bodhigram

Seminar on Future of Development in Kerala( 19-20 December)

2011-12-17T09:46:00.000-08:00

Bodhigram Seminar Series
Future of Development in Kerala

December 19-20,
Venue: Bodhigram Centre, Thuvayoor, Adoor

The key objective of the Seminar is to initiate a wider discussion, debates and searches about the opportunities, challenges and options of building an economically, socially and politically empowered and sustainable Kerala in the next thirty years. The world and India are in the midst of rather precarious and profound transition, with an implication for society, economy and political process in the next fifty years.

While Kerala has made very significant achievement in the areas of socio-economic development in the first fifty years after the independence, the society of Kerala are facing new challenges in terms of human development, governance, agricultural, sustainability of economy, ecology and infrastructure. So the seminar is an effort to review our present context so that we can renew our initiatives, ideas, and collective efforts across the spectrum to evolve more political and policy coherence and consensus on key areas of the future development of Kerala.

The specific Objectives of Seminars are the following:

1) Provide a shared learning space to discuss perspective, ideas and policy options for Kerala with a long term perspective of the next thirty years ( 2040)
2) To understand the dynamics of population, society, ecology, energy needs and economy in the next ten years.
3) To identify possible policy and political options to build an economically vibrant, socially empowered and environmentally sustainable Kerala.
4) To identify areas for further research to develop information base for Developing a Perspective Plan for the next twenty five years of the state.

Programme Schedule
December 19
5 pm- 7.30 Pm: Inaugural Assembly
Future of Developments: Opportunities and Options
Chair: Anto Antony MP
Welcome address: John Samuel, (Global Democratic Governance Advisor, Chief of Global Programmes on Governance Assessments UNDP, New York/Oslo)
Opening Remarks: Mr. Thiruvanchoor Radha Krishnan (Hon. Minister for Revenue)
Inauguration of Bodhigram Centre and Inaugural Address: Mr. Ommen Chandy (Hon. Chief Minister of Kerala)
Special Address: Mr. KC Joseph (Hon: Minister of Rural Development,)
Mr. Suresh Kurup ( MLA)
Mr. Chittayam Gopal Kumar (MLA)
Mr. Raju Abraham (MLA)
Prof. DK John ( former Principle, St. Cyrils College, Adoor)
9 pm to 9.30 pm: Thematic Key note Address : Mr. KM Mani ( Finance Minister of Kerala)

December 20
9.30- 11.15: Thematic Plenary:
Socio-economic Transitions in Kerala

Future of Kerala’s Development: Opportunities and Options
Chair: Dr. MA Oommen
Presentations:
Prof. V Santha Kumar, Professor, Azim-Premji University
Mr. N. K Premachandran ( Hon. Former Minister of Water Resources)
Dr. Pius Antony. UNICEF, Policy Officer, Hyderabad
Dr. TG Arun, Professor of Development Economics( Director, Institute for Global Finance and Development, UK)
Dr. N Ajith Kumar (Director, CSEES, Kochi)
11. 30 – 1 pm: Future of Health Care in Kerala:
Chair: Dr. Ram Mohan( Member, Central Council of Indian Medicines, Government of India)
Presentations: Mr. Adoor Prakash ( Hon. Minister of Health)
Dr. B Ekbal ( Former Vice Chancellor and Former member of Planning Board, Kerala)
Dr. SA Haffiz ( NRHM)
2- 3.45 Pm :Future of Media and Society in Kerala
Chair: Gouridasan Nair( Senior Assistant Editor, The Hindu)
Key note Address:
Mr. Sashi Kumar(Founder, Asia Net, Director, Asian School of Journalism)
Panellists:
Mr. NP Rajendran( Deputy Editor,Mathrubhoomi; Chair Person, Kerala Press Academy )
Mr. MG Radha Krishnan ( Associate Editor, India Today)
Mr. John Mundakkayam ( Chief of Bureau, Malayala Manorama, Trivandrum)
Mr. NP Chekkutty (Executive Editor Thejas)
Sarita Varma( Financial Express)
Mr. Damodar Prasad ( Director, EMRC, Calicut University)
4 pm- 5 pm: Future of Higher Education in Kerala
Chair: Mr. TP Sreenivasan, Vice Chairman, Kerala Council for Higher Education and Former Ambassador of India)
Presentations:
Dr. B Ekbal, Former Vice Chancellor, University of Kerala
Prof. CT Aravinda Kumar : Dean of School of Environmental Sciences, MG University
Prof. KM Seethi ( Director, School of International Studies, MG University)

5.15 to 7. 30 pm: Concluding Assembly:
Opening Remarks: MA Baby MLA( Hon. Former Minister of Culture and Education)
5.15- 6 pm: Valedictory Address
Mr. CP John( Member, Planning Board, Kerala)
Key Note Address Dr. Thomas Isaac, MLA (Hon. Former Finance Minister of Kerala)
6- 7.30 PM: Future of Culture and Society in Kerala
Key Note Address: Mr. MA Baby
Special Address: Paul Zachariah
Prof. B Rajeevan
KR Meera
Dr. CS Venkiteswran
The mission of Bodhigram Foundation is to facilitate enlightened communities, social action and policy initiatives for sustainable human development and democratic governance, through nurturing transformative leadership, knowledge process and innovative modes of socio-economic entrepreneurship.

Bodhigram seeks to nurture ethical leadership, inspiring ideas and building social and political consensus on issues that affect human beings in India and across the world. Bodhigram Foundation plans to have four specific initiatives a) Institute for Leadership and Management in Governance b) Centre for Community Tourism c) Centre for Local Governance and Development d) Centre for Cultural studies and Research.
The Bodhigram Centre is a multi-purpose campus with conference and research facilities, and meant for youth camps, Leadership development programmes, Trainings, Seminars and workshops . Bodhigram Centre also would promote Bodhigram Farm and Bodhiigram community tourism ( Indicare: www.indicarehealth.com) along with Bodhigram Ayurveda centre.

Human Rights in the Indian Context

2011-12-10T03:02:00.000-08:00

By John Samuel

As important as civil and political rights in the Indian context are the rights of the marginalised -- women, tribals, Dalits or lower-castes, and the poor whose survival depends on access to natural resources. It is the rights of the marginalised and of the minorities in the country today that are in peril. The challenge is to empower the poor and marginalised to demand their rights and participate in the public sphere

The Constitution of India is one of the most rights-based constitutions in the world. Drafted around the same time as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Indian Constitution captures the essence of human rights in its Preamble, and the sections on Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of State Policy.

The Constitution of India is based on the principles that guided India's struggle against a colonial regime that consistently violated the civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights of the people of India. The freedom struggle itself was informed by the many movements for social reform, against oppressive social practices like sati (the practice of the wife following her dead husband onto the funeral pyre), child marriage, untouchability etc. Thus by the mid-1920s, the Indian National Congress had already adopted most of the civil and political rights in its agenda. The movement led by Dr B R Ambedkar (one of the founding fathers of the Constitution) against discrimination against the Dalits (the erstwhile outcasts or so-called untouchables who formed the lowest strata of the caste hierarchy and who currently number more than 170 million or 16.5% of the total population of India) also had an impact on the Indian Constitution.

In spite of the fact that most of the human rights found clear expression in the Constitution of India, the independent Indian State carried forward many colonial tendencies and power structures, including those embedded in the elite Indian Civil Service. Though the Indian State under Jawaharlal Nehru took many proactive steps and followed a welfare state model, the police and bureaucracy remained largely colonial in their approach and sought to exert control and power over citizens. The casteist, feudal and communal characteristics of the Indian polity, coupled with a colonial bureaucracy, weighed against and dampened the spirit of freedom, rights and affirmative action enshrined in the Constitution.

In the first 15 years of the Indian republic, such inherent contradictions within the Indian polity were glossed over by the euphoria of 'nation-building', an agenda generally endorsed by political parties, the middle class and elite civil society. However, when the contradictions within the Indian polity and State came into the open in the late-'60s, the oppressive character of the State began to be challenged by student movements and ultra-left formations like the Naxalite movement. When the Indian State began to suppress such expressions of political dissent and mini-rebellions, the violation of human rights by the State began to command attention.

Over a period of 30 years, the articulation and assertion of human rights within civil society has grown into a much richer, more diverse and relatively more powerful discourse at multiple levels. A brief historical sketch of the different trajectories of human rights discourse will help us locate human rights in the historical context.

There are four specific trajectories of human rights discourse in the Indian context -- Civil and Political Rights, Rights of the Marginalised (such as women, dalits and adivasis), Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Right to Transparent and Accountable Governance. Though each of these trajectories is interconnected, they were promoted by different sets of actors (often with varying ideological affiliations) at different points in time. There has always been tension and lack of mutual appreciation between those who promoted civil liberties and the left-oriented groups who worked towards the structural transformation of socio-economic conditions and consequently of the State. As the concept of human rights was perceived as a western idea to gloss over inequalities and as a means of legitimising the capitalist and imperialist projects of the west (particularly the US) the left-oriented groups were clearly sceptical about human rights, particularly as expressed by the civil liberties groups. Though in some quarters such scepticism still exits, there has been a greater recognition of the need to promote and protect human rights, in spite of the misuse of the human rights discourse by the new imperialist forces.

Civil and political rights

The growing disenchantment with the Indian State that was expressed in various movements and political formations in the late-'60s and early-'70s was not tolerated by Indira Gandhi's regime. It is in this context that the movement for civil liberties led by liberal middle class intellectuals and activists became relevant. Organisations like the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) played a significant role in initiating and promoting a new discourse on civil liberties. However, many of the mainstream left parties, influenced by the socialist pretensions of Mrs Gandhi's regime, viewed the middle class movement for civil liberties as the agenda of the bourgeoisie and mistrusted the liberal voices of human rights groups as part of the American agenda. As many liberal institutions that promoted civil and political rights received funding from international agencies, the pro-establishment conservative groups as well as the leftist groups began to mistrust any organisation that received foreign funds.

The insecurity of Mrs Gandhi's regime resulted in the suppression of all dissent and the ultimate suspension of most Civil and Political Rights during the Emergency (1975-77). Almost all political opponents and activists were imprisoned and democratic rights suspended. The forced eviction of slumdwellers in Delhi and forced mass sterilisations created a sense of fear and insecurity among the people. It was during the Emergency, when every civil and political right was violated by the State, that the need to promote and fight for human rights was accepted across political classes. The civil liberties movement highlighted and challenged arbitrary detention, custodial violence and police atrocities.

In the last 20 years, the movement for civil and political rights has become much more coherent and widespread. It has grown beyond a set of urban middle class liberal intellectuals to a wide and diverse socio-political base. With the increase of insurgencies in the 1980s and the consequent State suppression of separatist movements in different parts of the country, various kinds of human rights organisations -- some genuine and some fronts for underground groups -- began to appear. The massacre of the Sikh community following the assassination of Mrs Gandhi in 1984 raised serious questions about the role of the State in protecting the fundamental rights of citizens.

The rise of right-wing Hindu 'nationalist' forces, the biased stand of the State machinery, and the consequent communal violence all over the country in the last 15 years have given rise to a different set of actors who stress on the civil and political rights of the minorities. The complicity of the State in abetting and supporting the planned violence against the Muslim community in Gujarat in 2002, where more than 1,500 people were killed and hundreds of homes and shops destroyed and looted, brought out the contradictions inherent in the Indian polity and State. But the rise of fanatical and right-wing forces and their anti-human rights postures have, in a way, helped to bring together human rights activists across the political spectrum, including leftist groups and minority rights groups.

Public Interest Litigation and the judicial activism of the Supreme Court initiated by Justices V R Krishna Iyer and P N Bhagwati has played a major role in expanding the scope of human rights and giving it a much-needed legitimacy through some very important verdicts (on prisoners' rights, rights of landless labourers, release of bonded labourers, etc). Justice Krishna Iyer, the law minister of the first elected communist government in Kerala in 1956, was instrumental in building a new discourse that brought together the left-oriented groups and the civil liberties groups as part of the larger human rights community in India. Most of his judgements reiterated the obligation of the State to protect rights and equally, the participation of people in securing their rights and giving them meaning. The establishment of the National Commission of Human Rights under the Human Rights Act of 1993 provided a new impetus to civil and political rights in India.

Rights of the marginalised

While civil and political rights focused largely on the rights of the individual, in the mid-'70s a new human rights discourse, based on group rights, collective rights and people's rights, began to be articulated within the framework of social and political empowerment.

The emergence of the women's movement in the 1970s gave a new dimension to the rights discourse in India. In 1974, the Committee on the Status of Women in India submitted a report that highlighted the marginalisation of women in every sphere of life. The emergence of a number of women's groups such as Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), Manushi, Joint Women's Forum etc raised a new consciousness and public debate on the issue of women's status, domestic violence, dowry, rape, custodial violence, trafficking and the invisible labour of women in the household. The women's movement not only critiqued the Indian patriarchy, casteism and feudalism, it also promoted a new awareness of women's rights. Though it began as a largely urban movement, over a period of 30 years, the women's movement has emerged as one of the most articulate and widespread movements in India, with new campaigns for women's political participation and rights. It is partly because of the pressure from the women's movement that the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments to introduce local self-government provided 33% reservation for women in local self-government institutions. The women's movement has played a key role in ensuring the participation of women in the electoral process and governance.

In the post-Emergency period a number of political and social activists and public-spirited professionals opted out of party/electoral politics and focussed on the micro-level process of social mobilisation amongst marginalised communities. These social action groups working at the micro level began to highlight the historic and structural marginalisation of the Dalits (the so-called outcasts), Adivasis (more than 80 million tribal people who form around 8.3% of the Indian population) and landless labourers. The empowerment of the marginalised has been the key mission of such social action groups. However, when it came to the demand for entitlement for these communities, most of these groups began to use the rights language, particularly because of the constitutional guarantees. As many of these groups were sceptical of mainstream human rights discourse, they have used the term 'People's Rights' to emphasise the collective characteristics of rights and to focus on the political aspect of their rights.

Thus from the mid-'80s there has been a consistent effort to define and re-articulate Dalit rights, the rights of Adivasis, people's rights over natural resources, etc. This became more pronounced following the large-scale displacement caused by large dams, development projects, forestry projects, mining companies, etc. Most of the displaced people were Adivasis and Dalits. The Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement), the Fishworkers Struggle and the Dalit Human Rights campaigns brought the issue of people's rights and rights of the marginalised communities into the mainstream political discourse of India. This trajectory of human rights discourse combined an integrated vision of human rights based on social justice, affirmative action, people's participation and economic justice. The adverse effects of neo-liberal globalisation helped to develop a pan-Indian discourse on people's rights and also helped to connect with similar movements in the global south.

Economic, social and cultural rights

The explicit focus on Economic, Social and Cultural (ESC) Rights is relatively new compared to civil and political rights and group rights. The emergence of ESC rights in the mainstream development agenda is in consonance with the emergence of more institutionalised and funded initiatives for poverty eradication and social development. In the initial years, many such initiatives and institutions (commonly termed non-government organisations or NGOs) began with a welfarist approach, trying to supplement or substitute the welfare State. However, over a period of time there has been a widespread realisation of the limitations of micro-level development intervention and poverty eradication programmes that do not question the politics and policy frameworks that perpetuate deprivation. Most of the welfare/development NGOs, with foreign funding support, became either subcontractors of the dominant development models or well-meaning do-gooders who addressed the symptoms of poverty and not the socio-political conditions and structural inequalities that perpetuate poverty. It is in this context that the need to bridge the micro-level action and macro-level political and policy arenas became relevant. As a result, a number of grassroots action groups and mass movements working with women, Dalits, Adivasis and the landless poor began to draw from the fundamental rights and directive principles of the Indian Constitution to pressurise and persuade the State to meet its obligation to fulfil ESC rights.

An activist judiciary has also served to expand the scope of fundamental rights to incorporate economic and social rights as well. Progressive and creative judicial intervention expanded the scope of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution which guarantees the Right to Life. Justice Krishna Iyer and other activist judges, through a series of very significant judgements, drew extensively from human rights law, to conclude that the right to life means the right to live with dignity, and that the right to live with dignity includes the right to livelihood, right to education and right to health.

These progressive judicial pronouncements were in many ways a response to the social action groups and movements that sought judicial intervention to persuade and pressurise the government to protect and fulfil the rights of the most marginalised. Thus the emergence of ESC rights is the result of advocacy efforts by grassroots action groups and NGOs in India.

The series of World Summits, starting with the Vienna Summit on Human Rights in 1993, helped to bring ESC rights onto the agenda of many international development organisations. This in turn also resulted in many of the specialised groups taking up campaigns to promote specific rights. This includes the campaign for the fundamental right to education, which resulted in the 86th amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing the fundamental right to education. There have been similar campaigns for the rights of self-employed women and unorganised workers, the right to universal healthcare and a number of other campaigns focussing on economic and social rights.

The emergence of the environmental and consumer movements in the1980s paved the way for a series of new legislations and policy interventions to protect the rights of consumers and people. The resurgence of the Adivasi (tribal) movement and the increased marginalisation of the minority communities by the right-wing Hindu nationalist government has brought cultural rights into public debate and policy discourse.

While the 1970s can be termed the decade of the emergence of the civil liberties movement, the 1980s witnessed the emergence of group rights and people's rights over resources and livelihoods. It is in the 1990s that ESC rights came centrestage. Various factors including rights-based reorientation by international development agencies and organisations, political compulsions on the ground and the increased visibility of the rights discourse provided the right conditions for advocating ESC rights.

However, it is ESC rights that are most elusive. This is because the rhetoric of economic and social rights is not necessarily reflected in policies, programmes and budgetary allocations. As a result, the State pretends to promote economic and social rights, while systematically undermining these rights following the dictums of the IMF, World Bank and WTO. This situation leads to a growing sense of disillusionment and cynicism about the so-called rights-based approach. As a result the political content and policy feasibility of the rights-based approach is increasingly questioned, particularly because it is more often used as a development strategy than a means for political empowerment of the people and policy transformation.

Right to transparent and accountable governance

The great expectations of India's welfare State began to recede after 20 years of hope and optimism. Over a period of time, the welfare State became too fat to be functional. The saturated State failed to either deliver welfare or protect and fulfil rights. The government apparatus and the government itself faced a credibility crisis. Political parties as the legitimising vehicle of parliamentary democracy suffered a lack of credibility due to the criminalisation of politics. The proliferation of career politicians and increasing instances of corruption in all aspects of governance brought the issues of accountability and transparency into the development discourse. The saturation of the State, coupled with the debt crisis, forced the government to seek financial and policy assistance from the Brettonwood institutions to make the failed welfare State work. However, the accompanying neo-liberal policy prescriptions of these institutions in the form of structural adjustments, privatisation and liberalisation further alienated the poor from the Indian State. That is how two clear tendencies in governance became clear by the mid-'90s.

The first set of actors, led by the World Bank, advocated 'good governance' to address resource leakage, misappropriation and mismanagement of the loans taken from the Bank and to ensure that there would be relatively less risk in credit management and repayment. This was more for strategic reasons than any commitment to the democratic principles of public accountability and transparency. The second set of proponents of transparent governance have been grassroots action groups (like the Mazdoor Kisaan Shakti Sangathan in Rajasthan) and advocacy organisations who sought government accountability as part of the citizen's right to know and the right to participate in governance.

The Jan Sunwais (public hearings) and social audits initiated by MKSS in Rajasthan are a well-known example of a process of mobilisation that combines a rights-based approach with people's participation. The people's planning process in local self-governance in Kerala promoted by the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) is another example of participatory practices with a rights-based perspective. The Community Learning Movement for accountable governance, promoted by the National Centre for Advocacy Studies (NCAS), is an example of a rights-based praxis, based on the principles and practice of participation. Thus the new movements and institutions are working to advance the right to accountable governance and ensure that the peoples' right to participate in governance and development are the basic premises for people-centred governance and development.

In spite of the relatively greater visibility and legitimacy of the human rights discourse, the meaning and utility of rights is still a highly contested arena. Though India has ratified five of the six covenants (ICCPR, ICESCR, CEDAW, ICCRC, and CERD) and conventions that constitute the legally-binding international human rights treaties, the implementation of these rights is rather poor. Although the new policy papers and the documents of the Planning Commission of India increasingly use the rights language, in terms of real programmes and implementation the performance of the Government of India is far from satisfactory.

(For detailed information on the right to information and the campaign in India, click here)

Making human rights work: Linking rights with participation

If human rights are to have real meaning, they must be linked to public participation. And participation must be preceded by empowerment of the people. A sense of empowerment requires a sense of dignity, self-worth and the ability to ask questions. The sense of empowerment along with a sense of legal entitlements and constitutional guarantees gives rise to a political consciousness based on rights. A process of political empowerment and a sense of rights empowers citizens to participate in the public sphere.

Most mass movements in modern India (the All India Democratic Women's Association, Ragpickers Union etc) have emphasised the process of empowerment while they also 'struggled' for rights. The notion of 'struggle' was implicit in claiming and promoting rights. Most social action groups and people's organisations started by challenging and changing oppressive power structures that perpetuate patriarchy, casteism and poverty. Thus at the core of many such organisations was political transformation through people's empowerment wherein people can assert their rights and voices and demand justice. The process of social and political empowerment encompassed a sense of conscientisation based on dignity, rights and participation. That is why the slogans of the Shramajeevi Sanghatana, the union of erstwhile bonded labourers and Adivasis (tribals) in Thane district of Maharashtra assert that "We are not animals, but human beings", "We are not here to beg, but to demand justice".

People-centred advocacy is a possible link between rights and participation. People-centred advocacy seeks to connect social development, human rights and governance. It is about creating enabling conditions for socio-political empowerment and enhancing the capability of the marginalised to advocate for themselves so that they can claim their rights, seek public accountability and participate in the process of governance. People-centred advocacy seeks to go beyond changing public policies to changing people's attitudes, behaviour and unjust power relationships.

The Community Learning Movement (CLM) promoted by the National Centre for Advocacy Studies (NCAS) is an effort to empower grassroots communities so that they can seek accountability from the institutions of governance, demand their rights and participate in the political process. CLM takes a cluster of 10-25 villages. Four volunteers from each village participate in an action-learning cycle of 18 months, in six phases of three months each. Once in three months, the volunteers meet for two to three days to share experiences, learn new topics and build strategic plans for addressing local issues. The Learning Space or Open Notice Board maintained by the CLM local unit provides information (policy, budget, local government etc) that affects the villagers and the volunteers update the Board regularly. As a result of these initiatives, the CLM group in Karnataka has come up with its own community newspaper and wall magazine. Ordinary women, who have developed a sense of their rights and responsibility, have sought accountability from local government officials and exposed corrupt forest officials involved in illegal tree-felling and smuggling of timber from the forest.

People-centred advocacy can be an effective way to link rights and participation. However, the challenge is how to transform this linkage into an emancipatory politics that would help the poor emerge from the structural inequalities that perpetuate poverty.

Human rights are legtimised claims and the State has an obligation to respect, protect and fulfil these rights. However, rights become real only when people begin to realise their full potential as human beings and assert their rights in the private and public sphere.
InfoChange News & Features

Seasons

2011-12-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

Living is a feel of seasons
Sensing sights, sun, smell,
flow, moon and snow!

Snow, Snow, Snow
A sheet of white
Showering on earth
Naked trees
Leaf-less woods
Birds flew off!
River is freezing.

The depth of winter
Touching the marrow
At minus 12!
Sun sulks at 10 am!
Days are short!
Snow yet to shine!

Time to fly!
To Gods of own Country
To embrace the joy of a sunlit morning
To feel the leaves of green grass
To dip the feet in to the warmth
Of a flowing spring
Wake up to the tune of a morning bird
Walk up to embrace the laughter of a
Little daughter!

Life revolves around seasons
In anticipation of
Sun, moon, snow, life
Leaves, flowers and people
Life is seasons.

Waiting in the Winter

2011-12-05T23:11:00.000-08:00

Waiting in the winter
For the song of a bird
For a sun shine
For a smiling leaf
For the laughter
of kids on the playground
Smiles on the streets
For a warm hug!

Oslo- smiles
In summer
Sun never sleeps!
Sky bright-and blue.
Streets happy

Oslo Sulks
In winter
Sun ever sleeping
Everything cold
Everyone cold
Lonely streets
Moody sky
Covered bodies
Cold handshakes
Dark mornings

Waiting
For a velvet of snow
White Earth
White foot prints on the road
Waiting...
For the smile of the summer...
And flowers of the spring

Young Life!

2011-12-05T22:35:00.001-08:00

Young Life-
A gift unfolding
Young
Is to create life
Is to celebrate living
To Imagine,
To inspire and illuminate

Being young
Is being in Love
Sing a song of living
Dancing with others
To hold hands
To hug
To make love
To feel poetry
To learn to live everyday
To sense the power within
To question
To challenge
Making change happen within
And beyond...
Learning to laugh
Lighting up the lamp
Within
Feeling life- every moment
In a billion moods and modes
Of colours, creed and flow
Living, loving and laughing

When dreams begin to unfold
Winds of change begin to blow
Making poetry flowering
Making...
Hopes real
Making world smile
Earth Green
Sky- the limit
Life-
the beauty revealed-.
Dignity discovered
Divinity realised
Refusing to die
Swimming forward
In the waves of the world
Winds of change
To the flow of history.

The Dandi Diaspora

2011-12-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Cause and effect. Indian expertise in civil society problems gives them a global edge.
Sanjay Suri Text Size

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?240155

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Why Desis Lead In Civil Society Groups
•Indians have a better, first-hand experience of poverty. And also richer experience in combating it.
•Excellent at mobilising masses, in contrast to those in the west who are good only at lobbying.
•Indians groomed in the Gandhian tradition of working for the forgotten people and organising citizens for peaceful protests.
•India provides a democratic space for experimentation, in an environment not suppressive of innovative ideas. It helps produce well-trained leaders.
***

Of all those acronyms that crowd the communication space, there could hardly be another that sounds as dully inconsequential as 'NGO'. The yawn it inspires stretches right across 'civil society', defined as all those who organise themselves to pursue collective benefit. The persisting image of the 'civil society types' is badly dressed people who haven't showered for weeks just to make a political point, who live unwanted in a village somewhere except when they step into the city carrying posters to demand a better world, never mind how. Basically, the last reserve of someone with too much morality, or too little gumption, to be a proper scoundrel.

The trouble is that this no-proper-man's land is now beginning to matter worldwide in dramatic, even historic, ways. And Indians are right up there in leading that change, pushing governments and global giants like the World Bank into doing what they are convinced a lot of people want. These Indians are taking the street to meetings where decisions are taken over the lives of millions, even billions; and where necessary, in suit language.

It has the face of, say, Salil Shetty who heads the United Nations Millennium Campaign, whose job it is to hold governments to the promises made in 2000 to improve education and health, and reduce poverty. It's a campaign that could determine the quality of life of a couple of billion people, not forgetting that a few hundred million of them are in India. Shetty took up the position after taking over as the first non-Brit head of ActionAid, a charity with a once very British stamp.

It wasn't the expected way to go for someone who joined an MBA programme at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. "I went into the MBA programme kicking and screaming and pretty much stayed that way for the two years when I was there, asking why we need to study how to make rich people richer," Shetty told Outlook. And when after the MBA he also cleared the IPS exam, and then decided to join an NGO, "my friends thought I had gone bananas". Instead, he's gone places, in this un-smartest of callings.

Ashok Khosla, Development Alternatives, IUCN: IUCN is the world's biggest environmental grouping; research and field projects all over
Invisible to an uncaring media, these Indians have been stepping ahead in parallel with Indians taking space around the top in other fields; the many writers, businessmen like Laxmi Mittal. Now Ashok Khosla from the NGO Development Alternatives has come to head the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), the world's biggest environmental grouping that carries out research and field projects around the world, bringing together more than a thousand government and independent organisations. Then there's Dalip Mukarji, a doctor who worked at a leprosy centre in Andhra Pradesh and now heads Christian Aid, one of the largest charities in the world, supporting hundreds of millions of people. Ingrid Srinath heads Civicus, a hugely influential network of civil society groups around the world. John Samuel is international director of ActionAid.

These are not just Indians who happen to be there; they are there because they happen to be Indians. "In relation to social justice and poverty eradication questions, nobody can talk with greater legitimacy than an Indian," says Shetty. "We have both the largest number of poor people in the world and some of the most effective interventions to combat it. Take the Right to Information or Right to Food campaigns; they are at the leading edge of civil society action to combat poverty and discrimination."

In some ways, India has its problems working for it. Ingrid Srinath says, "The exposure to both, deep, structural injustices of the kind prevalent in India, and the multiplicity of successful civil society interventions there, makes it possible to relate to injustice and marginalisation around the world and to retain a sense of optimism and constructive engagement even in situations that seem utterly dire."

John Samuel, ActionAid: Global anti-poverty agency working with the world's poor everywhere

Indeed, India has a way of getting a lot of people together to make a lot of informed noise, then demand change—and achieve it as well. "People in the European Union and the United States are good at lobbying, not mobilising," says John Samuel. "In the West, advocacy meant experts hanging around in the corridors of power, and media-driven campaigns. In the last 10 years, global advocacy has been informed by India, Brazil and South Africa."

For instance, the mass protests over world trade talks apparently had a very Indian root. "The trade justice campaign arose from a workshop I did," says Samuel. This was some time before the explosive trade talks in Seattle 1999, when widespread rioting broke out against big corporations linking arms with rich governments to force deals profitable for them, but disastrous to too many others.

The protests were firstly a communication triumph. They began with a translation job, in decoding a negotiating language that was choking on jargon. "Civil society demystified the whole trade justice negotiations," says Samuel. "These highly technical agreements were brought to the people and ordinary political leaders." From conference rooms the discourse spilled on to the streets, and then flowed back to inform the negotiations. It sparked off a people's action that backed the likes of Kamal Nath in blocking an advance of EU and US business into markets like India that could have smothered much of local produce, and producers. In step with civil society, political positions by India, Brazil, South Africa and some others broke that Western habit that advanced nations must also be advancing nations, now into markets if not whole countries. No trade deal is better than a bad deal, civil society argued successfully. The lack of a wto agreement on this could well turn out to be one of history's more progressive indecisions.

Somehow, there is Gandhi somewhere in this Indian-led resistance. He believes in the outdated morality of working with the forgotten, he doesn't pursue the standard quest for the next smart thing to buy or new currency numbers to add to wealth accumulation. He has the ability to generate mass mobilisation, usually peaceful, and offers convincing arguments in the face of opponents who are as tough as they come. The Indian lead comes not just in mobilisation techniques that are learnt because there are so many of us; it comes by way of ideas that have been transforming.

Dr Rajanikant Shankarrao Arole and Mabelle Rajanikant Arole pioneered a system of preventive medication in hopeless situations in Maharashtra; the World Health Organisation picked that up and promoted it in other countries. Ela Bhatt's Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) has become a model in scores of countries. Anil Aggarwal's work on clean air long preceded the follow-up later on steps to limit climate change, and his techniques for decentralised water management are now integral to local water management in villages. Rajesh Tandon's models for what he called participatory research have been adopted as almost standard in work among the disadvantaged.

Rajesh Tandon, PRIA among others: Participatory research, building alliances among societal development agencies

Tandon, who began with an engineering degree from IIT Kanpur followed by an MBA at IIM Calcutta and a PhD in the US, abandoned managerial ambitions to work in Indian villages. "I saw a disconnect between quantitative, instrumental knowledge and local views of knowledge that were more intuitive, emotive, practical, experiential," he says. "That disconnect began to bother me. The knowledge system of the expert was undermining the more rooted knowledge system." And so he developed methodologies to blend the two, such as developing a literacy primer for specific groups of village women arising from their world and the daily issues they deal with. At the many international conferences on development in the '90s, starting with the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, these ideas were rapidly, and widely picked up.

At least one simple reason that India has produced so many ideas for the world is that you name the problem, and we have it. But more because, says Tandon, "there is a democratic space available for experimentation, in an environment that is not suppressive, that is liberating in some way". And, talking Gandhi again, "India has a long tradition of people with all sorts of education and training coming to serve society", he adds.

They have worked to develop a new democracy that goes beyond a vote every five years or so; it's a continuing campaign to give disregarded choices a chance and the dispossessed a voice, but by producing the doable and deliverable. And when you have that, you don't petition a government with problems; you confront it with solutions.

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Where is Kerala going?

2011-11-20T21:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.mathrubhumi.com/english/story.php?id=116880
Posted on: 21 Nov 2011

John Samuel

Context of Socio-economic Development of Kerala
Kerala is at a critical juncture of its history, political process and economy. Over the last fifty years, Kerala achieved significant achievements in the area of social development, democratisation and, to some extent, economic growth.

Over the last 100 years, many factors, including a relatively healthy political party process, robust mass media, deeper influence of social reform movement and better access to education, played an important role in achieving better social development indicators. This has created a relatively empowered middle class society (in comparison to other states of India) with better social and political consciousness. The progressive policy consensus among key political parties, with better investment in social sector, from 1957 onwards served its purpose. However, the older policy framework is now more or less saturated and not good enough to help us to develop pathways to the future. Though it is important to have a sense of history, it is time not to get too much preoccupied with any past model so that we can look forward to the challenges and opportunities in the next fifty
years. Hence, it is important to have forward looking new political and policy consensus towards building the future of Kerala.

The relatively better performance of Kerala in social development and democratisation is a result of the cumulative process of social reform movements from the early 20th century, relatively better outreach of education and health facilities (initiated by the missionary and church network and later on by other community network organisations), the development of the mass media, the political process in the backdrop of freedom struggle and progressive movements and the relatively better cosmopolitan fabric of the society. The social democratic political and policy process from the 1950s also enabled to create conducive governance environment for achieving universal primary education, highest literacy rate, relatively better health care, and development and gender indicators. The investment in education and health in the 1950s to 1980s created a competent and skilled labour force that could negotiate in the global market. Kerala is one of the first and most successful states in India
in globalising its relatively skilled or semiskilled labour force, with waves of migrant workers to Gulf countries and other parts of the world. The economic boom in the Gulf States, due to the hike in the oil price also created demand for skilled labour force for the modernisation and socio-economic development of the oil producing countries. The skilled labour force from Kerala contributed significantly towards the socio-economic growth of India and the Gulf States. The export of labour force towards the development of secondary and tertiary sector to different parts of the world and the consequent expatriated income of migrant labours created a new wave of economic growth in Kerala from the late 1980s and early 1990s.

While the growth in expatriated income created new demands in service sector, it also paradoxically contributed to the decline of primary sector- particularly that of agriculture. The cost of land and labour increased very significantly and the hyper-unionisation and party politicisation also created less conducive atmosphere for the development of manufacturing and secondary sector. In spite very significant growth in service sector (particularly consumer, health, education, housing, transport,
travel and allied areas), there was no corollary growth in the capacity of infrastructure. The migration of skilled force also contributed towards cumulative bran-drain from all sectors, including that of political process. This has created the paradox of the development of Kerala: higher socio-economic development, high per-capita income, less infrastructural facilities, conservative social values, better gender indicators along with less women's empowerment, and a civil society divided on the basis of party political affiliation and community organisations.

