the hearts of the common people was lost.

Fiefdoms were the inevitable and tragic end result as the competition began between institutions for more funds, more profile. The same set of people who once worked with you and supported you began to be seen as potential rivals. On this treadmill, there was time to undermine the other institution, but no time to build an organic relationship with the people. This sense of insecurity, false sense of power and habituated comfort levels undermined the moral authority and political will of the activists.

This was not what many of us wanted. There are a large number of genuine activists who are restless in the institutional corridors. They cannot help but look around and say, Is this really what we wanted?

Social change institutions and social action groups can at best be pathmakers for larger social movements. But when they appropriate the space of social movements, there is bound to be a conflict of interests between institutional survival and the voice in the wilderness. Optimum institutional backing is helpful to build up movements, but an overdose of institutionalisation is the best way to kill a movement in its embryonic stage.


2) Self-righteous messiahs


The holier-than-thou attitude makes one dismissive of others, and impairs the building up of a relationship between various social change initiatives. Even if many organisations share compatible socio-political perspectives, they tend to undermine each other because of self-righteous leadership. When self-righteouness becomes a sort of dogma, it alienates people and builds up walls around you. That is what happened to many of the best activists and social action leaders.

3) Fragmented perspectives

What determines the choice of an issue to work on? Is it the availability of funds, the flavour of the month or one's own conviction or people's needs? The choice will vary from organisation to organisation, depending on their social location and institutional inclinations. However, it seems that there is a season for each issue. At one point of time there will be a bandwagon of child labour issues, then after some time another frenzied effort for primary education. If you ask some of the organisations working on primary education about child labour, you are likely to be told that child labour is not their priority. When people fail to realise that child labour and the lack of compulsory primary education are two sides of the same coin, that is an instance of fragmented perspective.

The roots of such a fragmented worldview can be traced back to the so-called experts and consultants hired by international development organisations. When a development institution runs out of funding, the mandarins in funding organisations prescribe an issue for them and offer a new project to work on. So instead of continuing their work on child labour, the emphasis will be shifted to micro-credit or reproductive health. When funded programmes and projects guide one's worldview from time to time, it leads to a very fragmented perspective. The priorities of donor organisations are determined more by statistical figures and global trends than by the real needs of people. When an organisation takes up an issue that cannot connect to the felt needs of people, one cannot communicate with the people. Without communicating, one cannot mobilise the people. The compartmentalised expertise and fragmented responses of the international aid system reinforce the project-oriented worldview. As a result, a large chunk of work is duplicated and a great amount of money wasted.


4) Going beyond the converted

In almost all cities, there is a bunch of people who attend seminars and workshops on issues ranging from child labour to consumer issues, women's rights, the environment, human rights and anti-nuclear campaigns. These groups of people usually consist of public-spirited citizens, "freelance" activists, political residues, retired bureaucrats, a couple of academicians, some journalists or a couple of lawyers and, of course, the development or social work professionals. Over a period of time, many of them become more acquainted with each other and emerge as an informal circle of concerned citizens or activists.

They are the converted; converted to the cause of one issue or the other. In fact these are the people who sense the injustice when trees are being cut, or some atrocities are committed. There will be around 4,000-5,000 such people all over India. Many of them may have a leftist, feminist, environmental, consumer rights and intellectual or literary background. Some of them are people who have been habituated to listening and talking about social issues. For some others it is a part of their job, or something to do post-retirement. So far so good. But the problem is that hardly any issue goes beyond this small group of people. The groups have remained the same for the last ten or 15 years. Before the converted become museum pieces, we must create new voices, broader alliances and a different sensibility among the middle class.

It is time to rediscover the honesty, fearlessness, integrity and moral authority of John the Baptist. Or we will all be lost in the wilderness.
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