Kerala society jumped from Semi- feudalism to Consumerism via Communist aspirations - all within a div of sixty years. Hence, our own social and political culture became a strange and confusing mix of feudal- left- and consumerist and conservative- all in one! We also jumped from a predominantly agriculture - (primary sector economy) - to service sector (Tertiary sector) economy within a div of 40 years. We have moved rather fast from a rural based joint-family or networked-family social settings to nuclear and post-nuclear settings. A very significant section of our people moved from lower-middle class subsistence economy culture to a surplus bank balance - fuelled by expatriated income

From the 1990s, there was also significant deficit in the quality of youth leadership both in political and social process of Kerala. The expatriated income, the tremendous growth of consumer market and the decline of the quality of higher education contributed towards a new vulgarisation of politics, society and culture. While Kerala successfully became a part of the globalisation of labour force in the 1970s and 1980s, Kerala has failed to negotiate with other aspects of economic and social
globalisation. Though Kerala was well positioned to get the best possible opportunity out of the growth of IT sector in 1980s, the state missed the opportunity due to the lack of initiative to capture a significant opportunity to create at least a million more employment in the IT Sector. The lack of appreciation about the future potential of the sector and anti-entrepreneurial minds-set contributed towards the failure of the state to reap the benefits of the tremendous economic growth in the new sectors in the 1990s. The hyper-party politicisation of the development debate, the lack of long term vision in policy process and a deficit of creative imagination within the civil society led to a new stagnation of politics, society and economy of Kerala. Though there is dynamism of pseudo- debates and discussion in the political process and seeming economic growth- propelled by consumer market and expatriated income, there is stagnation at the core of the society and politics in Kerala. There is in
an increasingly trend of a rather cynical discussion and debates around the middle-class and even the quick rhetorical debates on the 24X 7 TV Channel tend to replace the substantive political discussions based on research, information and public discussions and debates. The term 'public' or 'civil society' or 'pothu-samooham' is increasingly substituted by the 'reality' show of predictable speakers, 'invited' audience and celebrity anchors. The Politics of TV Performance or street protest in
front of TV Cameras unwittingly eclipsed and consequently eroded substantive political discussions and educations in the society. This lack of real searches, dialogues and discussions between the real stakeholders and active organisations in requires serious exploration and discussion among all key stakeholders of the society to imagine a New Kerala: a Kerala that can help to nurture ideas, leadership, and innovation that can transform the state, India and the World. A more confident,
optimistic and vibrant Kerala can make wonders in the society and the world itself.

More than ten percent of the people of Kerala now live and work outside the state. The migration culture of Malayalies in the last seventy years and the money and ideas they brought back to Kerala played a very key role in influencing the society and politics more ways than what is being generally being acknowledged. From the nineties onwards, Kerala society is more in a post-nuclear family mode-where the members of a family are dispersed far and wide- and often virtually connected- or networked: rather than sharing a life or space. This also means a society of lots of elderly people and young people and nothing in between.

During the last ten years, there have been significant social and political churning in Kerala, resulting in new kinds of identity based assertions, increasing criminalization and violence in society and party-politicisation of issues to do with economic development of Kerala. There are many symptoms of a larger issue of social, cultural and political transition of Kerala in the context of new consumer materialism and neoconservative values and sectarianism - that came to define our society, culture
and politics in multiple ways.

Hence, the most important challenge for the political and policy leadership of Kerala is to challenge the stagnation that is settling in at the core of our society and to have a new movement for renewing the creative energies, recharging our potential and crating a passionate vision for the future of Kerala. Such a passionate vision and new creative movement for Kerala should create conditions for the renaissance of Kerala in 21st century. This means it is important re-imagine a new Kerala- with a long
term vision of the next fifty years, medium term vision for next 20 years and clear short-term policy and programme framework for the next five years.

Emerging Issues
Kerala is in the midst of a profound transition. It is important to understand the emerging issues that
will have a relevance to the people and governance of the state. In the context of the election in 2011, it is important to consider few important issues and to develop viable and practical approach to those issues.

There are nine key issues that need to be addressed with a sense of urgency and clear plan of action.

1) Huge number of educated unemployed.

There are around 4.2 million registered unemployed in the state. This means around 12% of population of Kerala are unemployed or underemployed. The issue of unemployment in Kerala was addressed through the migration of skilled and semi-skilled and professional workers from Kerala to the rest of India and the world. Kerala has one of the highest rates of suicides in India and world. And one of the main reasons for high number of suicides is the lack of employment opportunities and the social pressure from a highly consumerist and conservative society.

As the labour market is getting increasingly saturated in many parts of India and the world, the biggest challenge is Kerala would be to create millions of new employment opportunities in a mission mode.

Issue of inequality and poverty can only be addressed if the causes and consequences of unemployment are addressed in a sustainable way.

2) Corruption in Governance and government There is a wide spread discontent against corruption at various levels. The various allegations against government departments and ministers of this government and previous government created an
atmosphere of cynicism and anger among the common people of Kerala. There are various kinds of corruption- including the most obvious forms in appointment of teachers in the 'aided' schools and colleges, controlled by community-cast- networks across the state. Hence addressing corruption through pro-active policy framework and action programmes would be crucial to influence a larger cross section of people in Kerala.

3) The crisis of food production and agriculture

The migration of skilled and semiskilled labours to the gulf and other countries impacted the economy and agriculture of Kerala in a significant way. While this has created new employment opportunities in the construction sector and service sector, it also created deficit of labour in the agriculture sector. And the rapid shift to cash crops such as Rubber paradoxically increased the income of a section of middle class and at the same time adversely affected the food production in Kerala. Due to the
migration of semi-skilled labours to others states and gulf, and due to new employment opportunities in the construction sector, rubber plantations, and service sector, there has been an acute shortage in the agriculture and farm sector. This has increased the cost of labour very significantly, making the cost of agriculture production very high. As a result, Kerala is dependent on Tamil Nadu and other states for food. This has significantly increased the cost of food in Kerala. Such a situation along with
the inflation and fluctuating price of diesel and petrol created a steep price in the food price. This has created a new sense of discontent among the poor, lower middle class and government employees of Kerala.

4) Increasing criminalisation within the society.

The most evident form of criminalisation in Kerala is through the emergence of 'quotation-gangs'. These are group of young people living in a consumer society – with an urge to make quick money to meet the 'demands' of the market. They are primarily used by group vested interests with the covert support of local political leaders. They are involved in a) real estate mafia b) Illegal sand mining c) getting and selling spurious alcohol from other states and d) using force to get back loans or capture assets of those who defaulted on loans to the banks. They are also involved in planned and targeted murder, extortion and threatening. This has increased tremendously in the last five years- resulting in high profile murders, planned attack etc. Hence, addressing this issue would be crucial in the context of Kerala.

5) Rights, Safety, Security of women.

In spite of good gender-development Indicators, when it comes to women's rights, space and empowerment the track record of Kerala is not encouraging at all. In spite of the relatively high educational achievement of women, there are less number of women in political leadership and there is less spaces for women to assert their rights and space. This situation needs to change.

Recent attack against a young woman of twenty three in the train and her consequent death created a sense of anger among all cross section of society in Kerala. There is an increasing tendency of harassment of women in public as well as private spaces. Hence it is important to have concrete measures to address this issue in a proactive manner – with a sense of mission.

6) Environment degradation and vulnerability to natural disaster.

Due to the over exploitation of rivers (though illegal sand mining) and also the tendency to fill in the marshy- land (used for paddy cultivation) for construction purpose has created acute shortage of water in a state with relatively high rain fall. The new wave of urbanisation and the lack of clear programme of sanitation polluted the water sources. In the context of new urbanisation, based on the apartment-culture, scarcity of water will be an important issue. The pollution of water, lack of adequate sanitation, and breeding of mosquitoes everywhere, induced new communicable disease, killing so many people. The unprecedented pollution of rivers and water bodies lead to an environmental crisis, resulting in floods and other natural disasters. There is hardly any well planned programme or process to address the issue of environmental degradation, pollution,
scarcity of water and natural disaster.

7) Less quality of infrastructure

While Kerala has large quantity of roads and almost universal electrification, the bad condition of roads and regular power-cut created a sense of frustration among the people. The lack of regular maintenance of roads, along with rapid increase in the number of vehicles have created enabling environment for huge increase in road accidents in Kerala. The lack of good roads and the constant power-cuts have adversely affected the potential of the tourism sector in Kerala. This also proved to be a hindrance for creating new employment opportunities in Kerala.

8) The issues of marginalisation and Poverty

In spite of relatively better social development indicators, there are many communities and people still at the receiving end of poverty and marginalisation. A very significant number of people from Adivasies, dalits and fisher folks are still at the receiving end of poverty and marginalisation. Lack of land, productive resources and sustainable employment and income create seasonal as well as entrenched poverty among a section of the society. Hence it is important to have special focus to
address the causes and consequences of poverty and marginalisation in Kerala.

9) The vulnerability of Elderly People:

Due to intense migration of professional and skilled labour to different parts of India and the world, there is a real issue of the new vulnerability of elderly people, particularly those who have crossed seventy years. Many of them stay alone, and a large number of them do not have any health or psycho-social care. And Kerala will have very large number of elderly people and addressing their issue of health, security and developing support system would be crucial in the context of Kerala.

Kerala: Pathways to Future
It is important to have a paradigm shift in the socio-economic growth model of Kerala. The key challenge is how to build on the existing strengths of Kerala and at the same time going beyond the old policy paradigm to a transformative paradigm of socio-economic- and cultural renewal and renaissance of Kerala. On the one hand we need to address issues of poverty, marginalisation, and environmental degradation and on the other hand it is important to envision a socio-economic
paradigm appropriate for the making of a just, equitable, sustainable and prosperous Kerala.

Developing a robust and sustainable local economy that can negotiate with global economy – with high quality products and services- would be crucial for the future socio-economic viability of Kerala.

When there is high economic growth in the service sector, coupled with high unemployment rate, increasing sense of social or economic inequality- with identity connotations, and a new wave of consumerist materialism, there would be more chance for criminalisation, sectarian politics and communal tensions. So today the most important and challenging task is to create enabling policy and infrastructure conditions that can create millions of new jobs in the next ten years. While there will be significant opportunities for high-skilled professionals in the global labour market, there would be less opportunities for millions of semi-skilled and skilled labour force.

There is an estimated bank deposit more than 1.3 lakhs crore of rupees in Kerala and only 55% of this given as loan to be used. And even this is more often used n the consumer sector (like housing) rather than productive sectors. Here too most of the new investments are in the real estate, housing and retail sector. There is less significant investment in manufacturing or new knowledge economy sectors. Instead of inviting foreign investors, there is a very significant opportunity to create a new
entrepreneurial culture – by promoting locally and globally networked small and medium scale enterprises in select areas. It is also important to strengthen some of the traditional manufacturing sectors such as coir, cashew and hand loom- in a way that they are competitive, effective and economically viable. However, this also requires new infrastructure (road, power and water) facility and supportive investment climate. It is possible to create two million jobs in the networked enterprises in knowledge sector( R&D, IT, ) , Service sector( community tourism, health, education, ) and manufacturing sector( agro-industries and food processing,, garments, cosmetics ).

While all these require much detailed analysis, public discussions and master plan for the next ten years, it is also important to highlight few of the policy options in the context of the forthcoming elections in Kerala. It is important to begin to think about possible policy options, within the next five years. What follows is not a comprehensive policy framework, but more of an indicative framework that may help to address some of the issues to a certain extent.

Many of the potentially transformative initiative may not need more money, though it may require inspired, innovative and imaginative ideas and a leadership committed to long term development and renewal of Kerala. It is the present approach that needs to be revisited. It is time to talk about grassroots - and local level initiatives- of scale - to transform Kerala. It can create more than 1.5 million new job opportunities in the next five years. Creating strong and sustainable local economies
and linking with the global is the key. Now we are doing the opposite- linking global economy to the local- without any capacity or culture- and this create a completely false kind of service economy -based on consumerism rather than effective productive capability.

The key is developing productive capacity, vibrant local economies, grassroots entrepreneurial initiatives- public partnership, competitive local market that can negotiate with bigger market with niche comparative advantage. All these need enabling social, cultural, and infrastructural environment. We need a completely new different way of looking at things than the present mode of doing things- either old wine in new bottle or new wine in old bottle. We need to envision a new Kerala. We need a paradigm shift- nothing less than that. We need to renew and re-imagine society, economy and governance to create a sustainable, just, vibrant and peaceful Kerala for the coming generation. It is to time to invest in a new Kerala, laying the foundations for the future- Making Change Happen!!

Erosion of European economy?

2011-11-20T09:41:00.000-08:00

The New Age, Dhaka.
19/11/2011 22:50:00
http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/40572.html

The economic crisis of Europe also needs to be understood in terms of the history of surplus economy created during the colonial era and the character and nature of economic growth and the political development of the region in the post-second world war era. Writes John Samuel

Greece is more than a country. It is a civilization that deeply influenced the culture, society and political process of the western and southern Europe. If the number of people marching on the streets and the increasing discontent of citizens in many countries of Europe is an indication, many of the European countries are getting in to a precarious phase of volatile economy and state. Though the economy of Greece does not make a big chunk of the economy of European Unions, the deeper economic and consequent political crisis of Greece is indicative of the shape of possible trajectories of the economy and politics of many countries in the European Union. In wake of the economic crisis of 2008, Greek economy suffered as the main contributors to the Greek economy, shipping and tourism, suffered, resulting in unemployment and decreased tax revenue of the government. The trouble is that more than five countries, including Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, are dealing with a possible debt trap, and consequent economic recession. In spite of relatively stable economies of Germany, France or Netherlands, there is a likelihood of a more vulnerable Euro and possible economic recessions. This will have wider political and policy implications, in terms of new contestation at the national level and debates over the mutual responsibilities of countries within the European Union. The present financial crisis in Europe will also affect the quantity and quality of the international development aid of many countries, in the context of the new austerity measures.

In a way, the ongoing economic crisis in Europe is the phase two of the financial crisis that began to be evident with the crash of Lehman brothers in 2008. In a largely credit and consumerist driven advanced capitalist system, the greed of speculators in the financial capital market through new derivatives and bonds eventually resulted in to the fall of the speculative finance capitalism, driven by paper money and ‘fictitious’ capital movement on paper. European Banks exposed to the US market also got affected by the crisis. Within Europe, a low rate of interest and easy credit led to the increasing borrowing and consumption, fuelling more demand, which showed relative resilience in the wake of the financial crisis in the US in 2009. However, easy credit also increased the credit at the household and financial sector. The banking sector in Iceland collapsed in the first phase of the financial crisis in 2008. Though many countries such as Spain and Ireland had surplus budgets, the bailing out of the private banks and increasing public expenditure eventually increased the deficits. As the economic crisis began to unfold in many countries, many factories were closed, leading to unemployment and financial hardship at the household level, fuelling further the state expenditure for unemployment benefits and other welfare measures. The increasing instances of unemployment led to the default of the credit card repayment as well as decreasing of the revenue of the state from the tax. So the governments in many countries spent more when the tax receipts decreased significantly. This had a rather catastrophic effect particularly in countries with speculative real estate and property boom, driven by credit. This made the surging of interest rate and the credit rating of many individuals, firms and governments fell down precariously. As the cost of getting new credit increased, many countries including Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal got in to a debt trap of varying degrees.

The ongoing debt crisis in significant number of countries in the European Union will have possibly long term implications for the economy and politics of many countries and the region as a whole. While it is important to understand the present economic crisis in the context of the larger crisis of a credit driven speculative finance capitalism, it is also important to situate the present economic crisis in the larger history of economy, society and culture of Western Europe. It is possible to argue that the cumulative economic, social and cultural factors in the last twenty years led to saturation of market, labour force, resulting in the ongoing economic crisis. The relatively low birth rate, in the context of high individualism and dysfunctional families also resulted in the significant decrease in the younger work force that could fuel innovation, push forward new technology, increase the efficiency of production. The cumulative socio-economic factors also led to the erosion of ‘comparative advantage’ of Europe, particularly in the area of manufacturing, in the world. And in the last ten years, those born out of the baby boom in the post second world war phase got retired, with increasing cost for pension and social welfare. So Europe got in to a peculiar predicament of aging population, less availability of highly skilled work force, more cost of social welfare and less comparative advantage in terms of cost of producing goods and services in a highly competitive global market.

Ageing population with better life expectancy increased cost of social welfare and pension. Less young and inspired work force in many countries of Europe pushed comparative advantage of manufacturing sector and technology sector in favour of those countries with availability of cheaper and higher skilled work force, with more technological innovation. Less availability of high skilled labour can also lead to competition in the labour market, pushing the cost of labour high; pushing the cost of production high, and pushing the cost of living high. All these decreased the global comparative advantage in terms of quality, and price of services and goods, in a highly competitive global market. The importing of the cheap migrant labour created new political and social tension due to the fact most of the migrant labours in Europe happened to be Muslims. In the post 9/11 context of increasing socio-cultural paranoia , the trust between the ‘local’ population and migrant communities eroded and got compromised, resulting in new forms of violence in many countries, including France, UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and even in a rather peaceful Norway. The increasing oil price also affected European economy more than US economy. The decrease in younger workforce, the decrees in the average number of working hours and better social security also created an economic complacence in many countries in Europe. The economic crisis of Europe also needs to be understood in terms of the history of surplus economy created during the colonial era and the character and nature of economic growth and the political development of the region in the post-second world war era.

(These are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of any of the organisations with which he is associated)

Politics of Corruption

2011-10-28T23:54:00.001-07:00

John Samuel

Corruption is primarily about abuse or misuse of power for personal aggrandisement or vested interests in society or institutions; from local to the global. Hence, the practice and process of corruption is deeply political. The word ‘corrupt’ is derived from the Latin root ‘corruptus’, past participle of’ corrumpere-’ to mean abuse or destroy and when used as an adjective it denotes means ‘utterly broken’.

The subversion, misuse and abuse of power have systemic and socio-historical manifestations in different contexts. This has to do with the way power is institutionalised and internalised in a given society, with a particular cultural and political history. For example, the political elite of South Asia often demonstrate the embedded feudalism and cumulative hierarchies (through cast system) internalised within the collective memory of the society. So the one common defining political aspect of South Asia is that all power-elites in most of the South Asian Countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Afghanistan) operate through family network and, cast/identity networks to acquire and maintain power. Such internalised ‘order of power’ tends to undermine the process and content of democratic process itself. Though political parties play a cardinal role in the democratic process of a country, the irony is that political parties themselves have least of internal democracy or accountability. And in many cases, political parties are reduced to institutionalised forms of ‘interest’ network to capture and control the power of the state. In many countries in Africa, the use and abuse of power can also linked to the internalisation of power in the form of ‘tribal’ hierarchies and identities.

So it is important to understand the causes and consequence of ‘corruption’ within the history of the institutionalisation and internalisation power, the nature and character of the power elites and in terms of social and economic inequalities within a given society. The political economy of corruption is primarily about the nexus between the economic, social and political elites in a given society to subvert, misuse, abuse or misappropriates institutions, policies and systems for the vested interests or, private gains of a privileged group or set of individuals embedded in the dominant power-structure of a country. The unholy nexus between the business elites, political elites and media elites in managing the economic, political and natural resources of a given country is a global trend across the world; from the richest country to the poorest country. Various studies indicate that the worldwide bribery alone is estimated to involve over 1 trillion US dollars annually.

The ongoing economic crisis exposed the depth and breadth of the role of corporate elites and the missionaries of finance capitalism in shaping the policy and political agenda even in the so-called democracies of the world. When the cyclone hit the Wall Street in 2008, it exposed the unholy nexus between the capital fund managers of the Wall Street and the mandarins in the corridors of political power: the entrenched ‘partnership’ between the rich and those who are ‘democratically’ elected to ‘run’ the government. Such unholy systemic power nexus between the economic and political elites of a country is at the root of entrenched political and institutional corruption in many countries. A state of unbridled political and economic corruption is known as a ‘kleptocracy’, literally meaning "rule by thieves". The cumulative impact of such unholy nexus of corrupt practices and instances is the erosion of the legitimacy of the state. The rather spontaneous mobilization of ordinary people across the world from New York to New Delhi, from London to Lisbon, from Rome to Rio and on the streets of Egypt, Tunis, Yemen, Syria, and India and all over the world has one thing in common: all of them questioned the legitimacy of the governments and in many cases the character of the state and all of them demand accountability from the leaders, the state as well as market.

Though corruption does have a moral, theological and philosophic connotations, it is important to analyse and address corruption in relation to political system, dominant economic power relations and culture of internalised power. The manifestations and forms of corruption may include bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, and embezzlement. While corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking, it is not restricted to these activities. The legality and illegality of a particular act of corruption or abuse of power may differ depending on the ‘jurisdiction’ of a country. In some countries, certain political funding practices are legal, but may be illegal in another country. In many countries, government officials have broad or poorly defined powers, which make it difficult to distinguish between legal and illegal actions.

While the cause of corruption is to do with misuse and abuse of political and systemic power, the consequences of corruption are many. Corruption undermines the effectiveness, legitimacy and accountability of institutions and governments. Corruption does siphon off money meant for social and economic development of a country. Corruption breeds on entrenched socio-economic inequality and further increase the gap between the rich and the poor, and the powerful and the marginalized. In the political arena, it undermines democracy and governance by flouting or even subverting formal processes. Corruption in elections and in legislative bodies undermines accountability and distorts the representation in policymaking; corruption in the judiciary undermines the rule of law; and corruption in administration results in the inefficient provision of services. Corruption violates a basic principle of centrality of civic virtue. The net result is that corruption undermines the value of democratic governance and erodes the institutional legitimacy and capacity of government to deliver services, ensure security of citizens and to deliver socio-economic development.

In the last twenty years, anti-corruption initiatives have become a part of the governance and development discourse across the world. With the paradigm shift in the information and communication technology, it has become impossible to keep corrupt practices under the veil of secrecy and silence, either in the form of a controlled state media or suppressing the voices of dissent. The neo-liberal economic paradigm of free market capitalism and the economic globalization unleashed new power matrix in many of the countries, particularly those countries with a big market size( like India, China) or those countries with big natural resources( Nigeria, Sudan etc). Such corrupt nexus has a dimension of geo-politics as well as political economy of aid, trade and debt. It is not an accident of history most of the conflicts in Africa or Asia are fought with small weapons illegally exported by the big companies in Europe. It is also not an accident of history that most of the entrenched conflicts happen in countries with rich natural resources.

It is not an accident of history that the companies and the banks that benefit from the illicit flow of finance happened to be in some of the richest countries in the world. Illicit financial flows indicate the transfer of money earned through illegal activities such as corruption, transactions involving contraband goods, criminal activities, and efforts to shelter wealth from a country’s tax authorities. It is estimated that at an average more than US$ 1 trillion is transferred from the poor countries to rich countries in the form of illicit flow of funds. Illicit flow of finance from African countries is estimated to be around US$ 25 billion per year. It is also pointed out that for every dollar received as economic assistance or aid, around ten dollar is transferred from the poor countries to rich countries in the form of illicit financial flow. It is irony of our times that the very same countries that host the big companies and banks that benefit from the illicit flow of finance also preach to the ‘third world’ about the need to ‘fight’ corruption. So corruption has its local, national and international ramifications.
Reducing corruption to petty bribery without challenging the extremely corrupt system at the heart of the political economy at the national and international level would be equivalent to consuming aspirin tablet to fight a heart disease. However, the globalization of information and technology also helped to expose corruption in an unprecedented way. The social networks and new media could expose corrupt practices conveniently put under the carpet by the media and market elites in connivance with the political elites.

It is in recognition of the widespread instances of corruption across the world, the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) was adopted on 31st October 2003. UNCAC is the first legally binding international anti-corruption instrument. In its 8 Chapters and 71 Articles, the UNCAC obliges its States Parties to implement a wide and detailed range of anti-corruption measures affecting their laws, institutions and practices. These measures aim to promote the prevention, criminalization and law enforcement, international cooperation, asset recovery, technical assistance and information exchange, and mechanisms for implementation. The UNCAC is ratified or approved by 154 countries and European Union. In spite of the approval or ratification of UNCAC, the biggest challenge is that lack of implementation of the principles and provisions of UNCAS in the national context due to absence of effective laws or independent anti-corruption commissions to make them work.
In the context of the political economy of aid and governance, there has been effort to export a successful model of anti-corruption from western liberal democratic context to other countries in Asia and Africa. However, such measures did not work due to the fact that context of the internalization; institutionalization and culture of power are very different from the European context. In a recent book ‘Making the State Responsive’ (UNDP w 2011): Goran Hyden and John Samuel) we have made the following observation:
“Institutional innovations have typically come from external sources in the form of transfers from societies in which these institutions have evolved over long time. The Ombudsman institution found in the Nordic countries is one of these exports. It has been adopted quite successfully in countries that already have a tradition of rule of law, and where independent scrutiny of those in power is taken for granted. It has been much less successful in countries where particularistic values still prevail and the notion of universal norms is only weakly institutionalized. Transfers to these countries have typically ended as half-measures, for example when the ombudsman institution reports to the Presidency rather than the Parliament, rendering checks on the executive ineffective. The establishment of these institutions may not have been wholly unsuccessful, as the possibility exists in the future that groups of citizens will demand their independence and accountability from the legislature rather than the executive, but it is questionable whether these half-measures qualify as ‘good enough’ governance. There is evidence from a number of countries – Brazil, India, Mongolia, and South Africa – that institutional innovations spring out of hardship. Learning how to achieve something comes with the urge to change the status quo. Claiming the state, therefore, is very much a matter of challenging public institutions, whether national or sub-national, from below or within, to ensure adherence to norms and principles of equity in service delivering. Institutional innovations that help citizens to better monitor and measure government performance are important, but there are no shortcuts. Evolving such institutions, as the case study on India convincingly shows, are associated with political battles. Not all are won”

While a strong anti-corruption law, to a certain extent , can control or reduce the petty corruption or instances of bribery or ‘speed money’ /‘protection money’ at the lower level of bureaucracy( particularly police, land registration, public works departments), the real cancer of corruption operate at the heart of the political system in India and elsewhere.

In the South Asian context, one of the major systemic causes of corruption is the subversion of the political party system and electoral process. In the post independence era, the legitimacy of the political party system and that of the state was relatively higher. Hence, it was relatively easier to collect individual contributions from the ordinary members of the party or general public. However, in the last thirty years, the political party system itself got corpotorised, often controlled by the family or cast/identity network. While the cadre of the political parties got dissolved from below, the visibility and the ‘out-reach’ mechanism of the political parties were outsourced through costly advertising campaign, media ‘management’ and ‘image’ mangers from the public relations companies. When the cadre got dwindled on the ground, the institutional structures of political parties took precedence over the mass politics. ‘Mass’ was to ‘demonstrate’- in rallies ‘outsourced’ to the local leaders- with money and muscles. The degeneration of the political party systems in terms of the erosion of democratic values within and in terms of the instrumental use of ‘mass’ as the ‘muscle’ to ‘demonstrate’ or as ‘vote’ banks coincided with the increasing corporate control of the political parties.

When it has become difficult to raise financial resources from the cadre of the political parties, the new fund-managers of the political parties build new nexus with the new corporate elites in the neo-liberal era. The new corporate elites of multinational corporations and big Indian companies scrambling for ‘market share’ – also took ‘political share’ by ‘investing’ in various political parties and leaders. A percentage of the corporate budget as ‘miscellaneous’ items or ‘charity’ found their way to the coffers of political parties and leaders. They have in turn provided tax rebates, new policies helpful for one or other companies, or helping them to acquire land and resources. The new economic elites ‘invested’ in political parties, political leaders, elections as well as media. The Nira Radia tapes dramatically exposed this unholy nexus at the heart of the political and policies process in the so-called largest democracy in the world. Political Parties in turn ‘invested’ in ‘media companies and campaigns’ and market research groups to get ‘favourable’ poll result.

The media-market nexus of subverting electoral process has become complete through the ‘outsourced’ poll- using the methods of market survey to determine the ‘mood’ of the country or ‘legitimacy’ of its leaders. As a result media became the midwife to strengthen the unholy nexus of the political, policy and corporate elites in a country. In the absence of real mass politics and erosion of cadre party politics, the political leaders resorts to new tactics like ‘Radha Yathra’ to attract the attention of the media and the masses. The very term ‘Radham’- or chariot denotes ‘power’ of the King. When the political leaders began to think and act like ‘Kings’- they can at best be benevolent patrons and at worst be corrupts pimps in the corridors of power.

The health of political Parties and electoral process are the most important markers of healthy democracy. Hence it is crucial to maintain the health of these two necessary factors in sustaining a democratic process. The cancer of corruption is actually eating in to the heart of a democratic political system. And erosion of the legitimacy of such a system can be detrimental to the very viability and sustainability of democracy itself. This was evident in the context of Bangladesh, when Army stepped in with ‘appointed’ civil government to ‘fight corruption’ at the cost of democracy.

The political parties and electoral systems need to be more transparent and accountable. The decoupling of the interests of business elites and political parties are imperative for the sustainability of democracy in India and elsewhere. The funding for political parties and elections need to be transparent and accountable. At the heart of the problem is increasing lack of accountability in political system, media, big corporation and even NGOs. The Right to Accountability should be an integral part of the Right to democratic Governance.

2011-09-20T07:55:00.003-07:00

The New Age column.
http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/33438.html

2011-09-20T07:55:00.001-07:00

The New Age column.
http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/33438.html

Politics as Performance and spectacle : The relevance and irrelevance of the Anna mode of advocacy

2011-08-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

One of the positive outcomes of the recent mobilisation for the Lokpal-bill to challenge corruption at various levels of government is that it has revitalised the political debates in India, particularly among the 'apolitical' class. Though in terms of substantive demands, the Anna-team did not achieve anything new (as they simply changed the goal post, climbing down from their earlier demands); they succeeded in putting 'corruption' at the centre of political discourse. They also showed the possibilities for new politics.

The ongoing debates and discussions in the cyber space, in media, in the drawing rooms and in public spaces in a way signify the relevance of social mobilisations- in support of the campaign against corruption. It is the political debates about the nature and character of 'representative democracy', the new modes of mobilisation and the relevance( or irrelevance) of the 'old' left in new India etc that are more interesting than the advocacy campaign itself.

It is indicative of a political trend- beyond a mere 'storm in urban tea-cup'. Here are ten broad observations on some of the aspects of the changing trends.

1) There is less space for politically aware middle class to join a political party or mainstream political process- as the political parties are still in the old mode with less space for horizontal entry beyond the usual feeder mechanism. Even now in most of the political parties (except for the Left Parties) the lineage matters more than the political vision or commitment or grassroots experience. One in every six of MPs is there because of his/her family connections rather the political experience or commitment.

2) Software of Indian politics is changing though the hardware has not changed. The political and policy process in India has changed significantly in the last fifteen years. There is a new middle class with more access to knowledge, technology, social networking, income and global exposure. The modes of power, social legitimation and leadership have changed significantly in the last twenty years. However, the structural character of the Indian political party system is still based on a model that emerged in the early 1980s; in the post-emergency period in of the Indian politics.

3) The modes of communications determine the modes of mobilisation and modes of politics in many ways. Look at how the profile of the political leaders changed during the televised modes of political communications. Hardly anyone of them have worked directly with people or mobilised them at the grassroots. They walked to the political central stage through the TV studios. They have been telegenic- articulate – and their core communicative competence was more evident in the Television studios; they derived their political legitimacy in the television studios or they came ‘live’ in front of active TV cameras, though they may not be at ease with the dust and sweat of the road or the noises of the masses . Many of them have been lawyers or relatively better educated from the urban upper middle class and cast. The emergence of Kapil Sibal, Manu Abishek Singhvi, Chidambaram, Jayaram Ramesh, Arun Jetly, Sushma swaraj, Sitaram Yetchury or Brinda Karat- is indicative of the faces of the 'telegenic' phase of the Indian politics. In the telgenic phase of politics, journalism itself became an instant ‘performance’ of mono-act or drama on the TV studios or on the road, rather than the old modes of analytical journalism or nuanced critique.

The telegenic media politics and the ‘instant’ journalism of performing actors was all about playing for the ‘moment’ and performing for an ‘imagined’ community. Mass politics was submerged under the ‘media politics’ – like the fast food chains that provided ‘instant’ gratification. Market and media collided to create instant ‘sensex’ of politics. It is here that the new age advocacy actors from the non-party political-civil space began to ‘outsmart’ the old politicians by performing the media politics and network modes of mobilisation. They were the telegenic ‘civil society’ counter-parts to the ‘smart’ politicians who walked to the centre stage through the television performance. They belonged to the same class: articulate urban upper cast middle class. People were largely ‘means’ to them rather than the ‘end’ of democracy. Rhetoric often preceded the reality of a billion people. In a world where market, media and telegenic performance determined the political ‘clout’, the new ‘civil society’ too learned the art of playing to ‘instant’ politics as performance: competing for the TRP rating in the market place of the media mediation of manufactoring perceptions.

But now in the age of social media - and new possibilities of communications, the name of the game is changing again. Here, the ‘civil society’ actors are ahead of the old political class in terms of the ‘communication’ game of shaping perception of power. Power of influencing perception became more important than the real power of the people on the ground. Politics itself was reduced to ‘virtual’ game in the market place of perceptions.

4) When mainstream political parties get reduced to electoral network to merely win or lose elections, other actors take the political spaces beyond the periodic winning or losing elections. That is precisely the reasons for the relevance and space of new advocacy networks and organisations: from KSSP, to Narmada Bachao, to RTI movement, to Right to work( NREGA) campaign to the present anti-corruption campaigns. Look at all the key legislations (including the campaign for political participation of women) in the last fifteen years. None of them came from the mainstream political parties Most of the demand first emerged in the political-civil space beyond the political parties and then political parties 'responded' by absorbing them in to the policy agenda. And this happens when the sole preoccupation of political parties end up as 'winning or losing ' an election.

Ideology took a back seat - except in the empty slogans and rhetoric. Interest of the leaders (in capturing power of the state) often took a front seat. Politics of electoral convenience often replaced the politics of conviction. Political opportunism itself was elevated in to 'smart' politics- hiring 'media' experts, advertising professionals, 'campaign' managers- and slogans often coined by the copy-writers of the ad-firms in charge of 'designing' the best 'campaigns' to earn more seats( by hook or crook). This is a far cry from the politics of the ideals and ideas of the Nehruvian phase in the post independent India.

When ideology (or political vision or mission) gets replaced by a mix of identity (cast, creed, language ) and 'interest' based electoral arithmetic, the real politics of transformation simply fail to go beyond the 'pressure' politics and redundant rhetoric played for the moment. It is in such spaces that civil society activism find its relevance and influence in the mainstream political landscape of India.

5) Whether one likes it or not, middle class always shaped the broader political discourse in India or elsewhere- from communism to capitalism to fascism to Hindutva. So the role of middle class in the Indian politics is nothing new. Most of the ideologues and political leaders came from the ‘great’ Indian middle class- and largely from the upper cast.

Anna Hazare happened to be simply a signifier: here the old symbols of 'ideals' met with new modes of mobilisation- beyond the usual institutional network of political parties. There is also a message: those in government or power can no longer simply take people for granted. And in the age of social networking- mobilisation and public opinions can also be shaped beyond the mainstream media and mainstream politics. There is the possibility of a new politics beyond ‘winning’ elections every five years and enjoying the stay in the corridors of the state power.

6) The rural-urban divide has political implications in India. In the post-independent India, there has been four major political transitions- (towards the end of 60s the end of Nehruvian era-; the end 70s- the end of congress period- and one party rule in post-emergency phase ; the end 80s- the emergence of the telegenic politics in the age of globalisation, and assertive Hindutva competing for vote bank. All these periods were marked by various degrees of political expressions and modes of mobilisation. Almost all of them had an urban middle class link- even in the case of Naxals- in shaping the discourse.

7) However, it would be rather simplistic to compare the new social- network based mobilisation of the urban middle class to the Gandhian mode of political struggles for freedom against colonialism and imperialism. Politics against injustice, oppression and domination preceded the methods of Gandhi. Gandhian methods did not define his politics. His politics and ethics shaped his choice of methods and communication. Gandhi’s politics was the politics of the masses- and not the politics of the mass media. Gandhi worked and lived with people, listened to them, educated and empowered them- and spent a life time experimenting with his ideas and methods, without compromising the ideals for transformation. Gandhi sought to transform politics and not to transcend politics.

Here, in the case of the media –driven performance of the Anna team, method preceded the politics. It was more of the politics of instant performance, seeking to influence perceptions of a particular class, rather than a mass politics to challenge and change the situation. It sought to ‘transcend’ politics rather than transforming politics. It sought to create symbols devoid of substance. It is interesting to note that how Anna team sought to play around with symbols of ‘convenience’ playing to the need of the media market. The performance of protest began in the backdrop the ‘bharat-matha’ ( mother India), appealing to the upper cast ‘Hindu’ sentiments- and then shifted to the use of an elegantly designed photograph of Gandhi with ‘Charkha’ and waving the tri-coloure national flag to ‘nationalise’ and ‘secularise’ the performance of a fast. A colourful performance of protest, where Kiran Bidi played the Cheer leader on the ‘stage’ and Anna pretended to be Gandhi was a spectacle of a performance as an instant politics meant for the media. Masses became simply a means to ‘show off’ the power- rather than the real source of power. Hence, it was a mockery of Gandhian principles, practise and methods of politics. In Gandhian case, media followed his politics. In this case, the politics of performance followed the media.

9) Anna was more of symbol in a campaign- primarily promoted by the Delhi-centric upper cast and middle class-actors. The anomaly of Anna ( an ex-army man from rural India of ‘jai-jawan- jai kisan variety, with a bit of Gandhian touch and grassroots NGO background) in the urban-back drop and mass media provided the combination of a seeming ‘ideal’ with combination of instant networking. Anna symbolised the ‘old’ India, and the young India was performed by the ‘youth’ on the street- all televised instantly as the performance of a spectacle, with the corallarly drama created in the TV studios. Kiran Bedi performed for the media- the spectacle of the elite post-retirement ‘civil servant’ transiting in to ‘civil society’'activist' in search of the TV cameras. ‘Civil society’ itself became a residual space for the new elites to find their space within the media mediations. The Bollywood and the ‘Lagan’ fame Amir Khan added a celebrity flavour to the new ‘civil society’ celebrities manufactured by the media.

It was indeed a smart experiment in the new mode of advocacy campaign - making strategic use of symbols ( Anna too was one), media and networking. And it was not a 'political struggle'- or a Satyagraha of Gandhian politics. It was an example of smart urban-based advocacy campaign. Though there are many interesting lessons to learn from it - it can't be compared with a political struggle of salt sataygraha or even the anti-emergency campaign.

How can a bill made by a team of four or five people, making a rather tall claim of a 'people's (or Jan) Lokpal bill? They hardly consulted or discussed with people on the ground in a diverse country of more than a billion people. They sought to connect with people through media, rather than the other way around. And of course, there were also characters in the Anna team (from soft saffron to those who were looking for 'celebrity' spot on the TV) who got them excited by their voice and sight in the TV- and them performed-waving the national flag- for the TV crew, ever hungry for the next spectacle. Their protest was indeed significant and it is indicative of the transition, even though it is of instant transitory type of politics of protest.

10) While I think the mobilisation is indicative of a trend, I do not agree with the content and modes of Anna team- particularly its tall claim of ‘second freedom struggle’ or mass-based politics. Bringing thousands of people on the few streets of few cities of India, through media and networking- is not a substitute for the substantive politics in a country of more than 1.2 billion of people.
In a parliamentary democracy, the role of parliament is cardinal. Political parties are the main political force in the country that sustains the health of a representative system of democracy. I also think there are a large number of committed and aware politicians with a sense of integrity. Just because a section of politicians and political party system is corrupt - does not mean that the political class - as a whole - is corrupt.

While it may be important to challenge and influence those who hold power- of the state, it is also important to recognise the limitations of 'quick-fix' seven day wonders of televised mobilisation. Because such advocacy campaign can simply create illusions of politics when actually such 'televised' quick-fix mobilisation can undermine the real political or democratic struggles on the ground. And the campaign for the so-called 'Jan' lokpal bill was an example of a relatively successful advocacy campaign for a policy change, and not an example of a political struggle for freedom or against injustice. )

The ongoing phase of politics is indicative of a political transition. The politics in India in the next ten years may be dramatically different - in terms of modes of mobilisation, composition of leadership and the issues that would come up. So the mode of mobilisation of those who are born in the eighties is indicative of a bigger shift. The anti-corruption campaign just happened to be a space to voice a discontent with the mainstream political party process in India- where the lineage matters more than the real politics. If the political parties do not change their hardware and present modes of operation, many of them would not be able to mobilise people beyond the elction season,in the years to come

ഓസ്ലോവില്‍ ഒരു ദു:ഖ ഞായര്‍

2011-07-30T02:26:00.000-07:00

Posted on: 25 Jul 2011 ( mathrubhoomi)
ജോണ്‍ സാമുവല്‍

ഓസ്ലോവില്‍ എന്റെ ഏറ്റവും ദു:ഖാര്ത്തനമായ ഞായറാഴ്ചയാണ് പിന്നിട്ടത്. പൊതുവെ പ്രസന്നമായ നഗരത്തിന്റെ ഈ നാളുകളിലെ കണ്ണീരുപോലെ രാവിലെ മഴ ചാറിക്കൊണ്ടിരുന്നു. ഇന്നലെ ഞെട്ടലിനോടും അവിശ്വാസത്തോടും പൊരുത്തപ്പെടാന്‍ ശ്രമിക്കുകയായിരുന്നു ജനങ്ങള്‍. ഏങ്ങും ദു:ഖം നഗരത്തെ പൊതിഞ്ഞുനില്ക്കു ന്നു. നൂറുകണക്കിനാളുകള്‍ പൂക്കളുമായി പള്ളികളിലേക്ക് പോകുന്നത് എനിക്ക് ജനലിലൂടെ കാണാമായിരുന്നു. പൊതുവെ കൊച്ചുമക്കളുമായി വരുന്ന വൃദ്ധജനങ്ങളെയാണ് പള്ളികളില്‍ കാണാറുള്ളത്. ഈ ഞായറാഴ്ച വ്യത്യസ്തമായിരുന്നു. ഞാനും അപാര്‌്ികമെന്റിനടുത്ത പള്ളിയില്‍ പോയി. സംഗീതമോ പ്രസംഗമോ ഉണ്ടായിരുന്നില്ല. എങ്ങും മൂകത, മെഴുകുതിരികള്‍, പൂക്കള്‍, മെഴുകുതിരി കത്തിച്ച് എല്ലാവരും എഴുനേറ്റുനിന്നു. നിശ്ശബ്ദമായി പ്രാര്ത്ഥിചക്കാനേ മനസ്സുവരുന്നുള്ളൂ. അസാധാരണമായി ഇന്ന് ഒരുപാട് ചെറുപ്പക്കാര്‍ പള്ളിയിലെത്തിയിരുന്നു.

നഗരത്തിലൂടെ നടക്കുമ്പോഴും ഈ ദു:ഖഭാവം എങ്ങും തളംകെട്ടിനില്ക്കു ന്നത് കാണാമായിരുന്നു. രണ്ടു സുഹൃത്തുക്കള്‍ എങ്ങനെ കൂട്ടക്കൊലയില്‍ നിന്ന് രക്ഷപ്പെട്ടു എന്ന് ഇന്നുരാവിലെ കേട്ടു. മൂത്രപ്പുരയില്‍ പത്തുപേരാണ് ഒളിച്ചിരുന്നുരക്ഷപ്പെട്ടത്. ഒരാള്‍ വെള്ളത്തിലേക്ക് എടുത്ത് ചാടി മറുകരയിലേക്ക് നീന്തിരക്ഷപ്പെട്ടു. ശ്രീലങ്കന്‍ വംശജരായ മൂന്നുപേര്‍ കുറ്റിക്കാടുകള്ക്കിതടയില്‍ ഒളിഞ്ഞിരുന്നാണ് രക്ഷ നേടിയത്. പ്രധാനമന്ത്രിയുടെ ഓഫീസ് അടുത്താണ്. പുറത്ത് യുവാക്കളായ സുരക്ഷാഭടന്മാര്‍ കാവല്നി ല്ക്കു ന്നു. അവരും നിശ്ശബ്ദരാണ്. ഇരുപത്-ഇരുപത്തിരണ്ട് വയസ്സുള്ളവര്‍. യൂണിഫോമിലല്ലെങ്കില്‍ പട്ടാളക്കാരാണ് എന്ന് തോന്നുകയേ ഇല്ല. ഈ പ്രായക്കാരായ 91 പേരാണ് വെടിയേറ്റ് വീണുമരിച്ചത്.

നഗരമദ്ധ്യത്തിലെ കത്തീഡ്രലിന്റെ മുന്വേശം പൂക്കളും കത്തുന്ന മെഴുകതിരികളും കളിപ്പാട്ടങ്ങളും കൊണ്ട് നിറഞ്ഞിരിക്കുന്നു. വൈകീട്ട് നടന്ന പ്രത്യേക ദ:ഖാചരണച്ചടങ്ങില്‍ ഞാനും പങ്കെടുത്തിരുന്നു. നൂറില്താഖഴെ ആളുകള്‍ മാത്രം വരാറുള്ള ഹാളില്‍ അറുനൂറോളം പേരുണ്ടായിരുന്നു. പള്ളി നിറഞ്ഞുകവിഞ്ഞു. ഭക്തിഗാനാലാപം തുടങ്ങിയപ്പോള്‍ ആളുകളുടെ കവിളില്‍ കണ്ണീരൊഴുകുന്നത് കാണാമായിരുന്നു. എല്ലാവര്ക്കും ഒരു ബന്ധുവിന്റെ സുഹൃത്തിന്റെ സഹപ്രവര്ത്ത കന്റെ വിയോഗത്തിന്റെ വേദനയുണ്ട്. ഒറ്റ സന്താനങ്ങളെ നഷ്ടപ്പെട്ട മാതാപിതാക്കള്‍ എത്രയോ ഉണ്ട്. മരിച്ച ഒരു കൊച്ചുപയ്യന് പതിമൂന്നുവയസ്സേ പ്രായമുണ്ടായിരുന്നുള്ളൂ, ഏറ്റവും ഇളയ രക്തസാക്ഷി. ഒരുപത്തുവയസ്സുകാരന്റെ പിതാവായതുകൊണ്ട് എനിക്ക് ആ മാതാപിതാക്കളുടെ മനസ്സുകാണാന്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞു. സര്വീ സിന് ശേഷം എല്ലാവരും നിശ്ശബ്ദരായി കുറെനേരം പുറത്തെ തുറസ്സില്‍ നിന്നു. അവര്‍ തീരാക്കണ്ണീരില്‍ നുറുനുറുഅനുഭവങ്ങള്‍ പങ്കുവെക്കുകയായിരുന്നു. നേരിയ മഴ, പ്രകൃതിയുടെ കണ്ണീര്‍. മെഴുകുതിരികള്ക്കി ടയില്‍ ടെഡ്ഡി കരടികളും ബാര്ബി് ഡോളുകളും, ഓരോന്നിനും എന്തെല്ലാം ഓര്മ കള്‍. കരയാതിരിക്കാന്‍ കഴിയുന്നില്ല.

മരിച്ചുവീണവരെല്ലാം ശോഭനമായ ഒരു ഭാവി മുന്നില്‍ കണ്ട ഭാവിയുടെ നേതാക്കളായിരുന്നു. ഒരുപാട് കഴിവുകളും പ്രതീക്ഷകളും ഉള്ളവര്‍. വര്ഷം്തോറും ജുലായില്‍ നടക്കുന്ന ഇതുപോലുള്ള ക്യാമ്പുകളില്‍ പങ്കെടുത്ത് വളര്ന്നാ ണ് പ്രധാനമന്ത്ര സ്റ്റോല്ട്ന്ബ ര്ഗും് കേബിനറ്റ് മന്ത്രിമാരുമെല്ലാം ആ നിലയിലേക്ക് എത്തിയത്. മരിച്ചവരില്‍ ചിലരെങ്കിലും ഇതുപോലെ വളരേണ്ടവരായിരുന്നു. നല്ല സമൂഹത്തിനും ഭാവിക്കും വേണ്ടി വലിയ സ്വപ്‌നങ്ങള്‍ കണ്ടവരാണ് അവര്‍. വെറുപ്പിന്റെ പ്രത്യയശാസ്ത്രവുമായി വന്ന മറ്റൊരു യുവാവാണ് ഇത്രയും യുവത്വങ്ങളെ തല്ലിക്കെടുത്തിയത്.

നിറഞ്ഞ യൗവനത്തില്‍ ജ്വലിച്ചുനിന്ന പ്രിയ സന്താനങ്ങള്‍ നഷ്ടപ്പെട്ട അനേകര്ക്ക്സ വേണ്ടി പ്രാര്ത്ഥിിക്കാനേ നമുക്കും കഴിയൂ. ആഘോഷമായ യൗവനം, പൊടുന്നനെ തകര്ന്ന് സ്വപ്‌നങ്ങള്‍. ഇതൊരു ക്രൂരലോകമാണ്.
ഞാനും ഒരു മെഴുകുതിരി തെളിയിച്ചു.
(മനുഷ്യാവകാശ പ്രവര്ത്തികനും എഴുത്തുകാരനും ഗവേഷകനുമാണ് അടൂര്‍ സ്വദേശിയായ ജോണ്‍ സാമുവല്‍ ഇപ്പോള്‍ ഓസ്ലോവില്‍ താമസിക്കുന്നു

A Sorrowful Sunday

2011-07-24T23:13:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

This was my saddest Sunday in Oslo. The drizzle in the morning conveyed the mood of the otherwise cheerful city in the summer. Yesterday most of the people were grappling with sense of shock and disbelief. And on the Sunday morning, a sense of sorrow engulfed the city. From the morning, I could see from my window, hundreds of people going to the church with flowers. On a usual Sunday service, there would be only few people, mostly grandparents who come with their grand children. This morning it was different, I could see hundreds of people in silence going to the church. I too decided to go to the church next to my apartment. There was no music. There was no sermon. There was only silence, candles and flowers. They lit the candle stood there in silence. Everyone was in a mood of silent prayer. It was rather unusual to find so many young people in the church.

As I walked around the city I could sense the deep sorrow of a Sunday. My friend this morning told how two of his neighbours managed to escape. There were ten of them hiding in the toilet and one of jumped in to the water and swam to safety to another side. There were three young people of Sri Lankan origin; they saved themselves by hiding in the bushes.

As I walked past the road to the Prime Minister’s office, I noted the young soldiers who stood in sorrowful silence. They were hardly twenty or twenty two. More than ninety people who died are of their age. They hardly look like military men, except for their uniform- as they too stood there with a silence of a deep sorrow.

The square in front of the cathedral at city centre was filled with thousands of candles, heaps of flower, and lots of toys. The Prime Minister and King attended the Sunday service at 11 am. I went to the cathedral for the special mourning service in the after-noon. I have never seen more than hundred people on the usual Sunday service in the city cathedral that could accommodate at least six hundred people. Today there was no space; the church was overflowing. As the coir began to sing the hymn, I could see the channels of tears on many faces. We all stood together in a prayerful moment, where everyone was mourning for their dear children or a friend or a relative or a fellow Norwegian. So many parents lost their only one son or daughter. The youngest one who was killed was just thirteen years. As I too have teen age son, I could sense the rather unspeakable and unbearable sorrow of few parents who were in the Cathedral. After the service, I too spent some time in silence in the square where a thousand of tales of sorrow was shared in pindrop silence. I could only hear soft drizzle- as if the nature too shed tears for those young kids. My Norwegian friend told me about two young girls who got killed and their cousins came with stuffed dolls that they shared in their childhood. Many teddy bears and Barbie-dolls in the midst of flowers and candles told the intimate sense of the loss. Those toys belonged to the kids who were shot down. I thought of my own son of the same age. It was difficult for me to hold back the tears.

Many of them were young leaders with immense qualities and promise. The annual summer camps where they showed their talents, promises could have helped them to move to mainstream politics or policy roles. The Prime Minister Stoltenberg and the cabinet ministers, the labour party leaders grew up participating in the annual summer camp in every July. And many of those who killed could have become leaders of Norway or at a world stage. It was not be so. Those young people were the one who dreamt for a just, equitable and sustainable society. They represented the best of the social democratic values of Norway. And they were just blooming. - Most of them in their teen age. Another young man, poisoned with another indoctrinated ideology of hate, decided to shoot them down.
They were at their prime of dreams and imagination. I could only say a silent prayer for those parents and family who lost their very dear children at their prime; those children who were celebrating their youth and dreams. And the dreams got shattered.
It is a cruel world.
I too lit a candle.

Tragedy in theLand of Midnight Sun.

2011-07-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

Norway’s paradox of prosperity

In peaceful, open and newly-prosperous Norway, where migrants now constitute 10% of the population, Anders Breivik is the face of increasing socio-political prejudice against the ‘other’ who looks different, eats different and prays different, writes John Samuel from Oslo

The tragedy that unfolded in the Land of the Midnight Sun has shocked those of us who live in Oslo, one of the most peaceful cities of the world. On July 22 Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian man, went on a shooting spree at a youth camp of 600 people, on the beautiful island of Utoeya, 19 miles from Oslo. And in the afternoon, a massive bomb blast shook Oslo claiming at least seven lives and injuring hundreds.

Norway’s Black Friday (July 22, 2011) points to the paradox of prosperity. Breivik signifies the growing virulence of poisonous rightwing extremism in Europe.

Oslo is a calm and peaceful city. One can walk anywhere late into the night as if it were daytime, as the sun sets only for a few hours in summer. A city of just 600,000 people, Oslo also boasts one of the best facilities in the world.

The city is usually quiet on a Friday afternoon in July as most people are away on vacation. So, when I heard a huge noise and saw columns of smoke rising from my office window I was taken aback. A few seconds later, we could see ambulances and police cars whiz by as the tragedy of what had happened slowly unfolded before our eyes. It defied belief: Oslo was supposed to be one of the safest cities in the world!

The attack on Norway’s political heart and the shoot-out at the Labour Party youth camp are a rude reminder of the presence of rightwing extremist politics in Norway and other Nordic countries. It is reminiscent of the attack by American rightwing militant Timothy McVeigh who detonated a truck bomb at a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

Norway gained independence in 1905 when the union with Sweden was dissolved. Norwegians value their distinctive identity, prosperity, peace and open society. Perhaps for this reason, Norwegians rejected membership of the European Economic Community in 1972, and of the European Union in 1994, despite being urged by their governments to vote ‘yes’.

Norway’s distinct brand identity is that of a country of peace and for peace. Norway has been one of the biggest supporters of the United Nations and humanitarian work across the world. It has mediated between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and from 2000 to 2009, tried to play a role in resolving the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Every day, as I walk by the Nobel Peace Institute, I am struck by just how proud Norwegians are of their peace credentials. The country has always been sympathetic towards people and communities at the receiving end of conflict and violence. This explains the relatively large numbers of Tamils from Sri Lanka, and people from Somalia and Sudan, in the heart of Oslo.

In a country of just 49 lakh people, Norway’s per capita income is one of the highest in the world. It is one of the richest countries in the world, with the best record on the human development index. The country’s annual income from oil alone is around US$ 40 billion. And the government’s National Sovereign Fund is expected to be around US$ 570 billion, according to recent estimates. In spite of the economic crisis in the US and Europe, the Norwegian economy has been doing well. Unemployment is just under 3%.

Norway’s social policy is one of the most progressive in the world. Every citizen has the right to quality education and universal quality healthcare. And every working person, including women who work at home as homemakers, is eligible for pension from the age of 67. This is a happy country. One wonders: how can there be discontent in such a society?

From a rather low-profile Nordic country, Norway hit the jackpot with the discovery of oil in the late-1960s and ended up as one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Norway is the fifth largest exporter of oil and third largest exporter of natural gas. And here begins the paradox of prosperity.

With the rise of income levels and relatively small population there has been a marked increase in nationalism. (All small countries have a greater sense of nationalism.) Among a certain section, ultra-nationalism is expressed in different forms ranging from simple social prejudice to various shades of discontent against the ‘other’.

Though neo-Nazi rightwing extremism directed against migrants is more obvious in Sweden and Denmark, there have been indications in Norway too (paradoxically, the most rightwing party in Norway is called the ‘Progressive Party’). Under the surface of a social democratic liberal framework, discontent and unease over the growing influence and economic capacity of migrant communities is discernible.

According to estimates, 61,200 immigrants arrived in Norway in 2007, an increase of 35% over 2006. At the start of 2010, there were 552,313 people in Norway with an immigrant background. Over 10% of people belong to various migrant communities. With facilities available to every citizen, irrespective of race, gender or ethnicity, rightwing politicians view migrants as parasites.

While the first-generation migrants were at the lower end of the professional ladder and informal sectors like cleaning and minding small corner shops, second-generation migrants are educated, smart and compete for jobs with young people. For example, the largest migrant community in Norway is people of Pakistani origin. Most of them migrated here in the late-’60s when it was relatively easy to migrate to Norway. First-generation migrants from Pakistan were low-skilled and worked largely in the informal sector. After a couple of generations, Norwegians of Pakistani origin make up one of the most prosperous migrant communities in the country. Their children compete for professional jobs, indeed many of them are economically successful thanks to a coherent family foundation and network.

In a society that is used to being ‘taken care of’, there is growing irritation about successful second-generation migrants competing for the same economic resources. Also, most migrants in Nordic countries happen to be Muslims from Asia or North Africa, strengthening racial and religious prejudices.

Below the surface of Norway’s progressive left-leaning policies there is also a conservative trend. Norway is the most ‘Christian’ of the Nordic countries. The Lutheran church is primarily supported by the state; pastors draw their salaries from the state budget. Liquor is heavily taxed. There is therefore an underlying tension between the old Christian society and new immigrants with a different sociology, theology, colour and culture. In a country with a relatively small population, these issues become accentuated, particularly when the migrant population constitutes more than 10% of the total population.

It’s only in the last 35 years that Norwegian society jumped from an agricultural-fishing economy to a booming oil economy. The reasons for a national commitment to humanitarian support and peace are largely the result of the relative deprivation that Norwegians had to undergo during World War II and afterwards. There is indeed a significant difference between the generation that grew up in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s and the post-’80s generation that grew up in a wealthy Norway. The older generation placed great value on solidarity, left-leaning social democratic policy etc, because people wanted to share wealth. National heroes such as Fridtjof Nansen, a great pioneer of international humanitarian support, helped create a social consensus in favour of supporting the needy, poor and marginalised across the world. This social sensibility, influenced by a recent social history, core Christian ethics, a strong labour movement and social democratic politics has shaped the country’s social policies in favour of refugees and migrants.

It has also resulted in a society that places greater emphasis on social values than on opulence and extravagance. This is evident in Norwegian architecture: minimalist, functional, simple, and indicative of a society that considers understatement a core social value.

The economic boom of the last 30 years altered the perspective of the post-’80s generation. Many were born rich. They had access to quality education and healthcare; for higher education everyone is eligible for a loan from the government. Once a young person completes his/her education he/she is expected to get a job. Maternity leave is for a year, with full benefits. Paternity leave is for two months, with full benefits. Every working person who has paid tax is eligible for pension. People are generally happy paying tax as there are tangible benefits for everyone. The increasing visibility of migrant communities in cities like Oslo has created uneasiness about the ‘other’ enjoying the privileges of ‘Norwegian’ wealth and social policy.

The high cost of living and challenge of getting a high-paying job create new frustrations among many young people. So when migrants get top jobs or have a better earning capacity in a relatively homogeneous and less cosmopolitan society, social prejudices began to gain currency. Newspapers in Norway often ‘showcase’ the economic success stories of migrants. There are indeed many rags-to-riches stories among migrants who came to Oslo as pennyless refugees.

Such cumulative images -- along with the new wave of neo-Nazism in Europe -- can be a poisonous mix. Anders Breivik, it would appear, is a victim and a villain of increasing socio-political prejudices against the ‘other’ -- who looks different, eats different and prays different.

Norway has been ruled by a centre-left ‘red-green’ alliance with the socialist and centre parties since October 2005, when a centre-right government was replaced. Labour Party leader Jens Stoltenberg’s coalition narrowly retained its majority in the 2009 election, becoming the first Norwegian government to win a second consecutive term in 16 years. This could also have enraged rightwing extremists.

The government acted with an admirable sense of responsibility and confidence, without over-reacting, after the tragic events. The statement by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg on the night of the tragedy captured the general mood of the Norwegian people in the hour of national crisis:

“Nobody is going to bomb us into silence; nobody is going to shoot us into silence. Tomorrow we will show the world that the Norwegian democracy grows in strength when it matters. We must never stop standing up for our values. We must show that Norwegian society can stand up to these testing times. We must show humanity, but not naivety.”

(These are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of any of the organisations with which he is associated)

Infochange News & Features, July 2011

How civil society has changed the world

2011-07-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

Eleven million people across the world marching against the war in Iraq; thousands protesting in Seattle against unjust WTO policies… There is little doubt today about the impact of civil society on polities and societies, writes John Samuel

Civil societies: A pluralistic view

Civil society is not a colourless or odourless gas. Civil society is not an abstract academic concept anymore. Civil societies have colours and cultures, contexts and contours, gender and grounds, and politics and passion.

Civil society is plural. The theory and practice of civil society is plural in concept, genealogy, history, form, locations, content and politics. Its validity is partly due to this plurality at its conceptual core and the sheer diversity in its praxis. There is no single theory of civil society. And no single politics of civil society. This fluidity and fuzziness of the term is, paradoxically, what makes it significant.
Civil society signifies diverse arenas and spaces of contested power relations. So the contradictions and contestations of power, culture and economy are reflected in the civil society discourse of a particular country or political context. Civil society has now become an arena of praxis wherein theory is continually negotiated and re-negotiated based on the evolving practice in multiple social, economic and cultural contexts.

The idea of civil society is used for political subversion, political reform as well as political transformation. Proponents of various ideological streams from conservatism to neo-liberalism and from liberal reformists to radical socialists have been using the idea and practice of civil society to legitimise their respective political projects and programmes.

This dynamism, pluralism and diversity to a large extent shape the emerging civil society discourse across the world. In South Asia, civil society may reflect the feudal and post-colonial tendencies within its own power spaces. In many countries of Africa, community differentiations based on tribal identities may influence and shape civil society discourse as well.

How civil society has changed the world

If we consider civil society discourse as a pluralist network of citizens and associational spaces for social and political action, then one can begin to appreciate the contribution of such discourse in shaping and influencing the politics and policy processes in many countries and the world.
There are five specific areas where civil society discourse and initiatives have made very important political and social contributions. These are: a) women’s rights b) ecological justice and environment protection c) human rights of ethnic, religious, race, and sexual minorities d) movements for citizens’ participation and accountable governance and e) resistance and protest against unjust economic globalisation and unilateral militarisation. In fact, even in these specific areas there is a multiplicity of civil society discourse.
However, over the last 30 years, if women’s rights and green politics are at the centre of all political and policy discourse, it is indeed due to the consistent mobilisation and advocacy by thousands of organisations and millions of people across the world. On February 15, 2003, more than 11 million people across the world marched against the war in Iraq and unilateral militarisation. In fact, the unprecedented, coordinated global mobilisation happened on the same day largely due to digital mobilisation and partly due to the rather spontaneous coordination among social movements and civil society actors who met during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in January 2003.

In India too, in the last 25 years, most of the innovative policy framework and legislation happened due to consistent campaigning and advocacy by civil society organisations. It is the people-centred advocacy, campaigning and mobilisation by hundreds of civil society organisations in India that prompted the Indian government to enact the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Right to Education, the new Act to stop domestic violence, and the one aimed at protecting the land rights of tribal communities. It is due to the efforts of women’s rights organisations and civil society initiatives that women’s political participation and 33% reservation for women in Parliament are at the centre of political discourse in India.

In many countries of Asia and Africa, civil society activism has become a countervailing political force against authoritarian governments. It has also sought to challenge unjust economic globalisation. This was evident in the citizens’ and civil society struggle against monarchy in Nepal and authoritarian regimes in many parts of the world. In many countries of Latin America, civil society became the common ground for diverse interest groups and political formations to act together to challenge authoritarian regimes. In fact, civil society played a key role in shaping the political process in Brazil, where social movements, progressive NGOs, progressive factions of the church, trade unions and public intellectuals came together for political and policy transformation. The World Social Forum process originated in Brazil partly due to these historical and political conditions, and it helped the transformation of state power in Brazil.
With the advent of the Internet, digital mobilisation and relatively cheap air travel there is an increasing interconnectedness between civil society initiatives and movements across the world. The unprecedented mobilisation and campaigns against the unjust WTO regime and for trade justice and fair trade demonstrated the power of citizens’ action and mobilisation beyond the state and market. The diverse range of mobilisation against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle, Cancun, and Hong Kong influenced the political and policy choices of many countries and the G20 process. The Jubilee campaign for cancelling the unjust debt of poor countries attracted the support of millions of people both in rich and poor countries and in remote villages and megacities. The successful campaign against landmines proved to be another example of civil society mobilisation and action across the world. The World Social Forum emerged as an open space and platform for the exchange of ideas, coordination of action, and collective envisioning beyond narrow ideological and political divides. The emergence of a global justice solidarity movement influenced the political process in many countries in many ways.

A time for change: Civil society and international relations

In the last 15 years, there has been a resurgence of political consciousness in civil society. A whole range of new associations, citizens’ formations, new social movements, knowledge-action networks and policy advocacy groups have emerged at the national and international level.
This was partly due to the shift in international politics in the aftermath of the Cold War and a consequent shift in the aid-architecture, with a stress on local ownership in the development process. The new stress on human rights in the aftermath of the Vienna Human Rights Summit, in 1993, gave new spaces and international legitimacy to new human rights movements, integrating civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. A series of United Nations conferences, starting with the Rio Summit in 1992, created an enabling global space for civil society processes and organisations. The Beijing Summit in 1995 on women’s rights, the Copenhagen Summit on social development in 1996, and the Durban Summit on racism provided a global platform for civil society movements to advance a new discourse on politics and public policy. The exchange of knowledge, linkages and resources began to create a new synergy between countries and communities in the South as well as in the North. In fact, the United Nations became a key mediating ground between civil society and various governments.
Such a mediating role between civil society and state provided a new legitimacy and role for the United Nations. The new stress on human development, human rights and global poverty created a legitimate space for global action and campaigns for civil society. New technological and financial resources helped international networking and a new trend of globalisation from below. As the new hegemony of power politics driven by unilateral militarism, conservative politics and a neoliberal policy paradigm began to dominate the world, the new social movements and consequent civil society process became the arena for a new politics of protest and resistance against unjust globalisation. Such a new civil society process was driven by communities, communications and creativity. New modes of communication, networking, campaigning and mobilisation made civil society discourse one of the most influential political and policy discourses in the 21st century.

There is a significant difference between the civil society discourse of the 1980s, 1990s and that of the last 10 years. Unless we understand and appreciate the multiple political shifts at the national and international levels, it might be difficult to understand the consequent shifts in the practice and theory of civil society. In the 1980s, civil society was more of a conceptual tool to legitimise and organise the protest movement against authoritarian governments in Latin America and Central Europe. In the 1990s, the term ‘civil society’ became an instrument of policy and politics at the international level, supported by both aid and trade. And in the last 10 years, the idea of civil society has been increasingly contextualised to become a plural arena of political praxis for transformative politics in multiple contexts. The old civil society discourse was submerged in new movements for radical democratisation, feminist politics, and ecological, social and economic justice. It is the new emerging discourse on civil society that seeks to address the issue of democratic deficit, and crisis of governance.

So it is important to reclaim civil societies -- as plural and diverse spaces for collective human action -- as an arena for transformative politics. The reclaiming of civil societies would mean a reassertion of the dignity, sovereignty and human rights of all peoples. The ethics and politics of the idea of civil society need to be reclaimed to humanise the state, market and the political process. There is the need to reclaim a new political consciousness driven by freedom -- freedom from fear and freedom from want; freedom of association and freedom of beliefs. The idea of civil society needs to be reinforced by new civil values and virtues: the values of equality and justice; values that would help us fight all kinds of injustice and discrimination -- based on gender, race, caste or creed. Civil society can be transformative when it combines the politics of protest and the politics of proposal. Civil society will become an arena that can help combine the politics of people and the politics of knowledge. Civil society becomes a transformative space when it can help to create the politics of dissent, politics of association and citizens’ action against monopoly of power and spaces for counter-discourse and counter-hegemony.

Infochange News & Features, November 2009

“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”: On dignity and Rights of sex workers.

2011-05-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

“Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8 (2-7)

There are many kinds of work that tend to dehumanize people and tend to force people to subjugate their human dignity and choices of life and work. In such cases, choices and potential of the Life get subjugated to the compulsions of livelihood. Instead of challenging and changing the social, economic and political conditions that give rise to such dehumanising modes of work, the tendency is to stigmatize those who get in to such areas and modes of work. In spite of thousands of years of existence, those who are involved in providing paid sexual services to clients are often stigmatised as ‘prostitutes’ while ignoring the social and cultural conditions of patriarchy, subjugation, suppressed sexuality, social and economic inequality and double standards of morality. The tendency is to point fingers at women who are forced to ‘sell’ sex. Here, what comes to mind is the sentence of Jesus: ‘“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Let us take the issue of manual scavenging; that is a good example. I fully respect all those who are forced into this abhorrent "profession"; however, that does not mean that I would choose to glorify the "profession" of carrying shit. As a concerned and responsible person I would consider it my duty to ensure the creation of adequate infrastructure to eliminate this "profession" of manual scavenging, a "profession" which is a good example of what Marx describes as "alienated work". "

1) It is important to challenge "alienated work" which dehumanizes, subjugates and exploits people. Dignity and ability of making strategic choices need to be one of the defining forces of any creative and humane work ethic. Manual Scavenging is imposed up on someone because of the very birth and descend. In most of the cases, it is the ugliest face of the cast system (the Film “Lesser Human" by Stalin. K very well captures this). This is abhorrent because people cannot simply escape from this form of alienated work - as it a part of the cast-exploitation. Precisely because of this, I am totally against "Devdasi system"(a very well entrenched mode of patriarchy, sexual exploitation, and many other things); I am totally against trafficking of children and young women or pushing someone in to "prostitution" by poverty, patriarchy and exploitative social condition.
Having said this, the fact of the matter is people do shit-and there is provision for handling this- through a range of technology, sanitation services and many millions of people work in the sector. So the problem is not the work in itself- it is the exploitative condition, dehumanizing condition and alienation. This condition is what needs to be changed.

2) Most of the healthy human beings will have to eat, shit, and also enjoy sex (irrespective of gender). There are a whole range of services/and provisions to handle all their basic/instinctual need of human beings. From the very beginning of human history, different kinds of institutional and market arrangements emerged to deal with eating, shitting and sex. There are also some sort of conventions, culture, and taste in all these three areas depending on the immediate environment, culture, and institutions. Morality, Market, Institutions like family etc also emerged to address some of these basic needs as well as the large social and creative needs of human being. There has been always an arrangement to deal with sexual urges of people- in various forms in various society and cultures all through history; otherwise there would not have been a wide range of erotica in almost ancient civilization- including the Phallic symbol-fertility cult; sex and sexuality- has been a predominant force of desire, creativity, war, domination, exploitation and nirvaana. Kama Surthra or Kahjuraho would not have emerged out of any social or cultural vacuum. It is the patriarchal culture, use of religion as means to create moralism to subjugate and rule, and the institutional framework that on the one hand subversively encouraged alienated forms of "prostitution" and on the other hand stigmatised those women- making them the prisoners and victims of an unjust and exploitative system. This is what needs to be challenged.

3) Those who provide pleasure services or helping another to meet a basic human need ( there are so many examples of this beyond sex-related services) or entertaining- are a part of what we now call "service sector". Here too the question is whether in the service sector( ranging from circus, to belly dancers to "Mohini" attama, fashion show, theatre), there is any form of work that alienate a person because of subjugation, exploitations and dehumanization. The criminalization of those involved work/roles related to providing services( by men, women and transgender)of sex, will actually perpetuate subjugation, dehumanization and alienation of those who are at the receiving end of this 'profession'- poor women, trafficked children who were pushed in the market( without any basic Rights and with huge social stigma) by an unjust system. But when they are mobilized, when they fight against alienating, exploitative conditions, and when they ask for dignity, fair payment, health or social security- they are asking for justice,dignity and the basic human rights to live, love, and make choices about their own body and line of work.

4) The fact of the matter is that there are millions and millions of people( mostly women) working in this line of service;they are a sort of service providers to the entire society. In a society with suppressed sexuality there could be more sex-related violence as well..By criminalization and stigmatization, the patriarchal society exploit these millions of people, and use "morality" as a means for subjugating people as well as her/his right over his/her body.

The stigmatization, patriarchy and conservative moralism of the powerful need to be challenged at ethical, political and philosophical levels. I thought Marx did precisely that. So it is very much in line with Marxist positioning to help the stigmatized, exploited and alienated "masses" through unionization so that these "masses" can be transformed in to people who not only produce for utility but also for beauty- as creative human being with a sense of agency - to make decisions, to make choices and to live a life of joy and peace. So I argue for the dignity and rights of Sex workers from a Marxist perspective as well.

For instance, most of the Sex workers in Thailand are dignified 'professionals' who will claim their dignity, choose their work and sometime even clients- and provide services without compromising their health and choices. Dr. Metchai played a very important role in transforming the mindset. However, it is important to also recognize the role of exploitative economic networks, often with the blessings of the powerful vested interest, that perpetuate such dehumanizing modes of work. War and aggression created red streets in many countries. For example, the growth of Phatphong in Bangkok had a direct link with Vietnam War- and the covert and overt efforts to create a 'market' for the rest and 'recreation' of the American soldiers. So it is important to challenge an exploitative social,economic and moral system that perpetuate such exploitative practises.

5) Without dignity and a sense of beauty- the very act of sex too can be alienating- wherever it is done- in the "respected" four walls of "family" or elsewhere. In most of the safe-institutional set up of 'families'- "sex" can be as alienating (if not more )as in the case of so-called sex 'work'. How many women do have right over her body and sexual choices in family or society? How many of them are even asked whether they enjoyed or had an orgasm? In many cases, it is simple "rape"- one of the most criminal acts of violation of human dignity.Sexual or sex -related 'domestic' violences also indicate the very patriarchal conditions that often deny women the right over her body or right to have pleasure.

The key issue here is not only the social, economic and political conditions that perpetuate alienating or dehumanizing forms of work, it is also about patriarchal attitude towards sex and sexuality. So this needs to be addressed in terms of challenging the very political economy of the conditions and positions that perpetuate any dehumanizing or alienating forms of work, it is also about challenging ourselves about our received notions of the morality and politics of sex and sexuality. It is rather easy to sit on a 'pedestal' to either patronise 'sex-workers' or to moralise about 'sins' of sex, sexuality and 'sex' and stigmatise the people involved in such area of compulsions. Here an important task is to humanize and to politicise those involved in such alienating area of 'work' so that they are empowered enough to make choices of their life and work and bargain and negotiate with their life and work for themselves, like any other human being involved in any area of work.

Performance Monitoring and Governance Assessments of State owned Enterprises

2011-04-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

One of the good things about Kerala is that there are islands of optimism and islands of actions. As a student of governance, I am a very keen observer of Kerala politics and policy. The turnaround of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), due to the proactive initiative and effective management, led by the Minister of Industries, is indeed positive highlight of the governance. Kerala has some inspiring stories once in a while, though many of us would like to have many more inspiring stories. This story of better performing state-owned enterprises needs to be told much beyond the confines of Kerala and the confines of India because in the present context, it is important to set a new agenda on both public sector management and SOEs. It is not only about analysis and advocacy; there is also a need to be ambitious enough to set the agenda not only for India, but also for the world. I think Kerala has a story to tell the world about innovations in public sector management, and I hope we will be able to sustain the improvement in the performance quality of many state-owned enterprises.

I would focus on two aspects; one is a general framework on performance monitoring and the second is a framework participatory governance assessment, promoted by the UNDP

Performance Monitoring
My presentation on performance-monitoring system is based on my management and leadership experience of ensuring the performance quality for large international organization for many years.

Performance monitoring is a planned and regular process used to understand, assess, evaluate, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization and its process to decide the strategic priorities and direction. Here it is very important to have quantitative measurements based on key performance indicators and qualitative methods based on the review and reflection of key stakeholders. This is what you call participatory review and refection and the indicators will say where it is going. It will not give a lot sense about why it is happening and that requires a whole of regular participatory review and reflection that is qualitative because those review and reflection help you to get what I call the business judgment.

The purpose of measuring performance is to know how an enterprise is performing and to understand the reasons for good or bad performance quality. Improving the performance of an organization is to serve its purpose, the mission, customers, employees, promoters, owners as well as stakeholders.

Principles for Assessing and Monitoring Performance
When performance indicators of an organization or an enterprise or a company are to be assessed it is important to have a clear idea about the normative principles, which guide a performance monitoring system or the corporate governance assessment system.

Accountability is the most important of the six normative principles that are most essential for such a performance monitoring system, the most important one is accountability. For an SOE, it is of immense important to have political accountability, and this is not just a technical stuff. Since millions of dollars of money, which is being invested, is from taxpayers' money and it is the money of citizen, public accountability is a must for its very legitimacy. Political accountability to the people is primary. Social accountability is also paramount and it is necessary to evaluate whether an SOE serve the community in which it operates, apart from the employees of that enterprise. Managerial accountability includes the whole range of issues of performance, capacity, product quality, marketing, customer care, finance management, research and development and overall performance in the larger market and society.

Transparency is not merely about making some information available. How far we have a system of open and transparent system of process, information, and management is a very important aspect in relation to sense of ownership.
A transparent system is all aspects of management is import to ensure accountability and to combat corruption. However, transparency in itself may not lead to accountability. Accountability is about answerability. Accountability is a function of power-relationship within the organization and the organization in relation to the larger society and the state. A effectively managed company should disclose all its policies, including the policy of recruitment, performance, financial management related information on a regular basis. It is very important to have a system where every citizen should be able to go to web-portal of a particular company or enterprise and see the performance of a company in every quarter. The quarterly report and quarterly internal audit should be published and all policies and key information of the company should be accessible and available to the people. Such an open-information policy framework and system would not only increase the credibility and performance of such enterprises, but also play as a safeguard against any practice of corruption.

Participation of the stakeholders means the sense of agency and ownership. It is very much connected to the extent employees and other key stakeholders are involved in defining and developing the strategy of the organization. It also means the extent to which other stakeholders, including media and civil society organizations, are involved in the affairs of the corporation. In an SOE it also seemed to be political, because the government keeps changing and it should not be only left to civil servants.

Integrity is about how the principles policies and strategies are translated in letter and spirit ensuring the quality, performance and overall effective management of the organization. Integrity is also about the courage of conviction not to dilute the core vision, mission and objective of the organization. An organization with a shared sense of integrity would not have any space or option for corrupt practices. It is related to the questions whether an organization serves the purpose for which it is created and whether the leadership follows the ethical business practice and systems of management.

Rights and responsibility include Corporate Social Responsibility and a respect for the rights of the community in which a company operates and responsibility towards people. A responsible and rights-based social or public enterprise should also ensure the triple bottom lines in management governance. The triple bottom lines include People, Planet and Profit

Towards the end of the day, if a monitoring system does not have the sense of ownership and agency of the employees, it will never get internalized and that is part of the problem in many organizations. Top-down policies without any sense of participation and agency of employees hardly get implemented. The term ‘agency’ means ‘who takes decision’ for whom. It is the participation and sense agency that creates a shared sense of ownership to any process or policy. And for the SOEs this is much more fundamental because there is a whole issue of political responsibility and agency is not only technical here.

Developing a Multi-dimensional Approach
Indicators can sometimes mislead you. Indicators are good, but not good enough to really take strategic direction. Performing the monitoring system enables enterprise to plan, measure, and manage its performance according to a pre-defined strategy and make the desired outcome and impact.It is a diagnostic tool; it is a report card for an organization / business that provides users with information on what is working well and what is not. How do you translate a strategy into performance? This would involve the following: translating strategy into more easily understood operational metrics and goals; aligning the organization around a single coherent strategy which everybody will know; making a strategy in everyone’s everyday’s job, from CEO to an entry level employee; making strategic improvement as a continual process; and mobilizing change through strong effective leadership. Change of management itself is an important is often important to ensure strategic performance of an organization.

When we develop a performance management and monitoring system, it is important to have a multidimensional approach. There are number of methodologies, which we call as Balance Scorecard methodology, performance prism methodology and quality management methods. Based on the Balance Score Card Methods developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton( Harvard Business Review-September-October 1993) ,I would like to high-light five multidimensional perspectives: Financial Perspective, Customer Perspective, Internal Business Perspective, Innovation and Learning Perspective and External Environment Perspective.

Multi-dimensional Approach
1) Financial Perspective: Allocation pattern, Expenditure pattern, Quality of expenditure, Revenue pattern, Monitoring supply and demand side; Return on Capital Employed, Cash Flow, Profitability, Profit Forecast Reliability, Sales Backlog
2) Customer Perspective: Quality of products and services, changing needs, constant feedback, managing demands and supply Pricing Index, Customer Ranking Survey, Customer Satisfaction Index, Market, Share, Business Segment, Key Accounts
3) Internal Business Perspective: Employee satisfaction index Project performance index, Resource management, production-management and product quality, performance capacity and quality
4) Innovation and Learning Perspective: Review, reflection, analysis and learning cycle, Research and development, systematic bench marketing, integrating new knowledge, individual and institutional capacity development, learning objectives and incentives for innovations and experiment.
5) External Environment Perspective: competitors, community, civil society, media, political environment, policy environment, political economy

It is so important to look at the bottom line of finance performance to know allocation pattern, expenditure pattern, quality of expenditure, quality of revenue, and monitoring of supply and demand, what is the profit, what is the profit forecast, etc. It is also important to take the customer perspective and internal business perspective. Here, the employee satisfaction index, project performance index, resource management and production management index, and performance capability are very significant. But towards the end of the day, an organization gets transformed through consistent process of innovation and learning perspective. The question is whether an organization enterprise can internalize innovation within its system and that is not an easy thing and is there an incentive for innovation is also very vital point. Many a times, if there is no incentive for innovations and if there is no learning, which is being built in the system, organization never transforms. So, the transformation of an organization depend on to what extent it has the innovation and learning perspective and of course, for an SOE, external environment perspective is very crucial and this is both business as well as political environment. So, I will conclude this part by highlighting the five aspects of Performance Prism. Performance Prism( Any Neely 2000,Cranfield School of Management) is a tool derived from the Balance Score Method of Kaplan and Norton. Performance Prism focus on five aspects: stakeholder satisfaction, how the strategies which we have used, what kind of process we use to execute these strategies, and what kind of capabilities are institutionally and individually transformed into institutional capability and what are the stakeholder contribution. One of the problems of many of these organizations is that there are excellent individuals in the organization with fantastic capacities, but that has not been transformed into institutional capability, which can deliver results.

Principles of Participatory Governance Assessments

The second part of my presentation is set of principles, which we use in the United Nations on governance assessment. Most of the governance assessment is done for assessing the performance of various sectors of government and also the public sector. We stress on the aspects of national ownership, local capacity, inclusive multi-stakeholder participation and evidence-base policy change. Many of us challenge externally imposed or donor driven perspective on governance assessment. Usually, highly paid consultants fly into a country for two weeks and then they tell what is best for those countries. This not only raise issues of legitimacy and sustainability – but at the end any top-down or externally imposed assessments will not be effective. Because, change will never happen, unless people own the process of change. So, we at the UNDP, stress eight most important principles of governance assessment. These principles of participatory governance assessments can be very useful to periodically assess the governance and management of the State owned Enterprises.

In this process, agency and ownership is so crucial. If a corporate governance assessment for an SOE is being done, who owns the process is so important, because unless the members of the board do not own it, you cannot get the best of the consultants and to develop a system and it is not going to work. It has to be context-specific otherwise it would not work. What work in Kerala may not work in Maharashtra because the political culture of Kerala would be different from political culture of Maharashtra or Gujarat.So, it has to be context specific, it cannot be ‘one-size-fits all’ approach. The priorities, methodology, and choices of indicators also will have to be based on the context and it has to be multi-stakeholder process, and it has to be need-based rather than a generic framework of assessment. The question is if we have a governance assessment for a corporate, does it transform or does it maintain the status-quo. So, one of the areas in which we work is to assist governments across the world to build up the national ownership of governance assessment through multi-stakeholder process.

Capacity Development is a cumulative process. Building the capacity of an institutions also requires robust systems that can combine the institutional capacity along with individual initiatives and innovations And capacity development involves a consistent effort to bridge- knowledge-skills and practice in a cyclical and systematic manner. It is so important to produce research and knowledge products, establish and maintain high-quality and dynamic depository of knowledge and make accessibility and availability of these knowledge. But unless we translate some of this learning into knowledge, process and product, it is not going to get a long-term influence.

This is just a process of how do you do a corporate governance assessment and the steps related to it. I am not going into detail of it here. But I would say it is so important to have a political economy analysis of an enterprise in an environment to identify who are the stakeholders. It is not a technical fix although technicality is involved, but it so important to have the political economy of an enterprise in a context and then identify the stakeholders, steering committee, and all those 10 or 12 processes. These are not linear processes, it goes to and fro. Unless these works are aligned with a political and policy priority, it does not work. You may be able to turn around an SOE, but does it translate into policy alignment that can transform the whole sector? Priorities are a very important questions and the methodology will have to be rigorous, and good enough to be replicable within a given context.

I am not going to the detail of the technical aspects, such as how do you collect data, how do you develop various indicators and how do you use the indicators. It is also important to see how you identify the data producers and to see whether they are reliable and trustworthy. Whether they give evidence, whether they improve the usability of evidence, whether you would be able to effectively disseminate this data, and whether it will be able to be widely accessed by different actors , are very important questions.

Data users could be policy makers, managers, internal stakeholders, civil society organizers and citizens. Getting appropriate buy-in is very important and hence the stakeholder process is very important, and what is the incentive to use this information and data, and how do you really improve the dialogue between these two.

I will sum-up saying that many of these information would be available on the portal, called www.gapportal.org, where there is a whole set of governance indicators and performance monitoring system to fight corruptions with lots of example from across the world. Let me sum it by saying that, a performance monitoring system and a governance assessment is good as long as there is a political will to transform. You can have the best of methods and you may have the best of consultants, but towards the end of the day, the transformation of SOEs will have to be a political project because in this particular context, the politics of change and the politics of market will have to take three points in to consideration; 1) the owners of SOEs will have to be citizens and it should not to be bureaucrats, so, the political accountability is fundamental. 2) SOEs also will have to be able to compete in the market. So, it is not just to generate employment. It should be able to compete in the market with products, with quality, and with competition. Otherwise it will not be able to sustain. 3) The investment in State owned Enterprise need to be based on strategic priority at a given time within a given context. It may not be necessary to have state owned enterprises in all areas, particularly where there are already other key market actors or where there is less chance to be financially viable. Political, Economic and Financial viability and sustainability should be key factors in investing money to create State-owned enterprises. In spite of all good intention the real challenge is that often State-owned enterprises become safe haven of corrupt political-bureaucrat nexus. Hence it is of immense important to have effective Performance Monitoring and Governance Assessment to reclaim the state-owned enterprises to citizens and ensure the public accountability and effective performance of these institutions in the market place and society.

I hope that the success story of Kerala SOEs will get translated into knowledge and practices and those knowledge and practices will be able to inspire and inform and set agenda in India. India requires such kind of stories because there are new vested interest nexus , ready to sell India, retail and wholesale, to the highest bidder. There are efforts to sell off some of our best public sector enterprises for a song. We cannot afford to sell this country and the enterprises, which have been built over last 63 years, which made us what we are told.
Hence, these stories of success of State-owned enterprise in Kerala need to be told, told everywhere, told beyond India, and I hope this kind of process will inspire change across the world. And we need to learn to set agenda to change the world- to make it more just and sustainable.

(Presentation at the International Conference on State-owned Enterprises, Kovalam, India: December 10-11, 2010)

Living in Multiple worlds: global and local

2011-04-01T13:31:00.000-07:00

March 31, 2011 By Cris Seetha DC Kochi ..
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/cities/kochi/globe-trotter-rooted-kerala-048

Flashback:

John, from a Malayalam-medium school in his hometown of Thuvayoor, near Adoor, stood quietly in a corner awaiting his turn to take part in an inter-school English elocution contest, amidst English medium students looking bright and confident. John walked to centre stage, and like a tape recorder that had been switched on, he spoke animatedly on his chosen subject and walked away with the first prize.

Fast-forward to the present:

Thirty years later, John Samuel is a well-known name in media circles. Currently head of the global programme on governance assessments at the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre, Norway and Global Democratic Governance Advisor at the UNDP Headquarters, New York, he is a busy man, shuttling across the globe every few days.

John has been travelling internationally for the past 18 years, living out of the suitcase across the world. But he has never felt homesick because he makes sure he makes a trip to Kerala every other month. As he puts it, “I constantly live in multiple worlds, but my roots are very organic and active in Kerala and India.”

Inveterate traveller John has barely lived in one place for more than 10 days. He has travelled to more than 90 countries, to remote villages, big cities and is still discovering the world. He attributes his incessant journeys and avid curiosity about the world to a local library he frequented as a kid — Sathyavan Smaraka Grandha Shala.

“I discovered the world of words and words of the world — through the hundreds of books that I read there. I read a book titled Paathira Suryente Nattil (In the Land of the Midnight Sun) by S.K. Pottakkad, when I was 10 years old and always wanted to go there. Now I am responding to your question from the Land of the Midnight Sun — Norway! In a way, it was my reading of the travelogues of S.K. Pottakkad and others which fuelled my thirst to discover the world in all its colours and shades.”

John does not credit the leaders of the world for his greatest sense of recognition in life. “It came when my school (Kadmpanad High School) decided to felicitate its best students in its 80 years of history who have influenced Kerala or the world. It was a humbling experience for me to share the stage with the well-known poet Prof. K.G. Sankara Pillai and my younger friend K.R. Meera.”

Reading six Malayalam dailies and actively contributing to discussions in Kerala, John has no ‘past memories’; he has ‘living feelings’ about Kerala. And those very feelings are myriad and still very vivid.

“The festival in our local temple; the sacred grove (kaavu) where we jumped from one tree branch to another like little monkeys; splashing in its ponds, growing up on unending stories of yakshis, madan and all kinds of unseen creatures lurking in the bushes or on the top of a tree or in a village spring and the sheer taste of eating uppumavu with my gang of friends.

I had a goat and a calf of my own. And the cashewnut season made me a rich kid in the village. I used to collect kilos of cashewnuts with my group of friends, sell them, go for the matinee show and treat all of them to ice-cream, in return for their camaraderie and solidarity.”

John’s wife Bina and children live in Kerala, because he wants his kids to learn Malayalam. He doesn’t feel the need to come back. “I still have my ration card. Kerala is in me and I am in Kerala, even when I am somewhere in the Amazon forests, or a remote village in Kenya, or sitting in a UN conference in Geneva or New York. I live in Maanjali (my village junction) and Manhattan at the same time!”
..

A Manifesto for New Kerala: Pathways to Future

2011-03-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

1) തൊഴില്‍ സമര്‍ദ്ത്ത കേരളം.
2) സുതാര്യ കേരളം
3) ഭക്ഷ്യ-കൃഷി സമര്‍ദ്ത്ത കേരളം
4) പരിസ്ഥിതി സുരക്ഷ കേരളം
5) ആരോഗ്യ കേരളം
6) ദാരിദ്ര്യ വിമുക്ത കേരളം
7) സമധാന-സുരക്ഷ കേരളം

Context of Socio-economic Development of Kerala

Kerala is at a critical juncture of its history, political process and economy. Over the last fifty years, Kerala achieved significant development in the area of social development, democratisation and, to some extent, economic growth.
Over the last 100 years, many factors, including a relatively healthy political party process, robust mass media, deeper influence of social reform movement and better access to education, played an important role in achieving better social development indicators. This has created a relatively empowered middle class society with better social and political consciousness. The progressive policy consensus among key political parties, with better investment in social sector, from 1957 onwards served its purpose. However, the older policy framework is now more or less saturated and not good enough to help us to develop pathways to the future. Though it is important to have a sense of history, it is time not to get too much preoccupied with any past model so that we can look forward to the challenges and opportunities in the next fifty years. Hence, it is important to have forward looking new policy consensus towards building the future of Kerala.

The relatively better performance of Kerala in social development and democratisation is a result of the cumulative process of social reform movements from the early 20th century, relatively better outreach of education and health facilities (initiated by the missionary and church network and later on by other community network organisations), the development of the mass media, the political process in the backdrop of freedom struggle and progressive movements and the relatively better cosmopolitan fabric of the society. The social democratic political and policy process from the 1950s also enabled to create conducive governance environment for achieving universal primary education, highest literacy rate, relatively better health care, and development and gender indicators. The investment in education and health in the 1950s to 1980s created a competent and skilled labour force that could negotiate in the global market. Kerala is one of the first and most successful states in globalising its relatively skilled or semiskilled labour force, with waves of migrant workes to West Asia and other parts of the world. The economic boom in the Gulf States, due to the hike in the oil price also created demand for skilled labour force for the modernisation and socio-economic development of the oil producing countries. The skilled labour force from Kerala contributed significantly towards the socio-economic growth of India and the Gulf States. The export of labour force towards the development of secondary and tertiary sector to different parts of the world and the consequent expatriated income of migrant labours created a new wave of economic growth in Kerala from the late 1980s and early 1990s.

While the growth in expatriated income created new demands in service sector, it also paradoxically contributed to the decline of primary sector- particularly that of agriculture. The cost of land and labour increased very significantly and the hyper-unionisation and party politicisation also created less conducive atmosphere for the development of manufacturing and secondary sector. In spite very significant growth in service sector (particularly consumer, health, education, housing, transport, travel and allied areas), there was no corollary growth in the capacity of infrastructure . The migration of skilled force also contributed towards cumulative bran-drain from all sectors, including that of political process. This has created the paradox of the development of Kerala: higher socio-economic development, high per-capita income, less infrastructural facilities,conservative social values, better gender indicators along with less women's empowerment, and a civil society divided on the basis of party political affiliation and community organisations.

Kerala society jumped from Semi- feudalism to Consumerism via Communist aspirations - all within a span of sixty years. Hence, our own social and political culture became a strange and confusing mix of feudal- left- and consumerist and conservative- all in one! We also jumped from a predominantly agriculture - (primary sector economy) - to service sector (Tertiary sector) economy within a span of 40 years. We have moved rather fast from a rural based joint-family or networked-family social settings to nuclear and post-nuclear settings. A very significant section of our people moved from lower-middle class subsistence economy culture to a surplus bank balance - fuelled by expatriated income

From the 1990s, there was also significant deficit in the quality of youth leadership both in political and social process of Kerala. The expatriated income, the tremendous growth of consumer market and the decline of the quality of higher education contributed towards a new vulgarisation of politics, society and culture. While Kerala successfully became a part of the globalisation of labour force in the 1970s and 1980s, Kerala has failed to negotiate with other aspects of economic and social globalisation. Though Kerala was well positioned to get the best possible opportunity out of the growth of IT sector in 1980s, the state missed the opportunity due to the misguided political and policy position of a section of people and the governments from the mid 1980s. The campaign against IT and the lack of appreciation about the future potential of the sector and anti-entrepreneurial minds-set contributed towards the failure of the state to reap the benefits of the tremendous economic growth in the new sectors in the 1990s. The hyper-party politicisation of the development debate, the lack of long term vision in policy process and a deficit of creative imagination within the civil society led to a new stagnation of politics, society and economy of Kerala. Though there is dynamism of pseudo- debates and discussion in the political process and seeming economic growth- propelled by consumer market and expatriated income, there is stagnation at the core of the society and politics in Kerala. The pseudo-socialist rhetoric in an increasingly middle-class and consumerist society like Kerala fail to go beyond the usual cynical political rhetoric and TV discussions.

More than ten percent of the people of Kerala now live and work outside the state. The migration culture of Malayalies in the last seventy years and the money and ideas they brought back to Kerala played a very key role in influencing the society and politics more ways than what is being generally being acknowledged. From the nineties onwards, Kerala society is more in a post-nuclear family mode- where the members of a family are dispersed far and wide- and often virtually connected- or networked: rather than sharing a life or space. This also means a society of lots of elderly people and young people and nothing in between.

During the last ten years, there have been significant social and political churning in Kerala, resulting in new kinds of identity based assertions, increasing criminalization and violence in society and party-politicisation of issues to do with economic development of Kerala. There are many symptoms of a larger issue of social, cultural and political transition of Kerala in the context of new consumer materialism and neoconservative values and sectarianism - that came to define our society, culture and politics in multiple ways.

Hence, the most important challenge for the political and policy leadership of Kerala is to challenge the stagnation that is settling in at the core of our society and to have a new movement for renewing the creative energies, recharging our potential and crating a passionate vision for the future of Kerala. Such a passionate vision and new creative movement for Kerala should create conditions for the renaissance of Kerala in 21st century. This means it is important re-imagine a new Kerala- with a long term vision of the next fifty years, medium term vision for next 20 years and clear short-term policy and programme framework for the next five years.

Emerging Issues
Kerala is in the midst of a profound transition. It is important to understand the emerging issues that will have a relevance to the people and governance of the state. In the context of the election in 2011, it is important to consider few important issues and to develop viable and practical approach to those issues.

There are nine key issues that need to be addressed with a sense of urgency and clear plan of action.

1) Huge number of educated unemployed.

There are around 4.2 million registered unemployed in the state. This means around 12% of population of Kerala are unemployed or underemployed. The issue of unemployment in Kerala was addressed through the migration of skilled and semi-skilled and professional workers from Kerala to the rest of India and the world. Kerala has one of the highest rates of suicides in India and world. And one of the main reasons for high number of suicides is the lack of employment opportunities and the social pressure from a highly consumerist and conservative society.

As the labour market is getting increasingly saturated in many parts of India and the world, the biggest challenge is Kerala would be to create millions of new employment opportunities in a mission mode.

Issue of inequality, and poverty can only be addressed if the causes and consequences of unemployment is addressed in a sustainable way.

2) Corruption in Governance and government
There is a wide spread discontent against corruption at various levels. The various allegations against government departments and ministers of this government and previous government created an atmosphere of cynicism and anger among the common people of Kerala. There are various kinds of corruption- including the most obvious forms in appointment of teachers in the ‘aided’ schools and colleges, controlled by community-cast- networks across the state. Hence addressing corruption through pro-active policy framework and action programmes would be crucial to influence a larger cross section of people in Kerala.

3) The crisis of food production and agriculture

The migration of skilled and semiskilled labours to the gulf and other countries impacted the economy and agriculture of Kerala in a significant way. While this has created new employment opportunities in the construction sector and service sector, it also created deficit of labour in the agriculture sector. And the rapid shift to cash crops such as Rubber paradoxically increased the income of a section of middle class and at the same time adversely affected the food production in Kerala. Due to the migration of semi-skilled labours to others states and gulf, and due to new employment opportunities in the construction sector, rubber plantations, and service sector, there has been an acute shortage in the agriculture and farm sector. This has increased the cost of labour very significantly, making the cost of agriculture production very high. As a result, Kerala is dependent on Tamil Nadu and other states for food. This has significantly increased the cost of food in Kerala. Such a situation along with the inflation and fluctuating price of diesel and petrol created a steep price in the food price. This has created a new sense of discontent among the poor, lower middle class and government employees of Kerala.

4) Increasing criminalisation within the society.

The most evident form of criminalisation in Kerala is through the emergence of ‘quotation-gangs’. These are group of young people living in a consumer society – with an urge to make quick money to meet the ‘demands’ of the market. They are primarily used by group vested interests with the covert support of local political leaders. They are involved in a) real estate mafia b) Illegal sand mining c) getting and selling spurious alcohol from other states and d) using force to get back loans or capture assets of those who defaulted on loans to the banks. They are also involved in planned and targeted murder,extortion and threatening. This has increased tremendously in the last five years- resulting in high profile murders, planned attack etc. Hence, addressing this issue would be crucial in the context of Kerala.
5) Rights,Safety, Security of women.

In spite of good gender-development Indicators, when it comes to women's rights, space and empowerment the track record of Kerala is not encouraging at all. In spite of the relatively high educational achievement of women, there are less number of women in political leadership and there is less spaces for women to assert their rights and space. This situation needs to change.

Recent attack against a young woman of twenty three in the train and her consequent death created a sense of anger among all cross section of society in Kerala. There is an increasing tendency of harassment of women in public as well as private spaces. Hence it is important to have concrete measures to address this issue in a proactive manner – with a sense of mission.
6) Environment degradation and vulnerability to natural disaster.

Due to the over exploitation of rivers (though illegal sand mining) and also the tendency to fill in the marshy- land (used for paddy cultivation) for construction purpose has created acute shortage of water in a state with relatively high rain fall. The new wave of urbanisation and the lack of clear programme of sanitation, polluted the water sources. In the context of new urbanisation, based on the apartment-culture, scarcity of water will be an important issue.
The pollution of water, lack of adequate sanitation, and breeding of mosquitoes everywhere, induced new communicable disease, killing so many people. The unprecedented pollution of rivers and water bodies lead to an environmental crisis, resulting in floods and other natural disasters. There is hardly any well planned programme or process to address the issue of environmental degradation, pollution, scarcity of water and natural disaster.

7) Less quality of infrastructure

While Kerala has large quantity of roads and almost universal electrification, the bad condition of roads and regular power-cut created a sense of frustration among the people. The lack of regular maintenance of roads, along with rapid increase in the number of vehicles have created enabling environment for huge increase in road accidents in Kerala.
The lack of good roads and the constant power-cuts have adversely affected the potential of the tourism sector in Kerala. This also proved to be a hindrance for creating new employment opportunities in Kerala.

8)The issues of marginalisation and Poverty
In spite of relatively better social development indicators, there are many communities and people still at the receiving end of poverty and marginalisation. A very significant number of people from Adivasies,dalits and fisher folks are still at the receiving end of poverty and marginalisation. Lack of land, productive resources and sustainable employment and income create seasonal as well as entrenched poverty among a section of the society. Hence it is important to have special focus to address the causes and consequences of poverty and marginalisation in Kerala.

8) The vulnerability of Elderly People:

Due to intense migration of professional and skilled labour to different parts of India and the world, there is a real issue of the new vulnerability of elderly people, particularly those who have crossed seventy years. Many of them stay alone, and a large number of them do not have any health or psycho-social care. And Kerala will have very large number of elderly people and addressing their issue of health, security and developing support system would be crucial in the context of Kerala.

Kerala: Pathways to Future

It is important to have a paradigm shift in the socio-economic growth model of Kerala. The key challenge is how to build on the existing strengths of Kerala and at the same time going beyond the old policy paradigm to a transformative paradigm of socio-economic- and cultural renewal and renaissance of Kerala. On the one hand we need to address issues of poverty, marginalisation, environmental degradation and on the other hand it is is important to envision a socio-economic paradigm appropriate for the making of a just, equitable, sustainable and prosperous Kerala.

Developing a robust and sustainable local economy that can negotiate with global economy – with high quality products and services- would be crucial for the future socio-economic viability of Kerala.

When there is high economic growth in the service sector, coupled with high unemployment rate, increasing sense of social or economic inequality- with identity connotations, and a new wave of consumerist materialism, there would be more chance for criminalisation, sectarian politics and communal tensions.
So today the most important and challenging task is to create enabling policy and infrastructure conditions that can create millions of new jobs in the next ten years. While there will be significant opportunities for high-skilled professionals in the global labour market, there would be less opportunities for millions of semi-skilled and skilled labour force.

There is an estimated bank deposit more than 1.3 lakhs crore of rupees in Kerala and only 55% of this given as loan to be used. And even this is more often used n the consumer sector( like housing) rather than productive sectors. Here too most of the new investments are in the real estate, housing and retail sector. There is less significant investment in manufacturing or new knowledge economy sectors. Instead of inviting foreign investors, there is a very significant opportunity to create a new entrepreneurial culture – by promoting locally and globally networked small and medium scale enterprises in select areas. It is also important to strengthen some of the traditional manufacturing sectors such as coir, cashew and hand loom- in a way that they are competitive, effective and economically viable. However, this also requires new infrastructure (road, power and water) facility and supportive investment climate. It is possible to create two million jobs in the networked enterprises in knowledge sector( R&D, IT, ) , Service sector( community tourism, health, education, ) and manufacturing sector( agro-industries and food processing,, garments, cosmetics ).

While all these require much detailed analysis, public discussions and master plan for the next ten years, it is also important to highlight few of the policy options in the context of the forthcoming elections in Kerala. It is important to begin to think about possible policy options, within the next five years. What follows is not a comprehensive policy framwork, but more of an indicative framwork that may help to address some of the issues to a certain extent.

Following are some of the possible options within the given context:

A. Ensuring Socio-Economic Growth and employment creation.

1. Strengthening Local Economy and Grassroots Entrepreneurship, providing job opportunities for half a million people
2. An investment climate for small and medium investors among Non-Resident Keralites through strategic public private partnership in the area of tourism, agro-industries, garment factories, and new forms of developing sustainable and viable agriculture
3. Master plan to strengthen community tourism and heritage tourism – through network of small and medium service providers across Kerala.
4. Crate enabling conditions for possible outsourcing jobs in new sectors like research, IT, law, education and publishing
5. Another area of intervention is grass-roots public-private partnership. There can be a right mix of bringing together small investors- and the pnachayat to address three key issues: 1) Health- and psycho-social care to the elderly 2) Universal Health Screening and support 3) Universal access to internet and village knowledge centres
6. A master plan and execution strategy to ensure the infrastructure development, particularly roads, power and urban development. It is important to have innovative approach optimising our resources and strengths to ensure that we will have all infrastructure facilities to facilitate a higher economic growth.

7. Transforming Kerala in to a knowledge and health care destination by 2015, increasing job opportunities and economic growth. Kerala can be an important international destination for education and health care. This would strengthen the service sector and international influence of Kerala in so many ways. So there can be specific policies to encourage educational and health care facilities in the private sector catering to international customers

B. Ensuring Food Security and Strengthening and Transforming Local Government Institutions as the Fulcrum of social development

1 Transforming the Local Self Government Institutions as the Fulcrum of social development, Disaster Management, Water conservation and Environmental Protection.

2 Declining agriculture productivity will have implications in terms of food security and sovereignty. So there has o be conscious efforts to develop sustainable agriculture- with clear incentives for farming. Increasing the food production-(crops, locally produced vegetables, fruits etc) - can be done by new forms of agricultural cooperatives and adequate mechanisation. The rather very significant amount of uncultivated agricultural land can be taken on two year- lease- with the guarantee of the Panchyat- for initiating new agriculture-cooperatives. This can be also linked new newtowrk of agro-processing indusries at the grassroots level.

3 There has to be a clear master plan for water conservation and retention. Water and sanitation is one of the biggest problems in Kerala now there is an increasing lack of cleanliness. There has to be an effort to ensue clean- and green public places. Unclean water and increasing pollution is one of the causes for increasing instances of communicable disease in Kerala. More mosquitoes mean more adverse impact on health, tourism etc. Morbidity rate in Kerala is high (though mortality rate is lower) due to increasingly unclean environment and pollution

4 Kerala is also prone to natural disasters. The local self government institutions can be the nodal points for the protection of environment and also for implementing disaster –risk reduction strategies in Kerala. Kerala needs a very viable disaster-managment and mitigation policy. Every Panchayat needs to have a disaster risk reduction Plan- and this also needs to be included in the curriculam of primary and secondary education.

C. Ensuring the Rights and socio-economic development of Marginalised sections

1) Hunger Free Kerala: There are very significant numbers of destitute and semi-destitute people who are at the receiving end of Hunger. Hence it is important to launch a Zero-Hunger programme at every Panchayat. There has to be proactive measure to address the issue of real hunger. It is possible to raise resources for this through innovative partnerships between Panchayat, citisens groups and civil society formations.

2) More equitable distribution of opportunities and resources. There are many communities, particularly dalits, adivasies and fisherfolks with less access to productive resources and opportunities. It is important to ensure that there is relatively less social and economic inequality among the communities. There has to be special programmes designed to ensure better opportunities for education and empoloyment of the section of people from marginalised communities.
There has to be affirmative actions, to ensure housing,access to productive resources such as employement to those from the poorest sections of the society. It is important to ensure food security of these communities to making food and vegitable at affordable price.
3) Conscious efforts for to promote women’s security, space and rights. In spite of all positive development indicators, women are still marginalised in Kerala- and hence there has to be more conscious efforts and campaigns to ensure space and rights of women There has to be a 24X 7 cell at the state level and district level to provide support to women, particulalry in the case of harassment at work place or public space. There has to be trained women within the police and at least one women headed police station in each district, with a special responsibility to address some of these issues.
There has to be concious effort to increase the political, social and economic space for women in the society.

4) It will be crucial to develop psycho-social and support programmes for the elderly. In fact, new health screening and elderly care framework can be done on the basis of private-public partnership and monitored by Local governance Institution. This can also provide new employment opportunity for at least ten thousand people.

D. Promoting Peace and Security in the society

1) Promoting social cohesion and cosmopolitan ethos. Kerala has been known for the cosmopolitan social ethos. However, there is a new wave of conservative sectarianism, social mistrust and resultant communal tension. This needs to be addressed in a proactive manner. There has to clear policies that sustains the sense of social-cohesion, communal harmony and integration in Kerala. This cannot be done only through policies- it is important to ensure political process that sustains the social cohesion of the state.
2) A mission-oriented campaign to address criminalisation of society. Clear plan of action to tackle the menace of new ‘quotation-gangs’ in the state.
3) Reorienting police force in to a people-friendly public service- with more sensitivity towards women’s rights and more responsible and polite behaviour to ordinary people. Clear policy towards addressing issues of corruption and interventions by vested interest political or social groups. Recruitment of more women in to police force to ensure protection and support to women
4) Strengthening community policing to ensure the security at the grassroots level, particularly that of the elderly people.

E. Transparent, Responsive and Accountable Governance: Addressing the causes and consequences of Corruption

1) Corruption at all levels of government has become a great social and public concern in Kerala. Hence, there has to be clear policies to ensure the public disclosure of the sources of income by all government officials above the rank of Gazetted officers and all elected representatives, including MLA and Ministers. All such information needs to be annually updated on a public website and the furnishing of the wrong infomation needs to be punished under the law.
2) Create a Governance Response and Anti-corruption Centre with autonomy- attached to the office of the Chief Minister to ensure 24X7 hotline and web-services where citizens and government officers can do ‘whistle blowing’ and invite attention to corrupt practices at various levels. Such a governance response centre should have district focal points to do quick follow up action.
3) Public display of the details of tender for all public works- including the amount of tender, period for construction etc
4) Citizens charter at all hospitals, police stations and office- including public display of the budget and service available.
5) Institutionalising social audit of important departments at the district level and Right to Information clinics once in every quarter at the district level
6) Quarterly submission of the report on the status of corruption, the action-taken and status of investigation at the Legislative Assembly.
7) All appointments to the institutions funded from public resurces need to be done in a transparent, accountable and predicatable manner. The most evident form of corruption in Kerala is in the area of publicly funded private institutions run by various community groups and interests. The appointment to such publicly funded institutions need to be based on a transparent and competant system, evenwhen the management can take the decision for the appoinment of competant teacchers based on transparent and credible policy of recruitment.

F) Improving the quality of Education and Health care.

1) There is a need to have total master-plan for improving the quality of education right from the primary to the tertiary level. The quality of primary and higher education in Kerala has deteriorated over a period of time. The quality of Higher education and University centres in Kerala needs to be improved significantly to make them nationally and globally competitive.
2) The present corrupt practice of appointing teachers in aided schools and colleges need to be made more transparent, accountable and on the basic of certain criteria – to ensure that quality is not compromised.
3) Discourage the ‘communialisation’ and ‘cast’-approach to education where in community –cast leaders encourage people to send their children to their respective colleges and schools.

4) Massive campaign to improve the skills of and quality of educated unemployed through finishing schools, career development and professional quality to compete in the national and international labour market.

5) Establish multi-purpose ten thousand village-knowledge centres as a grass-roots public-private partnership to create more opportunities for education, employment and responsive governance. This can be a combination of e-governance and e-education at the grassroots level
6) A conscious effort to improve the quality of primary health care and the health-care of elderly people in Kerala. This has to be done on the basis of an affordable user-fee for those who have a monthly income of more than fifteen thousand rupees.
7) A universal health-insurance scheme to ensure quality health care support at the poor and marginalised sections of the society.
8) Create a cadre of fifteen thousand self-employed community health-care professionals- with training, accreditation and professional support system, particularly to address the health care issues of elderly, communicable disease and periodic health-screening at affordable price.

G) Transforming Kerala in to a Global Destination

1) There has to be special efforts to increase the number of tourists by many folds. There will be efforts to strengthen direct flights from Europe and South East Asia. There will be efforts to strengthen quality community tourism with ecological sensitivity.
2) Developing world class research, academic and training institutions, with the support of non-governmental actors, foundation and private sector. Kerala needs to developed as top knowledge destination in the world
3) Developing world class facilities for International conferences and conventions- in collaboration with private sector
4) Developing a facility similar to the Indian International Centre and Habitat in Delhi to provide support for international professionals and to support high quality seminars and meetings in Kerala.
5) Strengthening world-class health care facilities – in collaboration with private sector- to attract more customers from Europe, Arab world and rest of the world.

6) Create enabling and supporting conditions towards developing more than hundred ecologically responsible community tourism projects- that can revive agriculture, enviorment, ayurveda and empolyment. There can be up to 5000 rooms, direct and indirect emplyment for one hundred thousand( 1 lakh people) in this sector alone.

Many of these things do not need any new money- it is the approach that needs to be revisited. It is time to talk about grassroots - and local level initiatives- of scale - to transform Kerala. It can create more than 1.5 million new job opportunities. Creating strong and sustainable local economies and linking with the global is the key. Now we are doing the opposite- linking global economy to the local- without any capacity or culture- and this create a completely false kind of service economy - based on consumerism rather than effective productive capability.

The key is developing productive capacity, vibrant local economies, grassroots private-public partnership, competitive local market that can negotiate with bigger market with niche comparative advantage. All these need enabling social, cultural, and infrastructural environment. We need a completely new different way of looking at things than the present mode of doing things- either old wine in new bottle or new wine in old bottle. We need to envision a new Kerala. We need a paradigm shift- nothing less than that. We need to renew and re-imagine society, economy and governance to create a sustainable, just, vibrant and peaceful Kerala for the coming generation. It is to time to invest in a new Kerala, laying the foundations for the future- Making Change Happen!!

മലയാളഭാഷയുടെ സ്വത്വനിര്‍മ്മിതി

2011-02-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

‎ജോണ്‍ സാമുവല്‍

1) ഭാഷ ജൈവബധ്ധമാണ്. മലയാള ഭാഷയുടെ ഉയിരും ഊര്‍ജവും ഉരുത്തിരിയുന്നത് അത് വിനിമയത്തിന് ഉപയോഗിക്കുന്ന ആളുകളുടെ ജീവിത- വ്യവഹാര സാഹചര്യങ്ങല്‍ക്കനുസരിചായിരിക്കും. എല്ലാ ഭാഷകളും മാറ്റത്തിന് വിധേയമാണ്.

2) എന്നാല്‍ ഭാഷയുടെ ഭരണഘടനയും മേല്കൊയ്മയുള്ള വ്യാകരണ-വ്യവഹാര രീതികളും രൂപപെട്തുന്നതില്‍ അന്നന്നത്തെ അധികാര സ്ഥാപനങ്ങള്‍ക്കും വ്യവസ്തക്ക്കും കാര്യമായ പങ്കുണ്ട്.

3) മലയാള ഭാഷയുടെ പരിണാമത്തില്‍ ബ്രാമ്മനര്‍ക്കെന്നപോലെ, അറബി, സുറിയാനി, റോമന്‍ വ്യാപാര വ്യവഹാരങ്ങള്‍ക്കും പങ്കുണ്ടാന്നുള്ളത് സാമ്പത്തിക-അധികാര ശ്രേണികളുടെ കുറിമാനങ്ങളാണ്. മലയാളത്തില്‍ ആദ്യമായി പുസ്തകപ്രസാധനം പതിനാറാം നൂറ്റാണ്ടില്‍ ചെയ്ടതും പോര്ടുഗീസുകരയിരുന്നലോ. ഇപ്പോള്‍ നമ്മളുപയോഗിക്കുന്ന കസേര, മേശ, ജനല്‍ എന്ന വാക്കുകളടക്കം പലവയും പോര്ടുഗീസില്‍നിന്നും ആവഹിച്ചവയാണ്. ആഗോളവല്‍ക്കരണം
വരുന്നതിനു എത്രയോ മുന്‍പ് തവണ നമ്മുടെ ഭാഷ ഒരു ബ്രഹത്തായ ആഗോള വ്യാപാര കണ്ണിയിലൂടെ മറ്റു പല ഭാഷകളും സംസ്കാരങ്ങളുമായി ഇണചേര്‍ന്നു രൂപഭാവങ്ങള്‍ആര്‍ജിച്ചു.

4) പത്തൊന്‍പതാം നൂറ്റാണ്ടിന്റെ രണ്ടംപകുതിയിലും ഇരുപതാം നൂറ്റാണ്ടിന്റെരണ്ടാംപകുതിയിലും മലയാള ഭാഷയുടെ വ്യവഹാരത്തെ രൂപപ്പെടുത്തിയതില്‍ പത്ര മാധ്യമങ്ങള്‍ക്ക് പ്രധാനമായ ഒരു പങ്കുണ്ട്. ആദ്യം ബേസല്‍ മിഷന്നും പിന്നീട് കേരളീയരായ പുതു മധ്യവര്‍ഗ വരേണ്യ ഉത്സാഹികളും തുടങ്ങിവച്ച മാധ്യമ-ഭാഷ സംരംഭങ്ങള്‍ക്കും പുതിയ കൊളോനീയ-അധുനീകതയുടെ അധികാര പ്രസരം ഉണ്ടായിരരുന്നു. 1892 -ഉണ്ടായ ഭാഷാപോഷിണി സഭയുടെ അങ്ങത്ത വിശകലനം ചെയ്താല്‍ പുതിയ വരേണ്യ-വിഭാഗവും ഭാഷ വികാസ-വ്യവഹാരവും തമ്മിലുള്ള കണ്ണികളെ കാണ്മാന്‍ സാധിക്കും.

മലയാള ഭാഷാ വീണ്ടു മാറിക്കൊണ്ടിരിക്കും- മലയാളികളുടെ ജീവിത-വ്യവഹാരങ്ങള്‍ മാറുന്നതോടൊപ്പം.
മലയാള ഭാഷക്ക് മാത്രമല്ല ഈ വിഹുഅലതകള്‍. കാലവും സാഹചര്യങ്ങളും മാറുന്നതനുസരിച്ച് ഭാഷയും മാറിക്കൊണ്ടിരിക്കും. ഭാഷയോടുള്ള വൈകാര്യകമായ പ്രതീകരണങ്ങള്‍ ഉണ്ടാകുന്നതു പോലും നമ്മളറിയാതെ നമ്മളുടെ ഉള്ളില്‍
സ്ഥാപനവല്‍ക്കരിക്കപെട്ട സത്വ ബോധങ്ങളില്‍ നിന്നാണ്. പതിനാറാം നൂറ്റാണ്ട് മുതല്‍ രൂപപെട്ടുവന്ന, നിര്‍മ്മിക്കപെട്ട ഭാഷാടിസ്ഥിത ദേശീയ സത്വ ബോധത്തില്‍ നിന്നാണ് ഭാഷ മൌലീക വാദങ്ങള്‍ ഉണ്ടായി തുടങ്ങയിത്
( from facebook discussions)

Egypt: Hopes and Challenges

2011-02-13T21:40:00.000-08:00

John Samuel

When people are together, they can indeed move mountains and shake the foundations of even the most formidable of the rulers. The Revolution that the world witnessed over the eighteen days at the Liberation square in the heart of Cairo proved the power of the people to challenge and change. This unprecedented people's revoultion for democracy in the Arabworld give a new sense of hope for democracy and people's aspirations for freedom. However, it also throws up new challnges as Egypt is moving towards a rather precarious political transition.
The next few months in Egypt will have serious implications not only for the region, but also for the economy and political process of the world

Every political situation, context and revolution would be unique. That goes without saying. But no political transition in the modern nation--state happens in isolation. There are historical, economic, cultural, geo-political and international dynamics that influence and shape the agenda of any regime or change of regime. While understanding and appreciating the power of the people and the unique character of the situation, it is also important to be informed by soco-cultural and political history of the region and the world- and also develop a sense about comparative politics- in any types of transitional politics.

As Egypt moves in to next phase, there are many challenges ahead: a) The future of the 1979 , Israel-Egypt accord signed after the Camp David b) How new political parties get a real presence and politics within a period of six months- in a society that hardly got any political party process, structures or experience c) How to transform institutions in such a way to align to the new aspiration for a democratic civilian governance d) Ability to do strategic negotiation with Military to make sure that they remain in the background of the political process rather than in the forefront e) Supporting the new political party process to move towards a more democratic and peaceful transition. Egypt may also require a new constitution- and this would take its own time- with lots of political implications. The next one year may define the politics of the country and region in the next fifteen years.

There are many issues here: a) Absence of rooted leadership with political experience or understanding- as Mubarak destroyed all possibilities for alternative politics or leadership b) whether the Barak Obama would show a sharp sense of practical as well as political imagination that would help that US to win back the good will of the people, and at the same time ensuring the sustainability of the Egypt-Israel peace accord. Egypt is a geo-political hot-spot for various reasons- and in a way the US simply cannot afford to lose the precarious (and risky) geo-political balance within the given context.

Military still remains one of the most stable and strong institutions in Egypt- and the entire political leadership of Egypt from 1952 were derived from the military. And the top brass of Military will certainly have role in negotiating change- in the next one year- and even when there is a civilian government, their role will not decrease

Most of the top brass of army are trained by the US (like the case of Pakistan) and hence the US plan would be to operate through the Army (that is what they did from 1977 to 1982- till Mubarak was in the chair- he was from Air force) - and pop up a national unity government- with possible participation of a section of MB. The present NDP may split in to two or three factions. In spite of all the present enthusiasm and mobilisation, in the next election in September, there could be political subversion - and the chances of an ex-military man in the form of party A or B would be more probable.

Army is not monolithic. It is one thing for the soldiers or policemen to be friendly with people, but it is an entirely different thing when it comes to hard power politics of managing multiple interests with the muscle power of army. One has seen this in many places, most recently in Thailand. So there may not be any sudden repression or oppression. But what may happen is the ‘subversion’ of power in such transition

Armed forces may not want to lose this opportunity to control and the US may not want to miss the opportunity to influence the army. So it could even be like a Pakistan-type arrangement. Civil Government n the front- with army in the back with huge say in foreign policy, security and defence. The problem is that 'built-in' instability may cripple the Egyptian economy- and the extremist elements would take this opportunity to create more sense of insecurity and chaos

The more challenging aspect would be how to transform the energy of young people who in a way spontaneously mobilised and persisted for change to be a part of the new political process and positive development. Most of them want a peaceful co-existence with Israel. While a large number of them may prefer a moderate Islamic slant of democratic governance, majority of people may not prefer the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood - as a large number of ordinary Egyptians also seem to indicate a respect for other religions- particularly the Coptic Church- as almost 10 percent of population may be Christians

There has to be new constitution, election and a civilian leadership.In the last many years, there were hardly any genuine elections in Egypt. And conducting an election is not merely about aspirations- but also about institutional capacity and technical capacity. The logistics, capacity and the technical know-how of conducting a genuine election requires institutional experience and technical expertise as well.

One has to wait and see how the 'Revolution' unfolds in terms of hard-politics in terms of negotiating multiple interests and ideals for democracy. Of course, we all would like a true revolution- with transformative politics, policy and state. But that is not something that can happen within few months

History of stable democratic transition shows the need for three things( among others) a) Healthy political party process b) Army completely detached from political management of the state, restricting their traditional role c) A capable and vibrant middle class. And Egypt certainly got a very capable, aware and enlightened middle class. And my sense is that after 58 years of direct role in political management of the state, it would be indeed challenging to keep out the army completely out of governance (particularly due to geo-politics and the entrenched power-relationships) and the sustainable political parties emerge over a period of time. So the chances are there will indeed be democratic transition with’d’ in the short term.

In the present context of transition,it may be good to learn from experience of Turkey- (which in a way had close links with Egypt- historically and to somewhat culturally too- Egypt was a part of the Ottoman Empire and many institutions are influenced by such a historical experience). It is interesting to see how democracy- Islam- Army negotiated over a period of time in the context of Turkey- with a clear sense of negotiation with global and European economy. Of course, Kemal Ataturk was a true visionary- a man with a historical sense of mission, though he too began as young army officer( like Nasser)

The sheer power of mobilization of people and their aspiration for democracy means it would be difficult for the regime to continue in the present mode. So in the emerging situation, there will be more space and freedom for people, space for political parties, but a transition to a restricted democracy- with a civilian leadership- backed by the Army.

It is one thing to transition to a civil leadership and it is not the same thing to sustain a stable and vibrant democratic state. One hopes this will happen and this would go down in the history as the one of the most formidable democratic revolutions in 21st century. One can hope so, though hope in itself may not necessarily match with the complexities of power-games on the ground and elsewhere.

.

Role of the broad Left Politics: Democratising Institutions, knowledge and power

2011-02-07T20:53:00.000-08:00

John Samuel

What does 'Left' mean today? How do we contextualise the role of the Left politics in the world, and India?

The term Left is a relative and comparative category rather than indicative of a clear political ideology or political philosophy. The term ‘Left’ can signify a whole range of policies and political positions. Left can have multiple connotations in multiple contexts and periods- indicating social democrats, socialists, communists, anarchists, greens, and even Liberals in the context of the USA. Though it signifies a broad range of politics and policies that seek to change the society to a more equitable and egalitarian direction, the use of the term precedes the movement for socialism or communism in the late 19th century. The Left is generally seen as political bias in favour of equality, fraternity, Freedom and emancipation- with a policy bias in favour of a more active government, welfare state and the marginalised sections or class of people. Right wing politics is generally perceived in terms of the maintenance of the status-quo, conservative values, individualism, less role of the government, accumulation of wealth, maximisation of profit and free market ideology.
In spite of such broad indications, it is not easy to put people in to such neat categories as most of the people derive their worldview, perspectives and attitude from a variety of sources and contexts ; their perspectives are often shaped by the power-relationship at a given point in time, social locations and cultural contexts.

The notions of Leftwing and Rightwing emerged during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in parliament; those who sat on the left generally supported the radical changes of the revolution, including the creation of republic and secularization. Radical Montagnard and Jacobian deputies form the Third Estate used to sit left to the President’s Chair, a practice that began in the Estates General of 1789. All through the 19th century the main dividing line between the Left and Right in France was that Left supported Republic and the Right was for Monarchy.
So the term Left is more indicative of those who questioned the status-quo of power and sought change in favour of more freedom. The term Left could mean different things in different countries. In the US, a political liberal who support affirmative action, poverty-eradication etc are termed as Leftist. But the meaning could be different in Europe- where those who supported workers rights and more rights for immigrants etc are termed as the Left. China, once up on a time, was known as a Leftist country, though the perceptions changed in the last twenty years. India, during the leadership of Nehru and to a certain extent during the first few years of India Gandhi was perceived as Leftist. So the term Left may denote a whole range of politics from social democrat to extreme Marxist- Leninist ideologies.
Though many may call ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’ – formal political model or policy choices as the real Left, it is important to also remember that Hitler too advocated for National Socialism- and claimed to work towards an egalitarian society in Germany. The full of name of Nazi Party was The National Socialist German Workers party. The irony is that both Joseph Stalin and Hitler claimed to be Socialists- and also said to represent the worker’s right- were responsible for the death of millions of people. The brutal and murderous Regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia too was supposed to be ‘leftist' Many of the early Zionists began as socialists and communists in Europe in the early twentieth century. So various kinds of authoritarian regimes claimed to be left, in their effort to appropriate the entire political space, presumably representing the cause of ‘people’ and workers ‘ So the term ‘left’ has a rather contested trajectory with different connotations at different points of time and contexts.

What does Left mean today? After the collapse of Soviet Union and transformation of China in to market economy, there were not many examples of Left as a Regime- though on ‘relative’ scale various political parties were termed Left or Right based on the perception and political dynamics in a particular country. There are also many parties which began as Left ended up as extreme Right wing. For example JVP in Sri Lanka- which began with Marxist ideology of change ended up as the representatives of extreme Sinhala Chauvinism in the context of political contestations based on Ethnicity and civil war. So the term Left is rather a fluid category- more in relation to other political positions which seek to maintain the status-quo of the powerful establishment and interests at a given time.

Emerging Trends

Hence, it is important to understand and locate the term Leftwing Politics, in the context of the changes in politics, economy and society. There is a shrinking of democratic space across the world; there is an elite capture of the state; there is a marginalisation and mistrusts based on identity; and there is the emergence of a right-wing identity politics in different parts of the world. Hence those who question such injustices and marginalisation have a role to play in the world and in India. So the Left Politics is still relevant, though such transformative politics needs to be firmly rooted in the new praxis of true democratisation and respect for all human rights.
It would be good to consider twelve key political and socio-economic trends when we try to explore the possibilities of the future of the Left:
1) Cumulative marginalisation of groups of people in the different contexts- denying their rights to live with dignity
2) Increasing identity politics based on religious ideology- and cultural contours. Increasing sense about social, political and economic inequality between countries and within countries.
3) Unprecedented rate of urbanisation, increase in urban poverty, inequality and consequent violence
4) New crisis of ecology, economy and food
5) Degeneration of political party system as election networks of various interests, with only goal of capturing the state, for the comforts of power, by political and economic elites.
6) Increasing corporatisation of the State and the influence of corporate financing on political process and elections.
7) Spread of consumerism as a part of the cultural and social pathology across the world.
8) The new wave of xenophobia , stereotyping and mistrust between people of different cultural and religious background
9) The path-breaking information and communication revolution created new forms of communications and communities and new global community of people virtually connected and networked to each other than ever
10) The emergence of a global elite- seeking to influence three- Ms- Military, Market and Media— to control and capture the power of the state
11) The emergence of a multi-polar world with new tensions between countries
12) Emergence of a global movement of people- through multiple forms of mobilization through internet, global civil society networks and increasing networked new social movements and peace movements of a wide variety – claiming the global Left political space campaigning for a world without poverty, injustice, war and exploitation of nature and people.

Locating the Left

Beyond the binary- comparative spectrum, in reality most of the governments draw policies and politics from multiple sources of normative framework- some of them would be from the left spectrum and others from the right. It is indeed a difficult to see a ‘perfect’ text book Communist, Socialist or Capitalist model anywhere in the world.
In such a context it is important to think beyond the formal models of any particular text book versions or cultivated dogmas ( as models of government and as clear prescriptive forms) in the 19th and 20th century. It is important to reconceptualise the Left politics for the 21 century. While it is good to be informed by the analysis, experiences and experiments of the past, it is important to outgrow the text-book versions of any one model, to relocate a new left politics within the context of democratic governance and justice.
As long as there is dominating status-quo, marginalisation, alienation, discrimination, and violation of human rights, Left has a role to play in globally and in India.
The future of Left Politics needs to be informed by the original ideals of the Left (freedom, fraternity, Rights and Justice); however there is a need to develop a new praxis of governance and government in the context of the emerging issues and trends. Though political party process is important, a new weave of left politics need to be shaped beyond the conventional confines of Party Politics and beyond the mere intentions of capturing the power of the state. While Party Politics is an important factor, when Party Politics itself become a part of a status-quo of the vested- interest-matrix, the real initiatives for transformative politics would only come from non-party political process. Because, possible creative initiatives and movements tend to operate beyond the usual confines of the interests of an institution or establishment.

The issues and perspectives of gender justice, social-economic and ecological justice should inform the left politics. Justice- as a concept has an ethical underpinning - in a way informed by all positive elements in the religious-ethical legacies. Equity- in terms of opportunities and access to resources, and equality in terms of dignity- and as citizens- would be important. So, the principles of Dignity, non- discrimination, civil and political rights, and inalienable rights as human beings should inform such a left politics.
And it is important to understand and appreciate that Ethics, Ecology and Economy are inter-related. Planet and People should take precedence over any efforts to maximise profit. And any monopoly of power- in terms of politics, economy and institutions- need to be challenged.
It is time to discard any mechanical formalism or for that matter ‘Statist’ ideology masquerading as ‘socialism’ or the Left. More important point is to rediscover the ethical premises of justice, freedom, Rights, Responsibility and translate them in to real life choices, institutional context and policy contexts. The notion of a teleological or linear march to Communist ‘salvation’ or nirvana-(with withering away of the state) taking 'scientific steps' 1, 2, 3,4 etc proved to be redundant. While it is important to organise and mobilize people against injustice and oppression, it is also important to have the compatibility of means and end. And unjust means can never be a justification for a just end. Any politics of violence would breed violence. Politics of annihilation and the authoritarianism of any kind (in the name of a proletariat or politburo) cannot be the real Left Politics- as it violates the basic idea of freedom.

Left in the context of India

The very constitution of India is a commitment and promise towards a more equitable, and just society with guarantee of Human Rights. However, even after sixty four year of Independence, substantive freedom is postponed for millions of Indians. There are still millions of mothers dying at child birth. It is reported that more than two hundred thousand farmers committed suicide due to debt and inability to manage small or medium scale agriculture. There is also increasing instances of inequality and injustice. There is an increasing communalisation of politics and new forms marginalisation based on cast, creed and identity. One in four Indians may still go to bed hungry.

Though the Nehrivian paradigm of social democracy firmly established the foundation of the new Indian Republic and made the first initiatives for affirmative action, India is yet to realize the promises and potential of the Constitution or the ideal of the Republic. After sixty years of Independence, a new political class, with the patronage of new economic elites emerged in India. While new paradigms of urban-centric economic growth models helped to create a new ‘Shining’ Indian upper-middle class in the metropolitan cities of India, it also pushed out the concerns of the marginalised and poor from the centre of the ‘development’ discourse. ‘Development’ was seen more in terms of inequitable economic growth, urban infrastructure, and employment opportunities for the upward-mobile middle class. And the fact of the matter is that more than 70 percent of the Indian population, living in villages and small towns hardly got any stake in this process ‘development’. The neo-liberal policy paradigm promoted ‘development’ in terms of ‘economic growth’ and GDP- and at the cost of majority of Indians at the receiving end of sky-rocketing price of essential commodities, lack of housing or gainful employment and decreasing democratic space to assert. While political parties expressed their concerns and sought votes- on the basis of identity of cast, creed and religion, they often fail to translate the rhetoric of election manifestos in to practical policy options in favour of the poor and marginalised. As a result, there has been less investment to support rural employment, sustainable agriculture, rural infrastructure or the social and economic development of the historically marginalised and minorities in India. Historically marginalised sections of people- Dalit, Adivasies and various kinds of religious and ethnic minorities form almost fifty percent of the Indian Population. In spite of all rhetoric of manifestos and the ‘vote-bank’ politics during the elections, most of the governments have fallen to the erroneous notions of ‘development’ as ‘economic growth’ – along with investment in impressive urban infrastructure. This creates new forms social and economic inequality. And such new inequality and perceived sense of injustice would breed new forms of social and political violence in India. And the new waves of Right-wing fascist formation in the form of Hindutva agenda create further insecurities among the marginalised communities in India. Such political contexts undermine the very promises and ideals of the Republic of India.

It is in this context that there is a space and scope for a new Left discourse, promoting equity, justice and socio-economic growth;ensuring human rights and human development to all sections of people, particularly the marginalised sections and the rural poor. A broader Left political discourse need to include a cross section of the civil society, social movements and political parties. However, Left agenda needs to be seen beyond the confines of one political party or other. Because Political parties- including the Communist Parties in India have become mere electoral networks or institutions to win or lose elections- and 'capture' the state to enjoy the 'comforts' of power. So a Left agenda need to be seen across political parties and beyond political parties. Political Parties are important actors in a democratic process. However, one of the important agenda of Left discourse also needs to be democratisation and accountability of political parties.
The irony of Indian Democracy is that there are an increasing number of political parties based on feudal or semi-feudal values. A significant number of members of the Parliament are there due to their pedigree, rather than their credibility as leaders of the people. The corporate financing of most of the Political parties by rich family run companies is at the core of political corruption in India. This leads to a new nexus between the lobby of rich and powerful economic elites and the political ‘managers’ of various political parties. So increasingly the economic elites seek to control the apparatus of the state and that of government – through their political and media operatives. A handful of economic elites can influence the political and policy making process- by financing political leaders, parties and by indirectly owning or controlling the mainstream media (through stocks or through adversely impacting the advertisement.) It is this systemic subversion of democracy, annulling the possibility of the promises of the Indian Constitution, and creating more inequality and consequent violence, at the core of the crisis of democratic Governance in India.

Hence, reclaiming the state and the democratic space in favour of the large majority of the marginalised and poor people need to be the number one priority of a transformative political process in India. This requires a whole range of coordinated process – to build more ethically driven leadership, a non-violent mass movement seeking economic and political reform and very clear advocacy agenda to influence public policies in favour of the marginalised and poor. India requires a new socio-political agenda and social reform movement of young people to challenge and change the situation. India requires new modes of social mobilization and creative action for a transformative politics.

In the context of Kerala, it is rather a difficult task to make a distinction between a Left Party and others- except in names. Because in Kerala, most of the people belong to a middle-class consumerist culture. Old Communist dreams were replaced by new consumerist dreams. Though there is lots of rhetoric about workers right, Kerala has a labour deficit- and now there are migration of labour from other states. Though in terms of 'party' and 'election discourse' the term Left is in prevalence, all main political parties in Kerala are a part of the status-quo; when it comes to social conservatism, issue of gender, cast and creed. So the question is what is left out of the Left in Kerala?
While in the context of world, India and Kerala, there is a space and need for a broad left movement- beyond the conventional party lines.There is less optimism regarding the long term role and viability of the Communist Parties- as the only custodians of Left Politics, as they stand now. This is due to the fact that in the last 30 years, the mainstream communist parties failed to capture the imagination of the poor and marginalised- adivasies, dalits, urban poor and others. They were busy enjoying and sustaining the power-base in three states. And in the process, CPM became a Bengal-Kerala party in its leadership and structure and fails to be a real pan-Indian Party. Even in the context of Kerala and Bengal, it was more a question of surviving and sustaining their base as a 'ruling' party. Slowly 'Communism' and 'Socialism' were for the slogans and rhetoric as the parties in these states become entrenched power-establishment with muscle and money power- and associated arrogance.
The fact of the matter is the India needs a vibrant and broad-based left movement. This has to happen at three level a) At the level of the Congress party - as a network party, it is possible to revitalize the ideals and ideas of Nehru b) At the level of communist and socialist parties- it is time they rethink their strategies and to position as a board based left alternative c) At the level of civil society initiatives and social movement- of non-party Politics. All these three forces- though in different locations may have to co-ordinate and work together -rather than undermining each other- against the elite capture of the Indian state, against communal fascism, and against inequalities, marginalisation and corruption. There has to be movement for social and political accountability and upholding of the Indian constitution.

Kerala requires a new Social Reform Movement- more in the legacy of Narayana Guru and those happened in the early twentieth century. What is required is a social transformation in Kerala and India. This requires broader movement than that of political parties- to influence the mindset, choices and attitude of the people

Emerging Role of Left: Towards a Transformative Politics

Social and political transformation happen through a whole range of cumulative process for radical shifts as well reformist advocacy: through knowledge, language, technology, and institutions. Hence influencing of such cumulative process for reformation as well as radical shifts is important for transformative humanism and democracy
Critiquing the institutionalized forms of power is the first step towards transforming the dynamics of power. Institutionalized and dominant forms of power tend to self-preserve through benign or malignant modes of tyranny and terror; coercion and consensus; and “common’ sense as well culture. If not constantly critiqued and challenged, all forms of institutionalized power can be oppressive, subjugating and dehumanizing. Hence, critiquing and transforming institutionalized power is an effort to resist dehumanization and relentlessly trying to humanize and democratize power. This requires a combination of the politics of people, politics of knowledge, and politics of communication to challenge the dominating forms of power: whether it is the power of the state or power of the market or power of mafia.
Every human action and institution needs to be historicized, problematised, politicized and democratized. Critical transformative approach involves consistent and constant critique of power and a commitment to challenge unjust power-relationship so as to humanize and democratize people, society, knowledge and institutions. Critical transformist approach to politics involves working within institution and working beyond institutions; such an approach involves resisting, engaging and persuading power-relationships to ensure justice as fairness and human dignity as the right to live in freedom.

The grammar of power- within micro and macro arena is often controlled by the institutionalization of knowledge, norms and historical and cultural ordering of life-worlds. This ordering of power is more often unequal and mostly unjust. Such unjust power-relationships get expressed through discrimination, deficit of dignity, exploitation, alienation and eventual dehumanization. So it is moral responsibility to humanize, deconstruct, decentralize and democratize power in all its forms and expressions

Social transformation requires intensive engagement with micro-politics- by challenging, changing, reforming and transforming to make it just and equitable. This involves changing language, attitude, behaviour as well as spaces and expressions of power within the family and communities. The most manifest form of micro-politics is the control over productive and reproductive sources. And this control is mostly expressed in terms of patriarchy that seeks to control women- as the most important reproductive source of life and living. Most of the unjust power-relationships codified in micro-politics of expected roles, and spaces- of body, life and life-worlds: in terms of rituals associated with birth, marriage and death. And in relation to sexual roles, pleasure and pains involved in orgasm- and sexual choices.
The nation-state derives its power from the legitimacy and legitmation of the constitution- with a claim of sovereignty and monopoly of power over a territory and people living in such a territory. Every constitution is constituted, through historical, knowledge, economic, social and cultural process- through various negotiations of power in all such spheres. The politics of the State is often the defining force of Macro-politics. The grammar of the power within and beyond a given nation-state determines the power-relationships in all other institutional arenas. The “statutory” legitimation process of market, civil society and religion are based on “regulation” of the power and politics of the state. Such constant negotiations and ‘regulations” of technology of power tend to create cultures of govermentality of power- in terms of legitimation, control as well as spaces.

There is a tendency of those in controlling the nodal locations of power to monopolize power- through claims of sovereignty. This monopolization of power to control natural, productive and reproductive resources, through ‘discipline” and promises of “security”, are at the root of unjust politics both in its micro and macro expressions
Hence a transformative politics is driven by a universal ethics- moral choices and value premises - informed by human dignity, equality, justice, responsibility to each other and the planet. It is informed and inspired by movements and struggles for economic, social, gender and ecological justice. Such a politics derives its moral legitimacy from various struggles and efforts to humanize the world- all through history- through care and love; through our creative and committed searches for making the world and planet a better place to live. Transformative politics is about imaginative potential of human beings to influence and transform the world within them, around them and beyond- in constant search for freedom and justice. Democratization is at the core of it. Democratization can only happen when there is spaces for dissent as well dignity: spaces to protest as well to propose; spaces to imagine as well as innovate. Creativity, Community and Communication (through language and technology) are three aspect that make human different from animals. And democratization is a process to affirm and constantly rediscover the potential and possibilities of human creativity, community solidarity and communicative actions.

Transformative politics is about the democratization of power, knowledge, technology and language. Politics is to make change happen towards a just, sustainable, responsible world- without poverty and war. Politics is to fight injustice, exclusion, marginalization and dehumanization. Social and Political Transformation begin to unfold when every person can celebrate her/his dignity and right to dissent and development. Transforming politics involves making market work for the people- not the other way around. Democratisation happens when people can seek accountability from all power-holders, State, Market and civil society. Politics is to restore the sovereignty of people and reclaim the state to citizens and the democratization of at levels of human action and institutions.

A creative Politics for must take responsibility to imagine and suggest alternatives to unjust power-relationships. Politics should help us to move towards -a world without poverty and injustice where every person can live a life of dignity, freedom, enjoyment and responsibility.
We get politically transformed and empowered when we acquire the courage of conviction to ensure sustainability of our planet, people, and a just world.

Egypt at Cross-Roads

2011-02-06T07:27:00.000-08:00

John Samuel

At the heart of Cairo, Tahrir square- the square of Liberation, is surrounded by very important institutions of power and culture. The square was named after the Liberation, in 1952, from the rule of a corrupt and feeble Monarchy. A group of young military officers forced out the monarchy, a puppet regime of the British colonialists. And in 2011, hundreds of thousands of largely middle class people, particularly young, want an aging Hosni Mubarak to leave the chair- for the people. Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt more than anyone since Muhammad Ali in the early nineteenth (from 1805) century.

Over a period of thirty years, the regime systematically subverted, marginalised or annihilated any voice of dissent or opposition or democratic freedom. Though in 2005, under the pressure from the US, Hosni Mubarak sought to create a smoke screen of 'democratic' election, it did not help the eroding legitimacy of the regime. The rise of a corrupt network of rich people around the regime and the efforts to install his younger son, Gamel Mubarak, as the next ruler further alienated a large number of urban middle class across Egypt.

The growing social and economic inequality, along with increasing price of essential commodities and decreasing employment opportunities provided the trigger for expressing the widespread discontent brewing over many years. The popular uprising against another long-ruling dictator in the Arab World provided new inspiration for the younger generation. Al-Jazeera televised the 'Revolution' in Tunis. This inspired imagination of the young and found the expression of anger, pent-up over the years. This was the first time a majority of them ever participated in a protest movement. The loose social network of young people on Face book to commemorate Khaled Said, a young man allegedly beaten to death by the Police, gave a call for a protest on 25th January (Police Day), to highlight the brutality of the Police. Those in the April 6th network and few from the Ghad( Tomorrow) Party of former Presidential candidate Ayman Nour supported the call for a protest mobilisation on 25th January They expected few hundred; but thousands of people wanted to chant Liberation at the good old Liberation Square. That is how the popular urge for a revolution began!

It is important to understand the present social and political mobilisation in the context of the history, geo-politics and the larger international politics.

Understanding the political history of Egypt

Egypt is not simply another country. Egypt is the only trans-continental nation-state with an influence in Africa, Mediterranean region, Arab world and within the larger framework of Pan-Islamic world. Egypt- with a written history of more than six thousand years, still remain the most eloquent symbol of the March of history and power in the entire history of the world. One of the first unified Kingdoms in the world was founded in the region in BCE 3150 by King Menes, followed by a series of dynasties of Pharaohs. Some of the most evident form of the expression of power, in the form of Pyramids, followed by the development of Alexandria as one of the most important centres of trade, culture and civilizations, during the Roman Era created an enduring and entrenched sense of hegemonic role for the country. Egypt has influenced Europe, Asia and Africa in so many ways all through the history. Christianity was introduced in Egypt by St. Mark, the disciple of Jesus and the Coptic Church of Egypt still remains one of the ancient churches in the world. The journey of Egypt through the Roman Empire, Byzantium, absorption in to the emerging Islamic empire in CE 639, and annexation to Ottoman empire 1571 and the emergence of new monarchy under Mohammed Ali in 1805 and the eventual over throw of the monarchy of King Farouk in 1952 by Free Officers Movement, led by a group of Army officers give us broad sense about the complexity of the political trajectory of the country.

It is with the French invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1789, Egypt began to face the colonial and imperialistic powers of the west, in the form of French and then the British domination. During the Ottoman campaign against the French in 1801, Muhammad Ali, an Albanian general in the Ottoman Army took over the control of Egypt. The real interest of the colonial powers in Egypt began when the Suez Canal was completed in 1869, in partnership with the French. The Suez Canal completed during the tenure of King Islamil had immense political consequences. The heavy cost of construction of the canal left Egypt with a huge debt to the European Banks. And to pay back the Debt, the people were over taxed and this created new political tensions. Making use of this opportunity, the British took over the canal and converted the monarchy in to a puppet regime and eventually making Egypt a British Protectorate in 1914.

The first political mobilisation against foreign intruders and monarchy and the seeds of the first nationalist movement found expression in the people’s upraising in 1879, led by Ahmed Rabbi. This led to the first nationalist ministry, with a commitment to democratic reforms and parliament’s control over the budget. Fearing the rise of democratic movement, the British and French mounted an attack against the government and reinstated Ismael’s son Tawfiq as the figure head of regime, effectively controlled by the British.

The beginning of the Islamist and Arab nationalist movement against western imperialism and the British colonialism emerged in the later part of 19th century. Al-Azhar University became a fountain head of the political and knowledge process in the region. It is in such a context that the Pan-Islamic movement against western imperialism, propagated by Jamalluddin Afghani found many followers in Egypt. Jamalluddin Afghani was a scholar, activist, religious reformer and campaigner – who significantly influenced the Islamic discourse in the British India, Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt Russia, and within the Ottoman Empire. The ideological work of Jamalluddin helped to create a pan-Isamist critique against imperialism and colonialism. The founder of Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, was a follower of the pan-Islamist ideology propagated by Jammalludin Afghani.

Muslim Brotherhood began as social-religious reform movement in 1928 attracted the attention of an emerging educated middle class wish a share sense of discontent against the British Imperialism in the Arab Region- particularly in the context of the geo-politics of the oil. So the organisation emerged as the most entrenched form of socio-religious force - with a hundred years of legacy of Islamist critique of Imperialism. The ideology of Muslim Brotherhood has very significantly influenced the Islamist politics in the Arab world, South Asia and elsewhere. Though, many of the more militant version of the pan-Islamist movements, including Hamas and Al-Qaida, emerged through the political trajectory of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is more of socio-religious transnational organisations, rather than a political party. And

Muslim Brotherhood itself is no longer a monolithic organisation. It is more of a networked organisational form- with extreme fundamentalists to moderate and liberal Muslims within its fold.
Muslim Brotherhood, though officially banned, in Egypt has formally declared its stand against violence. In spite of the official ban, Muslim Brotherhood still remains the most organised social, religious and political force in Egypt. However, one also has to understand that in a country of around 83 million people, Muslim Brotherhood is estimated to have only around one hundred thousand active members and another hundred thousand supporters working through a network of mosques, clinics and Charity organisations.

Egypt has been the fountain head of new thinking, knowledge formations and new waves of Islamist politics. One of the key issues in Egypt and the Arab world is still the Palestinian issue. There were four wars between Israel and Egypt. In spite of a widely shared sense of discontent against Israel in the Arab world, Egypt signed a peace accord, after Camp David Treat in 1979, with Israel and established diplomatic relationship with Israel. The peace-treaty was more between the two regimes, and less between two people. Hence, there is a wide-spread discontent against the perceived hegemony of the USA and Israel in the geo-politics of the region.

Movement for Democracy

Today, Egypt is at the heart of the Arab World- a country with immense geo-political and economic implications. The people of Egypt have not only a collective memory of civilization depth - but also a vibrant legacy of influencing the knowledge and political process of the region. Every time when I visit Egypt I was struck by this shared sense of collective memory about a culture and civilization- much beyond the usual confines of religion.

So the present people’s campaign against the regime of Hosni Mubarak needs to be seen in the larger historical, political and ideological context of Egypt and the Arab region. A network of progressive civil society organisations and NGOs played a key role in enabling invisible modes of mobilisation - for months on this- much before what have witnessed from January 20th. As someone who knows many of these actors on the ground I could see this coming.
The present mobilisation and protest is due to number of cumulative process- and in such a process there are a whole range of actors across and beyond various ideological shades. So if someone wants to discover a 'left' or 'Marxist' revolution, they are simply doing a wishful reading, far away from the real political dynamics on the ground. And the present mobilisations have direct link with a) Large number of unemployment b) Rampant corruption and a completely corrupt and cynical police force c) Crony capitalism and high level of social and economic inequality d) Sky rocketing price of essential commodities e) Use of the state force to silence the critics f) range of political process- largely Islamist critique- and shared sense of anger against US f) The impact of new media and the 'revolution' in Tunisia, g) A widely shared sense of anger about the perception that Hosni Mubarak is more of representative of American interests in the region h) The real pressure of economic crises felt by so many poor people due to the sky rocketing price of essential commodities This was partly a 'reaction'- and also partly opportunistic- as the election in Egypt is scheduled to be held in September and no one wants to have the son of Hosni Mubarak as the candidate of the 'one and only'- the National Democratic Party. The immediate triggers for these protests are a) High level of unemployment among educated middle class youth and b) High prevalence of corruption and complete erosion of the legitimacy of the government. A whole range of actors from Human rights activists, socialists, Islamists, professionals and members of Muslim Brotherhood are involved in the present campaign. In fact, many of the young people at the forefront of this campaign also happened to be educated middle class, with a neo-liberal inclination. So any effort to theorise the mobilisation of diverse interests and ideological spectrum in to a particular framework would be problematic.

Implications of Political Transitions
Following are some of the key implications of the ongoing political mobilisation and movement in Egypt.

1) Health of political parties is very important for the sustenance of any democratic system. And Hosni Mubarak over a period slow-poisoned co-opted and annihilated the multi-party system. When there is no-vibrant political party system, there is an increasing chance of any big mobilisation or protest get subverted and instrumentalised by other streams of vested-interests and reactionary forces. When there are a significant number of people without any stake in the country and the government they live, there will be cumulative discontent bursting in to forms of mobilisation and violence.

2) Egypt, Syria and Iran are the most strategic countries in the region- as all these people carry a collective sense of history and memory with a shared sense of immense pride. And these counties also got what can be termed as 'civilizational depth'. So a wind of change in Egypt can have immense consequence for the region. And while many of these countries may move to a different pattern of relatively more democratic regimes, the chances of them adhering to the received notions of 'western liberalism' is less. And one has to understand this beyond the confines of religion to a more cultural and civilizational assertions of these countries.

3) This could create new insecurity in Israel and this means a more aggressive posturing by Israel with possibly new alliances and Axis within the Arab world.

4) If the trouble continues in Egypt- and its potential spread to other countries, the price of crude oil and petrol may sky rocket( as it happened in 1973 and 77)- and this would have clear implications for the economy of Europe and then many oil importing countries across the world. Europe is going through a very vulnerable period of economic and political phase. And an increasing price of oil means a further hike in food price and also other commodities. This could create socio-political tensions in many countries of the world.

5) It would be good to study the modes of de-colonisation and 'modernisation' project in many parts of Arab world, Africa and Asia. Wherever, the process of decolonisation happened through the army elites- or a 'movement' led by army officers, democracy did not take root. If we study the history of Egypt from 1950s to 2010- one can see how this process unfolded- from Nasser- through Sadat- and Hosni Mubarak. If we look at the history of Turkey, Indonesia etc, we get this picture. And note that all of them have been countries with majority of Muslim population. The dynamics and process of decolonisation and the post-colonial regime- and the implications of such a process- need a closer look.

6) So the chances are that USA and its allies would try to influence the army (which received annually an average of 2 billion US dollars as military aid from the US- one of the biggest recipient of US military aid for thirty years). In the post-Islamic revolution in Iran in 1977, US co-opted Hosni Mubarak as an effective 'neutralising' agent in the region. Egypt and Jordan were the key blocks in the middle-east strategy of the US- in relation to Israel and Iran. And now such a 'constructed' consensus of 'false stability' may give rise to new geo-political equations and consequent tensions in the region. Hence, the US- and its allies would try to pop-up a national government with the support of army- and a secret pact with Muslim Brotherhood. And eventually after an election within the next six months, they will try and co-opt a new government. However, this will not be that easy- as there is a widely shared anti-American sentiment across the region. And Egypt has longer history of ant-imperialist politics- based on an Islamist critique of imperialism and western liberalism.

7) It is after the Iranian Islamic revolution against the regime of Sha (where America completely lost the plot and the people), that Egypt acquired a new 'strategic significance'. The biggest recipient of the US Military aid has been Israel. Then Egypt and the third one is Pakistan. Egyptian Military received one of the highest military aid and training from the USA. The regime of Hosni Mubarak (along with Jordan) was a key part in the US-game-plan of the Regan Era and this continued. And one of the reasons that US got hardly any supporters in the entire region is the 'double speak' on democracy- and a complete cynical approach of using authoritarian rulers- in the name of the MB- and other such forces. And at the same time the Regan- Sia-ul-huq dispensation funded the extreme Islmist Taliban and Mujahidin. And also those who are educated and aware could clearly see through this double speak- when the real interest was in oil and to create - adequate tension- to do geo-political balance through supporting Israel- and at the same time taking peace! All these led to a middle class - more educated and aware - angry with this dispensation of Mubarak- US axis.

8)During the Nasser phase, Egypt was more inclined to the soviet- side- and it is during that phase that there was a significant wave of left thinking and trade unionism in Egypt. However, that generation began to get eclipsed in the 1990s- and many of the erstwhile leftist (particularly many Trotskyites) moved to a pan-Islamic framework of critique of the western civilization-imperialist mode. So what can be termed as left in the context of Egypt are largely the academic variety and mostly those human rights civil society groups and NGO. These networks played a role in the sense of consistently critiquing the Mubarak- American axis that suppressed the democratic political aspirations and process. However, the present mobilisation is a result of number of factors- and got a whole range of actors involved in it- due to different reasons.

The Emerging challenges

Every political situation, context and revolution would be unique. That goes without saying. But no political transition in the modern nation--state happens in isolation. There are historical, economic, cultural, geo-political and international dynamics that influence and shape the agenda of any regime or change of regime. While understanding and appreciating the power of the people and the unique character of the situation, it is also important to be informed by soco-cultural and political history of the region and the world- and also develop a sense about comparative politics- in any types of transitional politics.

1)Military still remains one of the most stable and strong institutions in Egypt- and the entire political leadership of Egypt from 1952 were derived from the military. And the top brass of Military will certainly have role in negotiating change- in the next one year- and even when there is a civilian government, their role will not decrease

Most of the top brass of army are trained by the US (like the case of Pakistan) and hence the US plan would be to operate through the Army (that is what they did from 1977 to 1982- till Mubarak was in the chair- he was from Air force) - and pop up a national unity government- with possible participation of a section of MB. The present NDP may split in to two or three factions. In spite of all the present enthusiasm and mobilisation, in the next election in September, there could be political subversion - and the chances of an ex-military man in the form of party A or B would be more probable.

Army is not monolithic. It is one thing for the soldiers or policemen to be friendly with people, but it is an entirely different thing when it comes to hard power politics of managing multiple interests with the muscle power of army. One has seen this in many places, most recently in Thailand. So there may not be any sudden repression or oppression. But what may happen is the ‘subversion’ of power in such transition

Armed forces may not want to lose this opportunity to control and the US may not want to miss the opportunity to influence the army. So it could even be like a Pakistan-type arrangement. Civil Government n the front- with army in the back with huge say in foreign policy, security and defence. The problem is that 'built-in' instability may cripple the Egyptian economy- and the extremist elements would take this opportunity to create more sense of insecurity and chaos

2) As Egypt moves in to next phase, there are many challenges ahead: a) The future of the 1979 , Israel-Egypt accord signed after the Camp David b) How new political parties get a real presence and politics within a period of six months- in a society that hardly got any political party process, structures or experience c) How to transform institutions in such a way to align to the new aspiration for a democratic civilian governance d) Ability to do strategic negotiation with Military to make sure that they remain in the background of the political process rather than in the forefront e) Supporting the new political party process to move towards a more democratic and peaceful transition. Egypt may also require a new constitution- and this would take its own time- with lots of political implications. The next one year may define the politics of the country and region in the next fifteen years.

There are many issues here: a) Absence of rooted leadership with political experience or understanding- as Mubarak destroyed all possibilities for alternative politics or leadership b) whether the Barak Obama would show a sharp sense of practical as well as political imagination that would help that US to win back the good will of the people, and at the same time ensuring the sustainability of the Egypt-Israel peace accord. Egypt is a geo-political hot-spot for various reasons- and in a way the US simply cannot afford to lose the precarious (and risky) geo-political balance within the given context.

3)The more challenging aspect would be how to transform the energy of young people who in a way spontaneously mobilised and persisted for change to be a part of the new political process and positive development. Most of them want a peaceful co-existence with Israel. While a large number of them may prefer a moderate Islamic slant of democratic governance, majority of people may not prefer the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood - as a large number of ordinary Egyptians also seem to indicate a respect for other religions- particularly the Coptic Church- as almost 10 percent of population may be Christians

4)There has to be new constitution, election and a civilian leadership.In the last many years, there were hardly any genuine elections in Egypt. And conducting an election is not merely about aspirations- but also about institutional capacity and technical capacity. The logistics, capacity and the technical know-how of conducting a genuine election requires institutional experience and technical expertise as well.

5)One has to wait and see how the 'Revolution' unfolds in terms of hard-politics in terms of negotiating multiple interests and ideals for democracy. Of course, we all would like a true revolution- with transformative politics, policy and state. But that is not something that can happen within few months

6)History of stable democratic transition shows the need for three things( among others) a) Healthy political party process b) Army completely detached from political management of the state, restricting their traditional role c) A capable and vibrant middle class. And Egypt certainly got a very capable, aware and enlightened middle class. And my sense is that after 58 years of direct role in political management of the state, it would be indeed challenging to keep out the army completely out of governance (particularly due to geo-politics and the entrenched power-relationships) and the sustainable political parties emerge over a period of time. So the chances are there will indeed be democratic transition with’d’ in the short term.

7) In the present context of transition,it may be good to learn from experience of Turkey- (which in a way had close links with Egypt- historically and to somewhat culturally too- Egypt was a part of the Ottoman Empire and many institutions are influenced by such a historical experience). It is interesting to see how democracy- Islam- Army negotiated over a period of time in the context of Turkey- with a clear sense of negotiation with global and European economy. Of course, Kemal Ataturk was a true visionary- a man with a historical sense of mission, though he too began as young army officer( like Nasser)

8)The sheer power of mobilization of people and their aspiration for democracy means it would be difficult for the regime to continue in the present mode. So in the emerging situation, there will be more space and freedom for people, space for political parties, but a transition to a restricted democracy- with a civilian leadership- backed by the Army.

It is one thing to transition to a civil leadership and it is not the same thing to sustain a stable and vibrant democratic state. One hopes this will happen and this would go down in the history as the one of the most formidable democratic revolutions in 21st century. One can hope so, though hope in itself may not necessarily match with the complexities of power-games on the ground and elsewhere.

The next few weeks in Egypt will have serious implications not only for the region, but also for the economy and political process of the world.

Love- The Salt of the Earth

2011-01-19T23:36:00.000-08:00

John Samuel

It is the love that makes us the SALT of the Earth.

Love is about 'being; not about 'having'. Love is about 'giving'; not about 'getting'. Love is a verb- an action; not a reaction; neither a notion.

LOVE- is the art of going beyond the Self- to touch, feel and be together with the other- with people, planet and the Divine. Love is what makes Life worth living. Love is that can transform us. Love is that can make us creative. Love is that can make music within us. Hence Love can drive poetry and politics. Love can also help us to escape from the prisons of the self.Love can set us free. Hence, God is Love. It is the message of Love that makes Jesus unique in so many ways.

Love one another. Love your neighbour. Love your enemy: Jesus preached and practised LOVE with his words, deeds and lifeand Love was his biggest of commandments: sum and substance of his life and mission. Love made him die young.

LOVE. LOVE and LOVE- is the alpha and Omega of his teaching, Life, and mission. He lived and died a life of Love. He lived dangerously - challenging injustice, stigmatization, and exploitation. He challenged unjust and unequal power-relationship with the message of Love. His Cross too was that of Love.
Jesus was the messenger and message of Love and in his words and deeds he stood with the down trodden, oppressed, and stigmatized.
He sought to heal people and world with LOVE.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. – (1 Corinthians 13:5-7 )

The tragedy of the world is that many who claim to believe in him made wounds that hurt the world; instead of creating Love in the world, many wars were fought in his name;many millions were killed. Jesus and his message of Love get crucified every single day by those who claim to represent him in this world. The irony is the Jesus gets often crucified in the altars of Churches!

( This is written as a quick response in a Facebook discussion - initiated by a friend Ravi Varma on Jesus)

Poetry does not have to be written

2011-01-14T03:38:00.000-08:00

John Samuel

Poetry does not have to be written; neither 'published'. Poetry is about the fleeting sense of beauty in the art of living- expression of the aesthetics of life itself.

Poets do need any license from 'cultural' 'leaders - who derive their sense of power from 'arbitration' or socio-cultural 'legitimation''. Poetry does not necessarily need another 'ac-knowldged' 'critic' or 'writer' to say: "hi- this is 'good' poetry: and the 'other' is a 'bad one". Poetry does not need a paper a pen or a lap-top.
Poetry to me is the ripples and waves of senses, sensibility and feelings deep within each human being- and an ability to share - the intimacy within one's own world- with another human being and with in a community. When poetry becomes an ability to go beyond the self- to touch, feel and sense the other- it becomes beautiful: and even spiritual- a fleeting sense of immortality: something that elevates human beings from the boredoms of 'being'- or mundane routines of living itself.
The expression of poetry requires a sense of communion. Communion can only happen within an organic community. And a sense of communion with other human beings makes creativity, communication and community as expressions of life and a living world. Such expression of 'life' with a creative sense of' Being' can be felt in everyday living: in the art of cooking and eating, in the art of falling 'in' love and 'making' love, in the art of 'touching' smelling' and feeling'- the pains and pleasures of life; the eclectic and ecstasies of life and living; in the anxieties and agonies; in the hope and hopelessness of life; in the rhythms of a dance; or the lines or tune of a song'; in the shades of a colour or in the world of a word.

Poetry finds its own modes of expressions- in a million ways- when we begin to live 'intimately'-feeling the life deep within each of us- every moment we 'live' our life. Poetry is both about 'being' and 'nothing'. It is about 'being'- as a mode of living and expression -as a sign of life. And it is about 'nothing' - as it simply vanishes beyond the moment of space and time - in the realms of fleeting feelings.
What is often discussed as ‘poetry’ is not the sensibility of the self - but the 'institutionalised' and 'legitimised' 'output' of a communicative exercise. Such institutionalisation of the world of 'literature'- as 'communicative' outputs- has been a function of power-relations within a society. And 'critics' and 'writers' are in the business of arbitrating and 'assessing' the quality of a 'product' - ready to be 'legitimised' through 'publishing'- to 'entertain' a 'public' , established in a 're-public'.
Such 'power' has something to do with 'ordering'. The construction of 'grammar' is an 'ordering' of 'power'. The printed word- and the 'published' word - need a 'public'. The’re-public' is a 'construct' of an order; construction of 'sovereign' power. And such expressions of 'sovereign' power got its 'theological', political and 'cultural' manifestations. In fact, 'language'' 'literature' and 'culture' often grew as the corollary to the macro-institutionalisation of 'Power': in the shadows of prince, priest and merchant; with the blessings of Kingdoms, states and empires. Religion- as an institution of power- often 'managed' and 'arbitrated' language; expressions of 'institutionalised' creativity and what is termed as 'established' culture. Hence, 'Sanskrit', 'Hebrew', 'Arabic' or 'Latin' began to acquire the ‘divinity’ - through a process of legitimation. And the most established forms of power of the missionaries was not the 'distribution' of 'faith' or ‘converting’ in to a new religion - but the 'establishment' of grammar and that of the 'printed' word- as a mode of ruling our worlds- within and beyond.

Who makes poetry or a poet? Who is a poet without a publisher? What is the significance of a publisher?

Here there are few issues. a) The issue of Legitimation b) The issue of institutionalisation c) The issue of cultural and social construct of a 'poet', 'writer' or 'professional' d) The political economy of communication and knowledge process.

II
I have lived in remote villages of Indian and elsewhere, particularly with people who are not supposed to be 'literate'. What is ‘literature’ for the non-literate? They don't have 'poets' or 'writers' or 'literary critics' or for that matter 'intellectuals'. They don't write poetry. They do not have anything to 'publish' or 'read'. But they do sense and feel poetry – and poetry finds its own expression and voices in non-literate world too.

During one of the days in the Ramadan period, I lived in a remote village in the northern part of Sierra Leon. People in the village were mostly of Muslim faith. It was a full moon day. And I got up early morning, listening to a string of soft prayers- voices 'azan'/'namz' flowing from one house to another house. I could feel people in each home in the neighbourhood waking up one by one to say the morning prayers- in soft and intimate voices. Prayer flowed from the heart and revealed itself in voices of people. Prayer was poetry. Poetry was an intimate prayer: sensing and feeling the unseen and the unheard. When prayer becomes poetry flowing from the depth of the self, priests become redundant. There was hardly any mosque or mullah there. And for the first time, I felt the poetry of prayer-- and for the first time I could feel deep within the beauty of the expression of an intimate faith: sharing an intimate feeling within with a community- bridging a world within to a world beyond: in the physical and spiritual sense. Here 'faith' was not merely about the expression of a religious identity or following a 'ritual'- it was the expression of a shared cultural and social sensibility- though felt by each individual. And for the first time I heard the 'voices' of women- saying 'Azan'. And a prayerful-morning of Ramadan in a remote village in Sierra Leon made me feel and sense the aesthetics of life.

I used to be very 'irritated'- when the 'loud-speakers' in the neighbourhood compete with each other to 'blast' off a prayer early in the morning- from mosques. Churches and temples- prayers those are broad-casted or 'published' for the 'public'. Here 'prayer' ceases to be an intimate sense of 'faith' or poetry. It is a 'declaration' and announcement of faith as an establishment of power- as politics: an act of asserting the 'power' - using technology and ability to 'impose'.
In the days, when prayers are 'televised' or in the days of 'tale-evangelists', faith itself is an 'item' in the market sold in retail or whole-sale to be consumed - for 'instant ‘gratification'; with a price-tag attached to it. In such cases, poetry simply vanishes.

What kills the poetry? Poetry involves a cultural and political sensibility - beyond the use of language. Poetry may not be merely the ordering of words- but also ordering of the worlds, within and beyond. Poetry is hardly felt or seen in many parts of the 'developed' world. When 'development' can kill ‘poetry’, it dehumanises society. A world devoid of poetry is a love-less world; feeling, love, care and beauty would be commodities sold or brought at the market place on the margins. Ethics end up becoming cosmetics in the fast highways of hyper-economies. When poetry does not have politics and politics ceases to have poetry, a tragedy unfolds deep within us and the society.

In the age of hyper-consumerism and monitorisation of heart and soul, people tend to be more 'productive' and 'less' creative. When money is honey, the poetic sensibility will be eternally exiled. That is the tragedy of our times! Productivity too can kill the poetry within each of us. Poetry does not have to be written always! But when poetry within is replaced by 'plastic', the credit-line is simply a card that can be cashed. And machines can’t create poems.

These days the 'value' of a 'painter' is determined by the 'market value' of the painting. Painting is a commodity to be flaunted in the vanity of a 'constructed' living. There are 'aspiring' poets- and poets need 'spelling' and 'grammar'! And Poets need cock-tail parties to be 'felt' - to be 'appreciated'- and to be 'sold'. Poets are in perennial search for a 'publisher' and a 'public'- a market. And Poetry is eternally postponed or exiled?

Isn't it a tragedy of the lack of art of Living?

When 'poetry' is dead deep within each of us - what we do? How do we live? Whenever our intimacy is invaded by the Internet- how do we feel? When 'reality' becomes a 'show', what is poetry- and who is a poet?

Winter

2010-12-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

A white river
And velvet white sheet over the earth
Trees in white slumber
Lonely white streets
Closed windows
People in wool
Winter winding down to the bone
It is only minus eighteen!
Not so cold after all!!

Patterns and consequences of Migration from Kerala : Preliminary Notes

2010-11-04T05:56:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

It is estimated that approximately more than ten percent of the population of Kerala live outside Kerala today- in different parts of India, in the Gulf region, USA, Europe and different parts of the world. In spite of various estimates, there is no agreement among various researchers about the exact number of people of Kerala origin living in different parts of India and the world. The estimates vary from 3 to 4 million. It is partly due to the fact it is not easy to count the second and third generation people of Kerala origin settled in different parts of India or the world for many years.

However, there is more clarity about the number of migrants to the Gulf region and the pattern of migration in the last forty years. Migration has been a significant factor in reducing poverty, unemployment and relative deprivation in Kerala. For more than three decades, there has been a steady migration to the Gulf countries, different parts of India and the world. A recent survey (Migration and Development: Kerala Experience) S. Irudaya Rajan, KC Zacharia, CDS, 2007) by the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, point out that there are around 2.27 3 million Non-resident Keralite workers. The proportion of migrant workers to Gulf countries have decreased from 95 percent in 1998 to 89 percent in 2007. As per the study, International migrants have sent about Rs 24.525 thousand crores as remittances to Kerala in 2006-07. Remittances in 2006-07 were about 20 percent of the state’s NSDP

Following are the highlights of the study by the team of researchers (S. Irudaya Rajan, KC Zacharia- Kerala Migration Survey 2007) of the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum:

1) The number of emigrants had been 18.4 lakhs in 2003; it was 18.5 lakh in 2007. The number of return emigrants had been 8.9 lakh in 2003; it was 8.9 lakh in 2007 also. The number of non-resident Keralites had been 27.3 lakh in 2003; it was 27.4 lakh in 2007 also. Migration rates, however, experienced some significant decline. The emigration rate declined from 26.7 per 100 households in 2003 to 24.5 per 100 households in 2007.

2) The proportion of Kerala households with an NRK each in them has remained more or less at the same level as in 2007; it had been in 2003, 25.8 percent.

3) The northern districts of Kerala are gaining importance as areas of emigration. As years pass, more and more Kerala emigrants emanate from districts such as Malappuram, Kannur and Kasaragod. In Malappuram - 71 percent of the households have in them either an emigrant or a return emigrant each. Malappuram district had the distinction of sending out the largest number of emigrants from Kerala in 1998 and in 2003. It has retained the distinction in 2007 also. In fact in 2007, Malappuram district was the place of origin of 336,000 emigrants or about 18.2 percent of the total number of emigrants from Kerala.

4) Nearly half the number of emigrants was Muslim. Among the Muslims, 3 out of every 4 households (74 percent) have an NRK each, but among the Hindus less than 1 in 5 households (22 percent) only have an NRK each in them

5) The Muslim community that forms nearly 25 percent of the state’s population received 50 percent of the total remittances during 2006-07. The share of the seven northern districts of the state in the total remittances (61 percent) was almost double the share of the seven southern districts (39 percent).

6) The number of “Gulf Wives” that is married women living in Kerala whose husbands are emigrants living in other countries, is estimated to be about 1.2 million. They form about 10 percent of the currently married women in the state.

Migration has been a key engine of social, political and economic change in Kerala in the last thirty years. The pattern of migration and the resultant socio-economic consequences influenced the culture and political process of Kerala in a significant manner. On the one hand the high remittance helped to decrease unemployment and poverty, and on the other hand it also paradoxically gave rise to a consumerist culture, and commoditisation of public good such as education and health. In a way the remittance income from more than 2 million migrant workers also hep to provide indirect employment to another 4 to 5 million (as per various estimates) people within Kerala. The remittance economy – also changed the pattern of the ownership of the land, pattern of agriculture, and also influenced environment- and ecology- largely due to the unprecedented rise of construction sector (and pressure on land and paddy fields for new constructions). It would be important to understand the cause and consequences of migration. Over a period patterns of migrations have changed.

Kerala is also at the cross-road of a transition and the consequences (positive and negative) of migration would play an important role in shaping the future of Kerala. The remittance income would begin to get saturated and the extent of migration to the Gulf States would significantly decrease due to the labour- market saturation in the region. Three would be more completion for skilled and semi-skilled jobs in India and elsewhere. Hence, a remittance-based and largely service –sector oriented growth process may not be sustainable for Kerala in the long run.

It would be important to understand five different waves of migration from Kerala and how each of those patterns influenced the social and political process of Kerala

There are three issues here.

1) Socio-cultural shifts due to migration.

2) Economic and social consequences of Remittance based economy

3) Political consequences of Migration.

1) Among the various states of India, people from three states tend to migrate more across the world: Punjab, Gujarat and Kerala. And this has some historical influence as these states were exposed to cultures and people from outside through trade relations. Kerala has a history of more than 2300 years of trade exposure to different cultures through the maritime trade; Gujarat may have more than 3000 years of exposure. Punjab was at the cross roads between south Asia and central Asia-- on the cusp of major trade routes and war zone. There was a different kind of migration from Tamil Nadu-Andhra- east coast- to the present south-east Asia: the present day Cambodia, parts of Thailand Indonesia, south of Vietnam etc And there were chola trade- based kingdoms in the south of present day Thailand. All these cultural exposure shaped our historical sense of world view and influence.

2) The first generation of migration in the early twentieth century from Kerala was the migration of semi-skilled or quasi-professional workers to Ceylon and parts of Malaya( to work in the plantations) Burma and to Madras,Calcutta, Karachi and Bombay in the early twentieth century. The knowledge and money they brought back influenced our architecture( houses) and recipes to some extent.

The second wave of migration after the Second World War was to Singapore, Malaysia, and to different parts of India- to big cities like Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, and Bangalore. Most of the people who migrated in the second wave from 1945 to 60 were high-school educated semi skilled workers( typist, secretaries, office workers and armed forces). The third wave of Migrations from 1960 to 1975 was people with more technical skills and professional trainings( ITIs, Nursing, Clerks, technicians etc). These three waves of migration and the consequent remittance helped to influence land relationships - and more sense of 'indianess'- as there was a significant number of malayalies who joined the pan-Indian middle class: with relatively urbanised- cosmopolitan identity of Indiness.

It is during the fourth wave- from 1975 to 1992( till Kuwait war) there was mass migration to the Gulf, USA, Germany and other countries in Europe and elsewhere. This was due to the increased income of gulf countries- earned from high oil prices in the 1970s- and lack of skilled labours required for the construction and infrastructure development for oil based economy. Those who economically transformed Kerala are those with ITI and Nursing education. The increasing demand for Nurses in the health sector prompted a chain of migrations to US, Germany etc. In fact, one nurse would have been responsible for the migration of at an average of twenty people. The fifth wave of migration (from 1993 onwards) had two or three streams. These included: a) the relatively large migration of semi-skilled and unskilled labour force from northern part of Kerala, particularly Malappuram and Kannur. b) Immigration of highly qualified professionals ( Engineers, doctors, IT experts, academics ) to different parts of Europe( particularly UN), USA and other parts of the world c) Increasing emigration to the USA by the family networks of Nurses who migrated to the USA and Europe in during the fourth wave of migration in the 1980.

3) There was indeed a cast and community connotations for the migrations. People from Christian community migrated relatively early more- partly due to the access to early education and less stigma associated with skilled work and professions like Nursing. It was also due to the fact that most of the Christians were marginal farmers. With the population growth in the first half of the 20th century, the land, and people ratio changed and hence they had to migrate within in Kerala- in search of land- or outside Kerala in search of labour. So many of them could have been quasi-economic refugees- who had less stake in feudal system or the ruling elites of princely kingdom- largely controlled by a Brahmin- Nair Axis.

4) It is in the fourth wave of migration, there was significant migration of Muslims, Ezhavas and from other communities. While the second generation of the first and second wave of migrants became professionals( doctors, engineers etc), the fourth wave of migrants belonged to lower-middle class of the society. While the first three waves of migration was confined to few areas of Kerala( Palghat, Central Travancore, some parts of Malabar and Kochi)- the fourth wave of migration was much more widespread across cast, communities and regions. It is the fourth wave of migration that had maximum impact in terms of social and political relations, cultural landscape and economic consequences. The fifth wave of migrations - from 1995 onwards- had three layers- upper-elites consisting of highly skilled professionals across the world, b) middle class skilled and semi-skilled workers c) lots of unskilled labour in the second half of the 1990s.
5) The pattern of migration and its consequences influenced all aspects of the society: land relationships, decline of agriculture, growth of consumer and service sectors, rise of education as an industry- ( capitation fees, self-financing etc), and relatively less skilled and knowledge-based young leadership pool for political parties. This has a deeper impact also in terms of the structure and leadership of the political parties. Those communities who had relatively better stake in the power-structure of Kerala( Nair- Namboothiri) - and who were economically well off - through access to land and feudal relationship- got in to the leadership of political parties.

So there was relatively a high prevalence of people from few communities in the political leadership of Kerala. There were relatively very less number of Muslims in the political elites of Kerala till 1970s- but by the end 1990s, the economic status , educational profile and land-relationship changed significantly among Muslim communities- and this has resulted in a new understanding and assertion of political process. Such politicisation and revival of identity has a direct connection with the pattern of migration: And the response included a very strange mix of mainstream reformist politics and a more radical politics that combined critique of imperialism and assertion of a new pan-islamist politics.
6) Most of the Christians- who belonged to the first three waves of migration- had better access to information, money and network resources. So the next generation of these migrants moved to the upper-middle class elite sections of the society. And since many of the relatively more educated and skilled( largely nurses) among them migrated to the US, and other European countries, their politics too was partly shaped by this. These are the sections of people who were less politically conscious ( largely non-Left) and inadvertently promoted the painkilivalkaram- a new popular titilating consumer culture which began in central Travancore- spreading across Kerala.

7) Various patterns of migrations from various communities also seem to have influenced the political sociology and the sociology of political leaders. This has influenced the film industry- as remittance money and gulf-based business men began to invest in films. The -painkilivalkaram- or popularisation also can be seen as the dissolution of feudal relationships in Kerala. The feudal relationship was significantly challenged by the fourth wave of migration and the pattern of remittance. Though feudal relationships changed, the feudal mindset was not completely changed. The feudal mindset- along with consumerist status-quo and the vanities of neo-rich created a conducive environment of paninkilivalkaranam: and this can be partly seen as a popularisation and democratisation of literature from high class 'culture' to products for mass consumptions.

( to be continued)

Oslo II

2010-10-15T01:41:00.000-07:00

Time is an illusion
When the day and night play hide and seek.
Neither the sun,nor the moon;
stars hiding in the depth of the sky;

Blue sky in the twlight
Drizzles define the day;
Night flows in to the forenoon.
And days embrace the night.

Trees shed the leaves.
No more Children in the Garden.
Snow on its way
Oslo is dressed up for the winter

Power to the People: Local Self Governance and Democratization

2010-10-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

The three-tier Panchyat Raj system of India is the largest experiment in grassroots democratisation in the history of humanity. There are around three million elected representatives at all levels of Panchyats and now fifty percentage of them would be women. They would represent more than 240,000(two hundred and forty thousand Gram Panchayat), 6500 intermediate tiers (block Panchyats) and more than 500 district Panchyats. The fact that the Indians system of local governance- the Panchayath system- has its roots within the cultural and historical legacy of India makes it different from many other initiatives of decentralisation of governance. The idea of Panchyaths and sabhas travelled a long way from Institutions of traditional local governance structures within the culture to become an important corner stone in the constitution of India. The 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments, arguably the most substantive amendments since the adoption of the constitution, envisage Panchayats as institutions of Local self-governance. The three-tier system of local governance is also means to build synergies between representative and direct democracy and participatory governance, resulting in deepening of democracy at the grassroots level. Though there is a huge gap between the promises of the substantive local self governance and the realization of true political devolution of power, the three tier Panchayat Raj system of local Governance still offers the great possibility of transferring the power to the people.

Substantive democratization works when all people are empowered to participate in governance, ask questions, take decisions, raise resources, prioritise the social and economic agenda for local development and ensure social and political accountability. Such a vision of democracy requires democratization from below and true devolution of power to the people. The nurturing of local democratic culture and local self government would be the most important means to realise the promise of the Indian democracy: the need for an inclusive, capable, participatory, accountable and effective direct democracy at the grassroots level. And the three tier system of Local governments, envisaged by the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments, seeks to establish democracy at the grassroots level as it is at the state level or national level.
Though the idea of local government was discussed and debated in the wake of the movement for freedom struggle in India, it took forty five years after the independence to make it a constitutional guarantee. While Gandhi argued for Gram Swaraj (village republic) and strengthening village panchayaths to the greatest extent, Dr.BR Ambedkar warned that such Local Governments would be captured by local cast and feudal elites, perpetuating the marginalisation and exclusion of dalits and other excluded sections of the society. The present three tiers Panchayath Raj system, with 50% women representation and provision of representation of dalit and tribal communities, provide a much needed space for inclusive democracy.

In spite of the promises of grass-roots democratisation, there are structural and political impediments to realise the Gandhian proposal for the real Gram Swaraj. The idea of Panchayat Raj emerged through a serious of policy proposals and process since independence. The Balwantrai Mheta Committee (1957) came out with the first comprehensive policy proposals in the context of Community Development. Though the committee recommended early establishment of elected local bodies and devolution to them of necessary resources, power and authority, the primary thrust was on implementation of community development projects rather than true devolution of political power. Following the Balwantarai Mheta committee, four other committees in the next thirty years ( K Santhanam Committee-1963,Ashok Mehta Committee 1978, GK Rao Committee-1985 and LM Singvi Committee 1986) proposed a serious of proposals to revitalize Panchayat Raj institutions – as per the Directive Principles of the State Policy, mentioned in Article 40 : “ the state shall take steps to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as unit of self-governments”. It took forty-five years of political and policy process to move this from an aspiration of the directive policy to a justiciable guarantee of the constitution. Apart from the 73rd and 74th amendments, the most important step towards grassroots democratisation is the Panchyat Extension to the Scheduled areas Act 1996, by making Gram sabhas (people’s committee/meetings at the grassroots level) as viable means towards direct participatory democracy.

One of the major hurdles in realising the true democratic and political potential of the Local-self Governance is the structural and systemic resistance by the bureaucracy and the political elites in control of the important state apparatus. There is a tension between the instrumental value of Panchyat Raj Institutions (PRIs) in community development and project implementation and the intrinsic value of PRI as strong political institutions with regulatory and administrative power- with adequate united funds and fiscal capacity. Following the Blawantrari Mheta committee recommendations, PRIs were expected to be the main vehicle for the community development projects. However, the funding for community development projects stagnated by the mid 1960s and Panchyats got stagnated without adequate funds and authorities.
Even after the constitutional amendments, one of the major hurdles is that in spite of various measures to devolve administrative and implementing mechanisms of the state, there has not been adequate measure of the devolution of finance, functions and functionaries to the PRIs. There are indeed few states, like Kerala, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, made important step towards this, though true devolution of political and financial power still remain far from being realized. In a dissenting note to the Ashok Mehta Committee report (1978), one of the members of the Committee EMS Namboodiripad made a very pertinent remark: “Democracy at the Central and State levels, but bureaucracy at all lower levels- this is the essence of the Indian Polity as spelt out in the Constitution. I cannot think of anything other than the integral parts of countries administration with any difference of what are called ‘development’ and ‘regulatory’ functions. I am afraid that the ghost of the earlier idea that Panchayat Raj institutions should be completely divorced from all regulatory functions is haunting my colleagues. What is required is that , while certain definite fields of administration like defence, foreign affairs, currency, communication etc should rest with the centre and all the rest should be transferred to the States and from the there to the district and lower level of local administrative bodies”. Even now one of the key challenges is the transition of the role of PRIs from mere local level implementing agencies to that of real local-self government institutions with political, financial, administrative and regulatory power in setting the agenda for local social and economic development.

There have been some very bold initiatives like the People’s Planning Process in Kerala that point towards the potential of peoples participation in Local Self Governance and the possibilities of Panchayats. In spite of few such innovative initiatives to strengthen PRIs and people’s participation, there are still major structural challenges to make them the vehicles for substantive democratisation at the grass-roots level. Some of them are to do with the very architecture of the governance process in India and some of them are to do with the character and nature of political power in India.
Some of the key challenges and issues are the following:

1) The challenge of transforming PRIs as the location of countervailing power of people to claim their rights and demand direct social accountability
2) The potential for PRIs to become the key vehicles for social transformation by ensuring the active agency and participation of women and marginalised section of the society. Such a role of PRIs would help women and marginalised sections of the society to assert the political space and demand to an inclusive social and economic agenda.
3) There seems to be a strong link between a vibrant local democracy and human development- as there would be more strategic allocation and effective expenditure of resources to promote on primary health care, education and sustainable environment. However, there is less role of PRIs in ensuring quality primary health care and education at the grassroots level
4) The success of PRIs is also influenced by the effective delivery of basic services to the poor and marginalised sections. Hence, macro-policy framework that ensures the right to livelihood is critical to success of PRIs as an important vehicle for poverty eradication.
5) Devolution of finance, particularly untied funds, is crucial to the success of PRIs as the means for Local Governance.
6) Deliberate efforts to remove the administrative, legal and procedural anomalies would be important to make the PRIs effective.
7) PRIs offer the most effective means for social accountability and transparency. Hence, devolving finance would help to reduce the instances of large-scale and entrenched corruption. The Eleventh Finance Commission, analysing the issue of Centre-state financial relations, highlighted the need to strengthen the finance of local bodies. Hence, there is a need to have broader finance reform to ensure fiscal devolution through the national and state finance commission.

The experience of Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh demonstrated that the transfer of funds, functions and functionaries would be critical to effective decentralisation. An effective policy framework for decentralisation from above need to be complemented with social mobilization and democratisation from below. In Kerala, social mobilisation through neighbourhood groups and women’s groups such as Kudumbasree proved to be an effective means to strengthen the demand at the grassroots level and facilitate the participation of women and marginalised groups in Governance. Democratisation at the grassroots level requires space for voices of the poor and marginalised through networks of social mobilisation. Such a space for participation, demand for effective delivery of services and demand for accountability can strengthen process of socio-political empowerment and capabilities of the poor. A human rights based approach to governance is crucial for the grass-roots democratisation. Hence, empowerment of Gram sabhas is critical to the claiming of rights and asserting voices of the marginalised and poor. Unless the legal and administrative hurdles that often constrain the effective role of Gramsabha are removed, the potential of the PRIs would not be realised. It is important to recognise that there are entrenched pathologies of cast discrimination, patriarchy and identity based political dynamics at the grassroots level. Hence it is very important to have safeguard mechanism to ensure transparency and accountability. There can be systematic efforts for participatory governance assessments- such as social audit and people’s report card to make sure that PRIs are not subjected to elite capture or capture by one political party or group.

While PRIs are still a work in progress, there are many initiatives that undermine the role of PRIs. For example, more than Rs 2000 core is spent annually through the Local area Development Funds of MPs and MLAs. Most of such funds are often spent independently of the social and economic priorities of the PRIs. Such parallel systems of financing often can undermine the real governance role of PRIs with more powers to the political elites of a particular political party and the bureaucratic elites at the district level. There is also more potential for PRIs to become the primary institutions for disaster mitigation, sustainable development, and water conservation, facilitation of local economies and creation of employment opportunity at the grassroots level, through small and medium enterprises that make use of the local natural and agricultural resources.

The 73rd and 74th amendments provide us a unique opportunity for democratisation, social accountability, effective service delivery, poverty eradication and reduction of corruption and a more participatory democracy. In spite of all economic growth, there is still entrenched poverty, social and economic inequality in India. When there are islands of prosperity, surrounded by sea of poverty and inequality, the real participation of everyone as equal citizens would be more challenging than it is assumed. We may have to go miles before realizing the dream of Gram Swaraj of Gandhi: “Every village has to become a self-sufficient republic. This require brave, corporate and intelligent work.....I have not pictured a poverty stricken India containing ignorant millions. I have pictured an India continually progressing along the lines best suited to her genius. I do not, however, picture it as a third class or even first class copy of the dying civilization of the west. If my dream is fulfilled everyone of the seven lakhs villages becomes a well-living republic in which there are no illiteracy, in which no one is idle for want of work, in which everyone is usefully occupied and has nourishing food and well-ventilated dwellings, and sufficient Khadi for covering the body and in which all villagers observe the laws of hygiene and sanitation”

2010-08-16T15:31:00.001-07:00

കാലം പോയ പോക്ക്!
ചോദ്യം തീര്‍ന്ന ചിന്ത.
താളം തെറ്റിയ ആളുകള്‍
തളം കെട്ടിയ വെള്ളം
കൂത്താടി കൂട്ടങ്ങള്‍!

കാറ്റിനിയും വരണം.
കാടിനിയും ഉണരണം
ആറൊഴുകണം
മനം പൂക്കണം
മാറ്റം വരണം.
മലയാള നാട്ടില്‍

Freedom

2010-08-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

Freedom...at last!
Promised,pledged ,
And postponed...

Freedom - at least.
Waiting to be redeemed
Freedom
From Fear
From Hunger
For dignity
Freedom to be free.

India- an imagination
A billion dreams.
waiting to bloom
For a new tryst with destiny!!

Whose Language? What English?

2010-07-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

(Notes on Language and Communications)

John Samuel

There are different notions about the effective use of a particular language. While many of the puritans would insist on ‘prescriptive’ use of a particular accent, pronunciation and grammar, many of the linguists would say the use of language needs to be seen in terms of ‘descriptive’ validity. The standardisation of language and ordering of ‘appropriate’ grammar is an exercise of power. There is a grammar of power in all communications. The power of communication also depends on the power of the communicator- in terms of ‘power-status’, knowledge and communicative skills.

Though English was introduced as a colonial language, now there are more people speaking in English outside the United Kingdom. So there is no more only ONE English language; there are many types of English- with variations in the accent, pronunciations, spellings and even grammatical preferences. The prevalence of a particular use of language has a lot to do with the power connotations of that language in a particular context of time and space. So today American accent or spellings and grammar may be more accepted than it was a hundred year ago. The power of Hollywood films and Internet provided relatively more acceptance to the American English which was considered as a ‘corrupt’ English by many. There are better known writers in English in India or former colonies than in the Anglo-Saxon world. Though there may be still few who are preoccupied with the RP (Received Pronunciation) accent, effective communicators are often less concerned about the ‘the RP accent’ and more focused on the communicative competence to convey an idea or connect with the audience. Communication is both about the competence and performance of language and message. It also means a sense of clarity about the message, audience and the purpose of communication.

Osho might be one of the most well known Indian communicators in the world. His books, audio and video presentations are sold across the world. His English had a very clear and evident Marwari accent. I had a chance to listen to his discourse. He was indeed a master of the art of communication. There was pindrop silence when he commenced his discourse. Every single word, interspersed with silence, straight went in like a ripple with a rare vibrance. The way he delivered his discourse- slowly and steadily- like a soothing wind, earned him millions of audience across the world. Often it is not the accent, it is the substance and the manner of delivery that make communication effective. Nelson Mandela- another inspiring communicator – too spoke in his own accent. Gandhi did have his Gujarati accent. Quite often the accent and pronunciation of English would be influenced by the mother-tounge of the a person. And for large number of people in the erstwhile colonies, English is only a second language. However, English is also the most effective lingua-franca in many countries and the world. The proficiency in English language gives a distinctive comparative advantage to effectively communicate to a world-wide audience.

It is one thing to have proficiency in a language and it is a different thing to have the ability to communicate effectively. Many people who may have excellent proficiency in a particular language may not be effective communicators. And when it comes to new modes of communications and broad casting, it is important to have special skills to communicate, using a particular medium- whether it is radio, TV, new media or social networks.

The issue of language and communication became crucial after the advent of TV. The name of the game changed after the TV became the direct medium of instant delivery. Here language and body language -looks, movement of eyes, posture – play a crucial role. It is a 'performance'- with an element of 'theatre'. In many parts of the world, people are 'trained' for days to 'perform' an interview. When I was the spoke person of an international organisation, and then global campaigns, I always had trouble with my communication staff. They would insist that I do a 'rehearsal' before I went to BBC, CNN or some other international channel for an interview or to deliver a specific message. They wanted to do trail run- with script. And they insisted on sticking to the 'script'- and I never stuck to the 'script': I did most of them on the 'instinct' of the moment, with one or two lines. And the feedback proved that the communication was effective. There is a difference between the communicative strategies in a long TV interview and short and crisp point on an issue or event. If one is a spoke person, one needs to choose few sentence carefully - and deliver it very clearly; all within a minute or two. It is a bit like visual twitter. The message has to be ABC- Accurate, Brief and Clear- and of course 'sexy'!

Even when we speak one language, there are different variations of the same language for different audiences. And the communicative strategies and the manner of delivery would differ based on the context, audience and the purpose of such communication. Some of us speak four or five kinds of English, depending on the audience, context and medium. The accent, choice of words, the speed too may change! For a successful politician who would like to be a statesman/woman, the skills to speak in different 'registers' of the same language and the proficiency in different languages do matter.

The communicative strategy of a politician to his/her constituency would depend not only on the use of language. It will depend on the use of body language, the attitude of communication, and 'speech-act'. It is a cumulative link between the person, promises, language and delivery. So in spite of his 'stammering' , EMS emerged as a good communicator - due to this cumulative effect of a communication strategy- and in his case that included writing as well. Pranab Mukarjee speaks English like a Bengali! In all such cases (including AK Antony) it is the cumulative communicative competence - not a particular- delivery that matters.

In the age of TV, expectations have changed. The mike used by the TV crew is called 'the gun-mike'- where a politician is the 'target'- he/she has to choose every word; and timing and manner of delivery is very important. One blunder can cost him/her the job!

So in the age of telegenic communications, the 'communicative' expectations changed dramatically. That is why the telegenic politicians also began to get prominence in the media discourse: Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitly. Kapil Sibal, Chidambaram, Jayaram. Murasoli maran, etc. None of them have the mass base of Shard Pawar or AK Antony. In fact, anyone of the got hardly any mass-base, and to a large extent their telegenic performance played role in giving them a space in the power-network. Sashi Tharoor too belongs to this 'telegenic' category- and he has the advantage of the ability to speak in four or five languages. However, telegenic performance- and networking capability alone are not good enough to make one's political sustainability.

Many well known leaders would insist speaking in his/her language in the international stage. Most of the leaders from Europe, China, Russia or Japan would prefer to speak in their mother-tounge, in spite of their proficiency in English, in the international stage. President Lula of Brazil hardly speaks in English- though he can understand few sentences. But Lula is one of the most effective communicators that I have come across. The man is amazing, and his communication (language and body language) is charismatic with a magnetic effect to attract the attention of the audience. In spite of not speaking English, he proved to a leader with a range of communicative strategies and skills.

Growing Intolerance and Neo-conservativism in Kerala

2010-07-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

Kerala has been well known for its legacy of peaceful co-existence and cosmopolitan social ethos shared by various religious communities. The two major religions, Islam and Christianity, took root in the society of Kerala from the very early years of both religions- and both were introduced more through the trade and words, rather than the sword or war. More than 25% of the population are Muslims and more than 20% are Christians. People, belonging to Hindu, Islam and Christian communities, lived together peacefully for centuries and nurtured their Malayalai identity and played a key role in enriching the culture, society, economy and political process of the state. In spite of the multiple religious or cast identities, it is the cosmopolitan social ethos that made Kerala a very dinstinct society known for its communal harmony, peace and social development. The people from various religious or cast groups nurtured and shared the same cultural, social, economic and political space. However, there are alarming signs of a growing intolerance and neo-conservative trends in Kerala. The growing religious and cast sectarianism, neo-conservatism and the new divisive political trends need to be challenged and changed.

There have been new tendencies of asserting various shades of identity politics – based on a politics of exclusion and also new pressure politics, based purely on a religious, denominational or cast identity. There is a growing sense of soft and hard sectarianism of various shades. And above all there is also trend to do ‘moral policing’ even by those parties who are expected to uphold ‘progressive’ values and gender justice. The entrenched patriarchal attitude and the new tendency of even questioning any man and woman travelling together tend to give an impression of very regressive neo-conservative trends in the society. Instead of challenging these trends, political parties seem to be more interested in fishing in the muddled water. Hence, we need to identify some of the disturbing trends within the society.

1) One does not need any micro-scope to find how various competing strands of 'communalism' (of the majoritarian and minoritarian types) feed in to each other in the forms of soft and hard sectarianism happening in the society and politics of Kerala today. There are many actors- including those from the 'minority' community- responsible for nurturing new kind of sectarianism, intolerance and consequent reactionary violence in Kerala society. The statements of less enlightened and more sectarian Bishops- and the 'pressure politics' played by many in the name of 'institutional interests' of few vested interests operating in the name of Christian and Muslim communities too contributed to the new conservatism and sectarianism within Kerala society. And then there is soft -hindutva getting more 'reactionary' acceptance within a very significant number of middle class of Kerala. And political parties seem to be more interested in the 'vote' outputs that emerge out of such new sectarian communalism of the soft- and hard varieties, rather than playing a role to address the causes and consequence of it.

2) This new kind of sectarian new- conservatism is also nurtured by new sectarian pressure politics practiced by the leaders of some community - 'representing' organizations. One could very much identify such sectarian and neo-conservative tones in the statements of some of the new leaders of cast-based community organizations such SNDP and NSS. So we reach this sad and shocking predicament as a society due to cumulative impact of sectarian indoctrination of various kinds among Christians, Muslims and Hindus of Kerala. This gets fueled by a new kind of identity politics of exclusion( in the last fifteen years) - with a mock liberal rhetoric- with a seemingly 'subaltern' content - and deeply sectarian and conservative social agenda propagated by few groups in Kerala. Any sectarian divisive politics in the name of religion- or promoted primarily by an exclusive religious identity can be dangerous in the context of Kerala- where each of the community are big enough to create social disintegration, political decadence and eventually multiple forms of violence and criminalization within Kerala and elsewhere. As of now it gets manifested in such incidents now and then - and due to the 'middle- class' character of all communities, there is less scope for massive violence in Kerala- as of now

3) The recent criminal and violent attack on the Professor (who framed a question paper with sectarian undertones), chopping off his hand, by fanatic people is also an outcome of the kind of such cumulative indoctrination of intolerance.

Now it is alleged that those who are arrested are affiliated to a particular group - which has a 'secular' sounding name - and supposed to be involved in 'subaltern' politics. Such formations are accused for their mock-liberal veneer and neo-conservative Islamic core and divisive political and social agenda. It is up to these formations to come clear on the increasing perceptions about the integrity of their politics.

4) Irrespective of the 'truth' of the matter, such kinds of planned attack cannot be executed by a local group simply for the sake of it. Such kind of attack can be a much planned strategy by some vested interested and fanatic groups to polarize the various religious communities in Kerala. There is a very sinister and dangerous political planning behind such 'symbolic' disposal of 'justice' against someone who might have made framed a very questionable question in a question paper, in a society that is being increasingly intolerant to each other.

5) It is important for all saner and sensible people across all religions and cast react against not just the disturbing incident of the attack against a Professor, but against all sectarian and neo-conservative trends- promoted by all vested interest groups in all formations based on respective religious or cast identity. It is important to challenge and change the causes as well as consequence of the sectarian and neo-conservatism.

Of course, during such highly volatile moments, it is important for all major media and political parties to deal such situation with a sense of sensitivity and responsibility to the larger society and politics.

It is time for a social reform movement by civil society actors across religious, community and cast spectrum to challenge the disturbing social and political trends and to ensure that the defining cosmopolitan ethos of Kerala is maintained, nurtured and strengthened. Each of us have to take social, political and moral responsibility to promote peace and harmony in Kerala- by avoiding stereotypes, religious/communal prejudices and encouraging values of freedom, human rights, justice and peace within the family, society and politics.

Kerala in Transit

2010-07-04T00:03:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

There are many symptoms of a larger issue of social, cultural and political transition of Kerala in the context of new consumer materialism- that came to define our society, culture and politics in multiple ways.

Kerala society jumped from Feudalism to Consumerism via Communism - all within a span of sixty years. Hence, our own social and political culture became a strange and confusing mix of feudal- left- and consumerist- all in one! Hence we come across 'secular-communalists’, ‘patriarchal-feminists, ‘communal communists’, ‘middle-aged social views and post-modern political views’, spiritual entrepreneurs and those who preach communism and practice capitalism; where every hartal is a celebration. And most consumed item is alcohol and most of the money is spent on constructing huge homes- where no one lives!
We in Kerala talk endlessly on 'resisting' imperialism and 'globalisation' and also flaunt our son and daughters working in MNCs or soft-ware giants. We hate Bill Gates and love Microsoft! We have a cultivated sense of anti-Americanism and our leaders jump at any invitation by any dick and harry to make a visit to 'study' or to 'collaborate'.
We also jumped from a predominantly agriculture - (primary sector economy) - to service sector (Tertiary sector) economy within a span of 40 years. We have moved rather fast from a rural based joint-family or networked-family social settings to nuclear and post-nuclear settings. Majority of our people moved from lower-middle class subsistence economy culture to a surplus bank balance - fuelled by expatriated income.
The migration culture of Malayalies in the last seventy years and the money and ideas they brought back to Kerala played a very key role in influencing the society and politics more than what is being generally being acknowledged. From the nineties onwards, Kerala society is more in a post-nuclear family mode- where the members of a family are dispersed far and wide- and often virtually connected- or networked: rather than sharing a life or space. This also means a society of lots of elderly people and young people and nothing in between.

In a consumerist culture, self-worth is often derived and determined by modes and brands of 'acquisitions' and consumptions. So 'brand-value' often becomes an indicator of 'self-worth'. When people consume-or acquire anything more to 'show off' their 'status' they cease to live for themselves and begin to live in their consumption. So in Kerala, people construct houses, buy cars, get the latest mobile phone- etc often for something else (as status consumptions) than the real use.
This new consumer materialism- partly fuelled by expatriated income- and related social and political churning created a shift in our literary, social and political culture. Hence, Kerala is going through a social and cultural transition with political ramification. There is a new social and political churning among many of communities in Kerala, particularly among the Muslim Communities in the last ten years. Hence, we see multiple response and shifts - and ambivalence. This new churning among Muslim community has created a new sense of confidence, and assertion to negotiate with the mainstream political, social and cultural process in Kerala- as well as a reactionary politics -fuelled by the neo-Conservative and well funded fundamentalist- religious networks of all sorts.

One thing is clear: Kerala is in the midst of a deeper social and political transition. Many of the prominent political actors in the stage would fade away faster than many of us may think

Inclusive, Responsive and Capable State: Towards a transformative agenda in democratic Governance Practice

2010-05-14T07:00:00.001-07:00

John Samuel

.
The multiple crises of economy, environment and governance brought back state in the centre of political and policy discourse. Those who promoted the idea of state as a corollary of the market seem to have lost their legitimacy- in the face of the multiple crises. So there is a need to revitalize the relationship between the people and state, in relation to the discourse on human development and democracy. The renewed focus on the role and relevance of “inclusive, responsive and capable” state is also a timely response to the multiple shifts in the development discourse and multiple forms of crises. Reclaiming the State in relation to people and in terms of responsiveness and capacity, in the context of development and democracy, is on the one hand a reaffirmation of the charter principles of the United Nations and on the other hand a commitment to realize the promises of the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals.

The ongoing economic and climate crises exposed the fallacy of notions such as “more market mean less state” or “market knows best” or “maximum market- and “night-watchman state” and the consequent overemphasis of the market as the key driver of development. The Economic crises – resulting from the lack of regulation and the state oversight of finance capital market- would affect the less developed countries and poor people more than others. This would also reduce the level of available resources for development in the less developed economies. So financing for development and the idea of the development-state is back as a defining force. Reclaiming the state-to the centre of democratic governance discourse- point towards a transformative agenda to go beyond the top-down ‘technical fixes “of the market based-rational choice models to that of a more contextual political economical perspective- that recognize the role of power and “agency” of people - in terms of analyzing and addressing issues related to governance and human development. The political process at the national level and an understanding of the multi-dimensional aspects of power is crucial for the governance assessment and analysis. National ownership and the participation of multi-stakeholders and inclusive spaces for women, poor and marginalized are central to the transformative agenda of democratic governance.

While both civil society and market are important stakeholders in the process of development, the state-as the more concrete and evolved from of social contract- has the most legitimate role in ensuring human development and human rights, with equity, sustainability and peace. While an inclusive, responsive and capable state can provide enabling conditions for market and civil society, the primacy of the state – as the site of political process and as an expression of the sovereignty of citizens- is integral to the idea of democracy and development.
The legitimacy of the “inclusive, Responsive and Capable Sate” is the political legitimacy derived from the “origin “of power as well as based on the “exercise “of power. The effectiveness of the state to a large extent is based on the “Responsiveness and performance quality ‘of its institutions. A discussion on the state in the context of democratic governance draws attention to the ‘outcomes” of the state action and not only the process related to the government and the state. The normative principle of “Inclusiveness” has dimensions of peoples’ participation, non-discrimination, human rights and women’s rights. The principle of “Responsiveness” implies transparency, accountability, and delivery and quality of services. And a capable state is the one with capable institutions to effectively and efficiently raise and manage resources as well as the capacity to deliver human development and to ensure equity, sustainability and peace. The practice of “Inclusiveness” and “Responsiveness” – contribute towards the making of a “capable state”. The principles and practice of human rights, women’s rights, inclusive participation, transparency, accountable and responsive institutions, voices of the women, poor and marginalized, and delivering human development are central to the discourse of Democratic Governance.
Apart from stressing the importance of the election cycles in building the legitimate mandate, practice of democratic governance in relation to an Inclusive, Responsive and capable state will also involve number of specific elements, including:

a) Independent and capable and sustainable institutional framework of Parliament, executive, judiciary, election commission and an effective system of delivery of justice and development

b) A system of checks and balances, in which rightful role of the parliament in particular is duly respected

c) An effective, transparent, and responsive public administration system – and Local governance system can that can ensure the delivery of human development and justice in an inclusive manner

d) A set of anti-corruption institutions, to ensure the law making and other government decisions are in the light of the public interest and not for private gain;

e) Freedom of association, assembly and expression, basic rights that are needed for citizens to be able to organize and act collectively in civil society;

f) Access to Justice through- laws, policies and institutions- in consonance with the human rights, and an effective policing – as a responsive and accountable-public service to ensure security and peace.

g) Access to Information, so that citizens can know what state agents are doing; and

h) A range of institutional opportunities for citizens to input in matters of government and seek accountability, whether participation of local government, sending petitions to the representatives and ombudsmen, voting on referendum or engaging in other forms of political participation.

In the twentieth year of the shift to the Human Development paradigm and in the tenth year of the Millennium Declaration, the very idea of an “Inclusive, Responsive and Capable State” acquires a specific significance as the state has been a constant point of reference in the human development approach as well the rights based approach to development. Hence, bringing the perspective of “Inclusive, Responsive and Capable State” in to the centre of the discussions on democratic governance once again reinforces the legitimacy and primacy of the state -in relation to the human development paradigm, rights based approach and the promises of the Millennium Declaration- capable of providing enabling conditions for people to realize their human rights, expand their freedoms, to achieve MDG targets and to ensure equity, sustainability and peace.
It is indeed important to understand and appreciate the diversity of political process, socio-cultural, historical and economic contexts that shape and define the nature, character and performance of the state. Working towards an inclusive, responsive and capable state also means appreciating the process and the dynamics of power- in its multidimensional aspect- in different contexts. This would increasingly point towards the need to adopt a political economy perspective on analyzing and understanding the sources and nature of power in the context of democratic governance and as the basis for development programming. This task is indeed more challenging in the context of the countries that are in the midst of conflicts or those coping up with the post-conflict challenges.

This has also point towards the need for more south-south exchange of knowledge and practice across the world, particularly among countries with similar socio-economic, cultural or historical context. Hence the agenda towards an Inclusive, Responsive and Capable state is both a learning opportunity and an action agenda. Such an agenda will be transformative when people, particularly women, poor and marginalized, can reclaim the state and governance to claim political and policy spaces and to assert their dignity and rights as citizens.

Unhappy Photos!

2010-05-12T01:23:00.000-07:00

Unhappy photos
Of brutal murders
Of mutilated bodies
Of blood
Of tears
Residues of unfinished Revolution
In the name of unfulfilled dreams
Through the barrel of Guns

Guns don't cry
Guns kill dreams.
Dead dreams
Of still-born revolution
In the graveyards
Dirty old revolutions

The nostalgia
of youthful memories
of living dreams of revolution

Be Romantic-
As long as we don't see
such unhappy photos, and
As long as we can listen to
Happy music every day
As long as we can write
and read poems about promised lands
The land of 'milk and honey'
In our imaginative landscapes.
We live by illusions- small and big.

Close your eyes.
Don't see unhappy photos
Of trampled dead bodies
In the wasteland of dead dreams
Close your eyes
And listen to a morning Raaga...
And then 'life is beautiful'-
And then, we can get lost
In our youthful nostalgia
For the promised land of Canaan.
Postponed forever.
We live by dreams and death

Love?

2010-05-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

Love,
the art of going beyond the self...
to touch, feel and sense the other

Love,
magic strings beyond the sight and sound
music that can't be heard
flowers that can't be seen.

Love,
the eternal
and ephemeral,
Within the reach...
And far-away

Love ,
a bird
that wants to fly ..away
From the cages of the self

Love,
Fragrance
In search of wind
Spring
In search of the sea
Leaves in search of the sun
A drop of ocean in the palm.

Love,
An Oasis
or a Mirage?
Love,
Divine
or profane?
Sacred
or sin?

God is Love

Revival of Religions in a changing world

2010-03-30T06:19:00.001-07:00

John Samuel

There is a revival of institutional religion across the world.
In different parts of the world there is an increasing visibility of religion - both in its institutional forms and in terms of assertions of identity. This increasing prominence of religions and new forms of religious formations may have to be located in the emerging social psychology of communities and people who are undergoing socio-economic and cultural transitions. There is an unprecedented transition in the context of migration of communities and the increasing perceptions about socio-cultural and economic inequality across the world. There is an increasing sense of multiple layers and process of alienation, emerging out of multiple levels of "dislocations' of the self, community and identity. The increasing trends of urbanization, migrations within and beyond the borders of a country, consumerism and aggressive construction of images in the context of globalization of media create new sense of individual and collective sense of insecurity and alienation.

However, the relative visibility of the institutional religion may be also due to the increasing role of "image" industry , rather than true 'conversion' or transformation of people from one faith to another. Religion has many manifestations and we often tend to confuse Institutionalized religion- with many other aspect of religion ( personal experience, belief, theology etc).

The revival of institutionalized religion is partly because of high visibility in the context of media explosion in the last ten years. As Institutionalized religions are historically strong in terms of institutionalized resources (money, network, people, structures etc), they could easily make use of the new media and TV to acquire more visibility. The number of genuine Christians ( in terms of personal experience of a preferred personal faith) might not have increased, but certainly the TV marketing has increased many folds. And such new visibility of "images" can create new delusions and illusions of an accentuated religion- without necessary "spiritual" transformation in the real lives of real people.

Then there are new insecurities in the context of social, economic and political transitions- and consequent feeling of alienation in the particular context of globalization. For example, there are enough evidence that those belong to the migrant communities tend to be more religious. This could be partly because of sociological and cultural reasons. The same way I feel happy to meet an Indian or South Asian in Oslo, the Sudanese would like to meet a fellow Sudanese. The nodal points of such identity -network often tend to be religious venues. So many Tamil people may come to know each other in a temple or a Bangladeshi will come to know each other in a Bengali Mosque etc. This is to do with relative marginalization ( in terms of space, cultural-comfort zone etc) of migrant communities.

There are also economic and social insecurity- more tensions and consequences of losing a job or being "alone" in the crowd- in a multi-cultural environment. These too add the quest for a "sense of belonging" and "identity" gets actually accentuated when one "feels" to be marginalized in a given context. So many of the first generation malayali migrants often feel more strongly about "being a malayali" than those who live in kerala. Hence, proliferation of malayali organizations in the Gulf and elsewhere( and many literary awards- and Malayalam blogs etc). This also often takes a religious/denominational ( cast, creed etc) dimensions among newly urbanized or migrant communities , in the context of increased sense of insecurity in a different socio-cultural and political settings.

There is a new sense of alienation due to increased "individuation"- and consequent "feel" of being "lonely" and "insecure". This has also a dimension of age- when one is too young( with an increased anxiety about job) and when one is in to middle-age( the fear of losing job, falling sick etc). This new sense of insecurity has also something to do with new consumerism and globalization of economy, where expectations about oneself( as a consumer who would like to "possess" certain quality of comforts) and consequent insecurity that emanates from the new "hire" and "fire" culture also create new insecurity. So here too one often finds more and more young people and those who cross the middle age tend to seek solace in new "spiritual" market of various sorts- from Deepak chopra to the tele-marketing firms of pop-religion of various sorts.

In the case of countries and communities where there is a social disintegration of erstwhile collective institutional structures( e.g. tribal communities in Africa or joint families or the old-neighborhood parish or temple) are disintegrated, there is a scope for new network-based identity formation. It is in such a space that network religion- and cell-churches grew exponentially. Such a process of social disintegration of erstwhile structures and process of "collective spaces of sharing" also happened due to the unprecedented trend of urbanization and movement/migration of people across countries and world. So the shifts from joint families to post-nuclear families and tribal collectivism also create new forms of individuation and multiple forms of "dislocations" and resultant "alienation".

It is in this context that institutionalized religions get transformed in to "spiritual" or "solace" or "feel-good" modules of customized products in the spiritual market place. Such network mode of marketing helps to get consumers for "psycho-pills" of well-packaged and customized religion of various sorts. In the context of Christianity, the charismatic movement- and its networks forms of "customized' and "personalized" and "flexible" modules of packaged and commodified "spiritualism" got a new market of relatively more "lonely" and insecure people. That is one of the reasons that prosperity gospel is doing so well in a relatively poor African communities - in Africa as well as America. Prosperity gospels and "healing" ministries and "miracle" crusades are all basically working on the new insecurities among various people and communities who are in a state of transit.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented transition- in the history of the world and in terms of sociological and cultural shifts. In such phases of transitions there would be new forms of insecurities and alienation- social, economic and political. This would also create new sense of inequalities. And at an individual level, the most convenient thing is to seek one's own sense of "belonging" through identifying with immediate communities with a shared sense of "belonging". Such "belonging" can be based on color, creed or religion. The biggest and oldest institutionalized structures of "belonging" happened to be institutionalized religion. And such institutionalized religion got adapted to the new technology, media and globalised network to "service" their new "clients', using the good old pill in new modes of delivery.

Then there is also new sense of political insecurity that emanates from the "accentuated identities"( majority and minority) in the context of accentuated sense of insecurity( for example when young Australians find it difficult to find jobs- they would feel the "Indians" are "stealing" their jobs- and then the "Indians’ begin to get mobilized on the basis of being “Indians"). Such "accentuated" identities often become defensive in the minority contexts. So a young Muslim in Europe or UK may feel more "Muslim" often than the Muslim in a Dubai. The Christians Europe will feel "less Christian" than the "Christians" in India or China. The ongoing war in Afghanistan and Iraq or the new political tensions between Iran or North Korea are all a residual accentuation of the post-cold war period of the new geo-politics. And here too recent history gets replayed with history of multiple forms of colonialism and imperialism.

This post-cold war politics moved from "ideological" war to "identity" based contestations in many cases. The political-economy of such 'identities' get accentuated among migrant communities. When 'identity', in its soft or hard forms, tends to be the sub-texts of macro and micro politics, ordinary people often fall back to the most conveniet and accessible network of identity. So there is an increasing assertion of "Muslim' identity even among those people who have rather moderate or liberal approach to religion. There is an assertion of 'Hindu' identity where Hindus are in minority. Such assertions of identity are often cultural 'defensive' mechanism that emenate from social and cultural insecurities and sense of alienation.

Oslo

2010-01-31T00:41:00.000-08:00

John Samuel

A white drizzle
When the sun peeps in.
Snow sparkle like white sand
In the air and on the earth
Trees are in deep slumber
Leaves left for a holiday

White drizzle
And dancing snow, snow and snow
In the shades of a sunny day
Nobel with a white snow cap- at the Henrik Ibsen road
Ibsen looks happy in his Museum around the corner

Snow, snow and snow
white sheet over the earth
Palace on the hill
Roads can be slippery

Music in the winter
Guitarist at the Metro station
Little girls playing in the snow
The white winter that play with day and night

River is now a crystal white road
And the life moves on like a tram
Cars wait for you at the zebra crossing
No one is in a hurry
Warm people in a cold country
Hot vada at the lankan restaurant
Oslo is beautiful

JS.
OSlo 29.01.2010

“You are the salt of the Earth” : Towards Ecological Justice

2009-10-31T06:22:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness , it is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled up on”
Jesus ( Mathew 5:13)

“Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.
We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family”
Chief Seattle (approx. 1852)
A letter in response to a U.S. Government inquiry about buying tribal lands

We are face to face with an impending ecological crisis. As we finish the first decade of the 21st century , the planet and earth and the forces of nature are staring at us- with a sense of revenge.; revenge against the injustice of exploiting the earth, and all that belonged to the earth- in search of pleasures and profit. The impending ecological crisis raise profound moral questions about the choices and patterns of our life, development paradigm as well as about our universal responsibility to each other, earth and biosphere.

It is time to locate the real crisis of food and economy , within the context of the impending ecological crisis that can harm the very sustenance and future of the earth. The ongoing discussion and debates on global warming and climate change should help us to think beyond the immediate concern about technical negotiation of climate change to the larger ethical crisis that confront the very essence of humanity and human civilization. It is time to develop effective moral and political response based on a shared commitment to Ecological and planetary justice.

The issues related to Global Warming and Climate Change acquired a sense of urgency in the context of the ongoing negotiations in relation to the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The ongoing discussions and debate on climate change has multiple subtexts of political economy, international politics and paradigm of development. Climate Change negotiation and discussions clearly brings out the unequal and unjust relationships between the rich countries in the global north and those countries- at the receiving end of the colonialism, extractive economic relationship and poverty. The discourse also signifies the ongoing economic and political tension between the rich countries and the emerging economies such as China and India, though it may not necessary in the interest of the large number of citizens in the respective countries.

Though everyone is concerned about the disastrous effect of the global warming, at the core of the climate change negotiation are the economic interests of the economic and political elites in rich and emerging countries. The sub-texts of climate change negotiations are the politics of technology, market, trade, economic growth and aid architecture. On the one hand rich countries are keen to capture the market for “green-technology” through the old trinity of aid, trade and debt. And on the other hand there is a concern that the emerging economies of China and India would further exasperate the climate vulnerability as well as the market potential of the rich countries.

The technical discussions and priorities on adaptation and mitigation are often a smoke screen for the underlying political economy of climate change. Mitigation in terms of clear commitment to quantifiable reduction of greenhouse gas emission and adaptation to meet the challenges of climate change should form the twin pillars of an effective response strategy. The rich countries and the respective civil society formations and aid agencies often give more stress to adaptation strategies in poor countries. This is important. However, advocacy for adaptation strategies in poor countries, without the necessary political pressure within the respective countries for quantifiable mitigation measures point out to the double speak even among the civil society actors in the global north.

While in the last twenty years new forms of disaster capitalism have emerged, there is indeed a possibility of the emergence of a new wave of Climate Capitalism- driven by new market for green technology, carbon-trading, technology transfers, adaptation funds etc. Multiple actors of the state, market and civil society are beginning to smell new opportunities of the emerging markets of “green technology”, adaptation funds and potential opportunities for economic growth. One the one hand poor communities and countries are at the receiving end of climate injustice, changing weather pattern, natural disasters, decreasing food production and unprecedented scarcity of water. On the other hand there is economic-development and consumption paradigm that undermines the very sustainability and bio-diversity of this planet. On the one hand there is a lot of talk about the disastrous effect of global warming. And on the other hand there is a fierce economic competition and political tussle between the rich and emerging countries to harvest on the anticipated Climate Capitalism. These dichotomies and paradoxes are at the core of the moral and ethical dilemma posed by the ongoing discourse on Climate Change.

Climate Change and natural disasters do not respect the territorial boundaries of the nation-states. Hence, it is important to locate the ongoing discourse beyond the narrow confines and interests of the nation-state to a moral and ethical plane of ecological and planetary justice. It is important to locate the discourse within the framework of human rights, and social and economic justice. The issue of global warming raises a deeper moral dilemma: Isn’t it immoral to promote an unsustainable consumption-based economic growth model that would make disastrous consequence to the coming generation as well as to very sustainability of the planet?. Without discussing the core problem of unsustainable and unjust consumption and economic growth model that survive on extractive relationship between the rich and poor countries and the rich people and earth, we can not have a morally viable discourse on the politics of global warming and climate change. The ethics and politics of climate change need to precede the economic calculus of climate change. Hence, it is all the more important to bring the issue of human rights and justice to the heart of the discourse on global warming.
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Removal of injustice demands the advancing of justice. Hence it is time to talk about ecological and planetary justice. The root of justice is ethics. These ethical roots of Justice are to a large extent derived from the inter-faith legacies. Justice constitutes a set of moral conditions and choices to advance fairness through equality of human persons, human dignity, capability as well as universal human responsibility to each other and to the sustainability of bio-sphere and this planet.

Human rights are universal, indivisible and inalienable. Justice too is indivisible. The justice perspective precedes the human rights perspective in many ways. Regarding the right to food, we must consider both ecological justice and economic and social justice. These are indivisible. You cannot talk about one without the other. The issue of economic growth can not be discussed without understanding the historical and ecological injustice involved at the core of extractive power-relationships of colonialism, imperialism and exploitation. From the perspective of ecological justice, the impacts of climate change are unequal and unjust. Poor countries and poor people contribute least to the climate change and are affected most by the consequence of it. G8 countries create more than 40% of emissions. China and India will soon overtake the G8 countries in this respect. Poor people and island nations are already experiencing the adverse effects of variations in the weather patterns. Recently, millions of people in Philippines have been affected by tropical storms and flooding. We must be aware of these impacts and what it truly takes to mitigate them. The irony is that even the new enthusiasm of various conferences on climate change has a high carbon footprint. Many of us flew here for these discussions and we are staying in an air-conditioned hotel , eating imported food.

There is a profound irony in the ongoing development paradigm which is based on high energy intensive and carbon-emission technologies and life styles and at the same time trying finding solutions with the same problem. As long as we – our life styles, modes of transports and modes of consumption- are a part of the problem, how can we find a viable solution without altering the content and character of the development paradigm- that is still based on the industrial and extractive character of the modern capitalist model.

Interfaith Perspective on Ecological Justice.

Without discussing mode of living, modes of production, modes of consumption, modes of technology and modes of economic growth, how can we have any meaningful discussion on ecological and planetary justice? This deep paradox between the gap between the walk and talk, deeds and words, reality and aspiration raise the issue of moral vacuum within the mainstream climate change discourse

The interfaith perspective on justice and human rights would help to build a more ethical discourse .The idea of human dignity is the cornerstone of human rights and justice . The notion of human dignity can be traced to various ideas and experience of the divinity. In almost all religious and faith traditions one can see affirmation of human dignity as well as the idea of divine. In that sense human dignity can be seen as a reflection of the divine- a reflection of a universal ideal- omnipotent and omnipresent- beyond the time and space.

The bridge between dignity and divinity is the constant search for truth and freedom- a perennial source of human creativity and explorations. The ethical as well as existential link between human beings and nature signify an eternal planetary communion: a commitment to share the resources of nature- air, water, earth, trees, forests, rivers, hills, birds, animals and every expressions of life- the entire biodiversity and the living species. The notion of sharing is what makes communions an ethical act. This divine compact of planetary communion is violated and broken by the human greed to accumulate, acquire and subjugate.

The ethical act of sharing is displaced by the exploitative acts of extractive accumulation, subjugation and injustice. The violation of the compact of planetary communion between of all living specious is symptomatic of a moral crisis of the erosion of divinity as well as human dignity in human lives and choices.

When Bhagavad-Gita says “ Loko samstha Sukinobhavnthu”( let all in the world be well)- it reflects a primordial commitment and compact of planetary well-being and communion. Vedas and Upanishads clearly talk about the life-centric perspective- as distinct from an anthropo-centric world view. In the Mount Sermon when Jesus said “ You are the salt of the earth”( Mathew 5:13)- it was to remind us of the human responsibility towards the earth and other living specious. Salt is the metaphor of life, sustainability ,preservation, and shared resources- symbolizing the elemental and life constituting character of human responsibility .In Islam, Buddhism and all other faith traditions one can trace the same ethical assertion about the universal human responsibility. St. Francis of Assisi helped us to understand the divinity and spirituality in a sort of mystical unity of human beings with all the living species. In fact this ethical assertion of human responsibility is what makes justice and human rights eminent moral choices of our times.

An inclusive ethical commitment to the sustainability and well-being of all living specious is at the core of planetary justice: a part and parcel of universal human responsibility. Ecological justice is an expression of the universal moral human responsibility to all earth and all expression of life- on the land, in the water, in the air, and within the sea or on the tops of mountains

Food Sovereignty and Right to Food.

Among many, there are two immediate concerns in the context of the possible consequence of global warming and changing weather patterns- as a consequence of Climate Change. The first one is the increasing instance of various natural disasters- which may or may not have a direct connection with climate change. The second one is the issue of food sovereignty. More and more communities and countries are losing their food sovereignty. Food sovereignty indicates the ability and power to control and manages the sources and modes of production of the food, within a given community or country. Food sovereignty involves the right of people and community over land, water and forests – that would enable them to control the sources and means of production. There is a decrease in the food production, part in many countries, particularly among the small and marginal farmers. This has to do with the changing weather pattern and increasing take over of agriculture by the corporate monopolies and rich countries. There is an increasing trend towards corporatization of agriculture and take over millions of hectares of land in Africa- at the cost of the small and marginal farmers and food sovereignty of communities and countries

Along with air and water, food is the most important elemental necessity for every living specious and human beings to survive. Right to food is the first among the enabling rights of human beings. The fast changing weather pattern – potential result of climate change- affect food sovereignty and right to food of communities and countries.

Food sovereignty has been taken from producers and farmers by their own nation-states and then by huge corporations that monopolize technology. The modern notion of Power is related to the monopoly of technology and knowledge. Monopoly and control over Technology is often used to take control over the food production and resources. Such corporatization of agriculture, in the name of “food security” – and “green revolution” is hardly green. Such efforts take away the viability and sustainability of small and marginal farming. This also would eventually make food less available, accessible and affordable. And eventually many communities and countries will be dependent on big companies and markets for their food. The lack of control of food would undermine the human rights to food.

The adverse impacts of climate change on ecosystems also affect sovereignty over food production. Firstly, life cannot adapt as quickly as the climate is changing. We are experiencing unprecedented instances natural disasters. Don’t blame God. This is not an accident of history. This is our making and comes from unequal and unjust power relationships of extracting and exploiting natural resources: forests, water, marine resources and air . Food decreases due to changing weather patterns- untimely rain, decreased rainfall, and unusual drought . Secondly, desertification decreases the amount of arable land. Thirdly, migration from rural to urban areas increases due to lack of water, natural disasters and the unviability of small and medium farming.Urban poor across the world are environmental, economic and social refugees.

The urban-centric, energy-intensive economic growth model induces rural urban migration at unprecedented level and further accentuates the high carbon-emitting economic growth model. This on the one hand affects the food production and viability of sustainable agriculture in the rural areas and on the other hand increases unprecedented level of human density in the urban areas- with consequent pressure on environmental resources, demand for water and resultant pollution. The increasing number of urban slums and urban poverty poses new challenges to the idea of food sovereignty and ecological sustainability.

Mining factories in the rural hinterlands are emitting both carbon and poor people. Instead of addressing poverty, factories are in the business of displacing and killing the poor. Polluting factories and corporatized agriculture will displace millions of marginal farmers and excluded communities at the receiving end of the extractive economic development paradigm. While the rich people waste millions of tons of food, there are hundreds of millions people who go bed hungry every single day. This is unjust. This is a result of ecological as well as economic injustice.

Biofuel and agro fuel are also produced and monopolized by huge transnational corporations. Land is used for fuel and not for food. Monopoly of technology and economy leads to corporatization of land, which leads to disempowerment of people, poverty, and food crisis.

The question is not merely about how much food is produced, but who is producing it and how and where and for whom.

We are once again witnessing a repetition of colonial sins with the way food is produced and distributed. Some of the new “revolutions” to combat climate change and promote food security are also manifestations of new colonialism. Millions of hectares of land in Africa are taken over by rich companies and rich countries. The soc-called new green revolution in Africa- Advancing the Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) are promoted by some of the most powerful companies and countries of the world. While one may that we need to produce more food- one wonders whether such new corporatization of agriculture in Africa will further impoverish large majority of people experiencing hunger and injustice every single day. Apart from the question of how “green” are the proposed green revolution, there is a serious concern that in the proposed promise of food “security” – food sovereignty of the people of Africa and elsewhere will be compromised. As of now there is nothing much of “green” or “revolution” in the new search for monopoly control of natural resources and land in Africa.

The question is whether the “green’ revolution enriches the rich or enables the poor to have food on the plate. The new environmental and economic unviability of small and marginal farming also undermines the human dignity and human rights of farmers. Thousands of farmers in India committed suicide because their dignity is violated. Farmers are the most dignified people in the world. They produce with their mind, soul and body. A farmer would rather protect this dignity with his death than lose it through the dehumanization that comes with loss of control of production methods and the loss of food sovereignty. Pesticide resistance and patented crop varieties are among the many mechanisms that huge companies use to control production and ensure monopoly over nature. Yes, we need to produce more food. But who produces for whom , where and how do matter .

Sustainable and eco-friendly small scale agriculture and sustainable technology – are key to food sovereignty of impoverished communities and countries.
Food sovereignty of nations and people can only be realized by strengthening sustainable agriculture and protecting the right of small and marginal farmers to live in dignity. Governments must protect these without compromising the climate and environment.

The struggles for justice and human rights have to be at every level. Human right to food is non-negotiable. The adverse impact of climate change and corporatization of agriculture would undermine our right to food. We need to ask hard questions about the nature of consumption and the nature of economic growth model. Climate change is an issue of justice, as is food rights. A call to act for justice-ecological, economic and social- should precede the technical negotiations of climate change. If human dignity is rooted in divinity. The idea of divinity rooted in our search for truth. The truth is that there is something terribly wrong and immoral in the way exploit the beauty and bounty of the earth- all that what makes it a sustainable habitat for millions of living species. Such a truth should help us to be free- free to imagine different choices of life, consumption and living. A freedom that makes the earth and all in to sustain and thrive.

The time has come to rediscover ethical assertion by the Chief of Seattle at the dawn of modern civilization in the mid 19th century

“This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.”

(This is an expanded version of the key note presentation in the International Interfaith Consultation on Climate Change in Bangkok on October 1, 2009)

Raaga …

2009-10-30T01:35:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

Music makes memories intimate.
Rekindles nostalgia,
Of unfolding worlds within,
And beyond.
Music makes a magic,
Of the breeze deep within.

A Raga of Bhimsen Joshi
Stirs up the intimate worlds.
And the gush of youthful memories..
Of Sawai Gandharv
Of festivals.
Of moonlit nights,
Of motorcycle rides..
Of a tree...in a starry night
Smell of a winter.
Anticipating a spring.

Discovering
Everyday – sunrise, noon, evenings and moon
Smell of burgi at GaneshKhind.
A fountain in a circle,
Days of sunny drizzle..
Of Music, Cinema, Poetry, Politics
And Love.

Getting Lost
Rediscovering again and again
Learning new pathways.
The raga of a dawn
Makes me smile.

Towards a Transformative Politics

2009-10-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

What is Politics?

Politics is the dynamics and expressions of power relationships within and among human beings, society and institutions. Power is dynamic, relative, contextual and processeual. Power gets formalized in various institutional arenas- from family to the state. However, even formalized power may get in to different flux and expressions in different cultural and social contexts.

There are different locations, sources and process of power. Power can be expressed in poetry as well paintings; power also can be expressed through aggression and accumulation; through contestation and collaborations; through brutal war and lasting peace and through crimes as well as punishments. Such locations and sources are negotiated by contexts and culture. Locations and sources of power operate through language, resources, knowledge, technology, networks, and economy and above all human will to act and change a situation or condition. There are gentle as well as fierce expressions of power dynamics. Power can act horizontally, cyclically or vertically – depending on the context and institutional situation.

An understanding of the sources, dynamics and expression of power is important to understand and approach political process. Notions like “Power over”, Power with”, “Power to” and “Power within” help us to understand the multiple dimensions and process involved in politics. The most obvious and dominant form of organized Politics is based on the institutionalization of “power over”: power as a means to control, manipulate, dominate and even subjugate.

Such dominant modes of power operate through coercion or consent. When such coercive power construct consent – as ‘common-sense”- hegemonic power-relationships are formed in a society. In a modern and postmodern society such hegemonic power is managed and regulated by the State- by claiming both monopoly of and legitimacy to regulate power. Since State is expected to be the site of collaborations for managing the monopoly claims of power, those who have relative control over natural and economic resources tend to capture the state through either military might or majoritarian legitimation through the electoral politics. Though State makes a monopoly claim over statutory power – through “Rule of Law” and power over the “Law and order”, in reality the dominant modes of power get expressed and operated through the Military, Market and Media. This is precisely why those who control the State Power- seek to establish the legitimacy of their power through multiple negotiations and trade off with Military, Market and Media.

One has to understand and appreciate politics in plurality of process as well as expressions. This can only be done by decoding the institutional and institutionalized dimensions of power. There is politics of the State. Then there are other manifestations such as the politics of the people, politics of knowledge, politics of technology; politics of identity, geo-politics; national and international politics. Such manifestations of politics signify various institutionalization of power within a given space and time.

Personal too is political. There is politics in sex; politics of body; there is politics in rituals and religions and there is indeed politics in language. Politics operates in the bedroom, dining room, class rooms and board rooms. Every arena of human action has a power dimensions and relationships - and hence there is nothing which is apolitical. However, for the sake of analytical clarity, one has to make a distinction between micro-politics and macro-politics.

Micro and Macro-politics

Micro-politics is about the dynamics, locations and process of power-relations within family, immediate institutional or social community. Such micro-power relations get expressed through language, locations, attitude, behavior, knowledge as well as social and cultural legitimation process. Issues like gender, cast, race and religion operate actively at levels of individual , family level and community , through micro-politics. At an intimate level, micro-politics operates in terms of once choices and expression of sexuality as well as the experiences of pleasure and pain.

Micro-politics signifies the internalized genealogy and pathology of power. This is how over a period of time various gender roles are constructed to legitimize unequal and unjust power relations- in the structures and locations of family, religion and community. The most manifest form of micro-politics is the control over productive and reproductive sources. And this control is mostly expressed in terms of patriarchy that seeks to control women- as the most important reproductive source of life and living. Most of the unjust power-relationships codified in micro-politics of expected roles, and spaces- of body, life and life-worlds: in terms of rituals associated with birth, marriage and death. And in relation to sexual roles, pleasure and pains involved in orgasm- and sexual choices.

Social transformation requires intensive engagement with micro-politics- by challenging, changing, reforming and transforming to make it just and equitable. This involves changing language, attitude, behavior as well as spaces and expressions of power within the family and communities.

Macro-Politics is the dynamics of power-relationships among and between Institutions and institutionalized forms of power. Such institutions may include that of state, religion, market and civil society.

Institutions are expression of the grammar of power. By grammar I mean a formalized set of rules, norms and defined inter-linkages- legitimized by knowledge and norms. The modern paradigm of Macro-politics is mostly expressed in the power of the state, governments, governmentality and governance.

The nation-state derives its power from the legitimacy and legitmation of the constitution- with a claim of sovereignty and monopoly of power over a territory and people living in such a territory. Every constitution is constituted, through historical, knowledge, economic, social and cultural process- through various negotiations of power in all such spheres. The politics of the State is often the defining force of Macro-politics. Because the grammar of the power within and beyond a given nation-state determine the power-relationships in all other institutional arenas. The “statutory” legitimation process of market, civil society and religion are based on “regulation” of the power and politics of the state. Such constant negotiations and ‘regulations” of technology of power tend to create cultures of govermentality of power- in terms of legitimation, control as well as spaces.

The grammar of power- within micro and macro arena is often controlled by the institutionalization of knowledge, norms and historical and cultural ordering of life-worlds. This ordering of power is more often unequal and mostly unjust. Such unjust power-relationships get expressed through discrimination, deficit of dignity, exploitation, alienation and eventual dehumanization. So it is moral responsibility to humanize, deconstruct, decentralize and democratize power in all its forms and expressions.

Power can be an immense source of positive energy to create, to seek, to bridge, to build and to sustain. As a positive energy, power operates in an eternal cyclical interplay of “Shirsti” (creation) “Sthithi (sustenance) and Samhara. (destruction). And politics is everywhere- from bed room, to bath room, from class room to board room- in our taste-bud and language.- within our body and beyond. And human creativity and life involves the ability to learn and deal with power- in its million manifestations.

Towards Transformative Democratization

I am a proponent of the politics of transformative democratization: more of a political praxis that I have learned over a period time- through theorizing practice and practice that emerge out of a theory of change and world.

My politics is driven by a universal ethics- moral choices and value premises - informed by human dignity, equality, justice, responsibility to each other and the planet. It is informed and inspired by movements and struggles for economic, social, gender and ecological justice. My politics derives its moral legitimacy from various struggles and efforts to humanize the world- all through history- through care and love; through our creative and committed searches for making the world and planet a better place to live. My politics is about imaginative potential of human beings to influence and transform the world within them, around them and beyond- in constant search for freedom and justice. Democratization is at the core of it. Democratization can only happen when there is spaces for dissent as well dignity: spaces to protest as well to propose; spaces to imagine as well as innovate. Creativity, Community and Communication (through language and technology) are three aspect that make human different from animals. And democratization is a process to affirm and constantly rediscover the potential and possibilities of human creativity, community solidarity and communicative actions.

I tend to think that social and political transformation happen through a whole range of cumulative process for radical shifts as well reformist advocacy: through knowledge, language, technology, and institutions. Hence influencing of such cumulative process for reformation as well as radical shifts is key for transformative humanism and democracy.

Critiquing the institutionalized forms of power is the first step towards transforming the dynamics of power. Institutionalized and dominant forms of power tend to self-preserve through benign or malignant modes of tyranny and terror; coercion and consensus; and “common’ sense as well culture. If not constantly critiqued and challenged, all forms of institutionalized power can be oppressive, subjugating and dehumanizing. Hence, critiquing and transforming institutionalized power is an effort to resist dehumanization and relentlessly trying to humanize and democratize power.

This requires a combination of the politics of people, politics of knowledge, and politics of communication to challenge the dominating forms of power: whether it is the power of the state or power of the market or power of mafia.

My mission is to constantly work towards the humanization and democratization of structures and institutions of power through contestation, collaboration and cooperative action and communicative action - based on value of justice, freedom and equality of human persons. Such an approach seeks to bridge between the Ideal and Real. It may involve working in, working with and working beyond the institutionalized forms of power, without compromising the values of transformation.

I believe that every human action and institution needs to be historicized, problematised, politicized and democratized. Critical transformative approach involves consistent and constant critique of power and a commitment to challenge unjust power-relationship so as to humanize and democratize people, society, knowledge and institutions. Critical transformist approach to politics involves working within institution and working beyond institutions; such an approach involves resisting, engaging and persuading power-relationships to ensure justice as fairness and human dignity as the right to live in freedom.

There is a tendency of those in controlling the nodal locations of power to monopolize power- through claims of sovereignty. This monopolization of power to control natural, productive and reproductive resources, through ‘discipline” and promises of “security”, are at the root of unjust politics both in its micro and macro expressions.

So politics for me involves challenging and changing monopolization of power, and injustice that is inherent in such unequal and unjust power relationship. Politics for me challenging and changing unjust power-relationships to ensure a life of dignity, choices and freedom to all human beings. Politics for me is all about humanizing life-worlds as well quest for justice- towards sustainable, just and democratic society, governance and futures.

Politics for me is the democratization of power, knowledge, technology and language. Politics for me is the celebration of human dignity- through asserting and demanding human rights. Politics for me is to make change happen towards a just, sustainable, responsible world- without poverty and war. Politics for me is to fight injustice, exclusion, marginalization and dehumanization.

Politics for me is to take responsibility to imagine and suggest alternatives to unjust power-relationships. Politics for me is to imagine a utopia- a world without poverty and injustice where every person can live a life of dignity, freedom, enjoyment and responsibility. Politics for me is to listen to the voice of the last person. Politics for me is when every person can celebrate her/his dignity and right to dissent and development. Politics for me is to make market work for the people- not the other way around. Politics for is to accountability from all power-holders , State, Market and civil society. Politics for me is all about sovereignty of people- citizens- and the democratization of at levels of human action and institutions.

Politics for me is the courage of conviction to ensure sustainability of our planet, people, and eternal dreams for a joyful and justful world

Accountability Matters!

2009-10-09T17:20:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

Accountability denotes the rights, responsibilities and duties that exist between people and various institutions that affect their lives. Accountability and legitimacy are two sides of the same coin. Lack of accountability will result in lack of political legitimacy. Lack of legitimacy will result in democratic deficit and the consequent abuse of power by decision makers and power-holders.

Democratic Accountability is both political and ethical. Accountability also denotes legal, social, economic and managerial aspects. Accountability is about answerability and enforceability. Answerability means the right to get information and clear response from any institutions or authority and the obligation of such institutions to provide information and response to such stake-holders. Enforceability denotes the capacity to ensure that a redressal is done or action is taken to correct a wrong action, wrong policy. Empowerment of people in terms of information, knowledge and mobilization is a prerequisite to demand any form of effective accountability.

From the perspective of democratic governance, people and citizens are the owners and the shapers of the State. The sovereignty of the Sate is derived from the sovereignty of the citizenship. Hence, all institutions of the state and governments are duty bound to be accountable to citizens. However, power is no longer the monopoly of the state or governments. Increasingly big transnational corporations, media, various public and private institutions, political parties, civil society formations and NGOs wield power and control resources and take actions and decision that affect the lives, choices and livelihood of people. Hence there has to be broader understanding, politics and ethics of accountability.

The big players in the markets like transnational corporations, big financial operators, including the banks and big media corporation increasingly tend to shape the boundaries of the state and lives and choices of the people. These unaccountable and powerful actors can become the biggest threat to Just and Democratic Governance in their quest for profit, unbridled free market, and accumulation of wealth and information.

Hence the notion of public accountability should ensure accountability of the state, governments and its institutions, corporate accountability, media accountability, accountability of the political parties and that of NGOs. All institutions and organisations that operate in the public sphere and market place need to be necessarily accountable to people, citizens and all stake holders.

One of the preconditions for Accountability is the Right to Information and political space and institutional mechanism to seek effective accountability from the various governmental, corporate, public and non-governmental institutions. Transparency, Accountability and legitimacy are interdependent conditions for any just and democratic form of governance. The exercise of any form of power or authority requires provisions for accountability to ensure that power or authority is not abused or used for self-interest of the few powerful. In many ways Autonomy and accountability are very much linked. More the autonomy, more the need for accountability.

It has been rightly pointed out by Held- Mathias that: “ Accountability refers to the fact that decision makers do not enjoy unlimited authority or autonomy but have to justify their action vis-a-visa affected parties or stake holders. These stake holders must be able to evaluate the actions of decision makers and to sanction them if their performance is poor or even removing from their positions of authority”

There are many innovative forms of seeking Accountability. The process of budget tracking, social audit, citizens’ tribunals, public hearings, people’s commission, and the monitoring of institutions of governance and public policies by citizens grouped proved to be effective means towards strengthening accountability.

There are multiple approaches to accountability. A typology of Accountability( adapting and strenthening the IDS versions) will help us to develop clear approaches and strategies to seek accountability in various arenas of power.

Political accountability

i) Consists of Checks and balances within the state including over delegated individuals in public offices responsible for carrying out specific tasks on behalf of people or citizens.

ii) The state provides an account of its actions, and consults citizens and stake holders prior to taking action in order to enforce rights and responsibilities.

iii) Mechanisms of political accountability can be both horizontal and vertical. The state can have its own horizontal mechanisms like, such as ombudsman, parliamentary audit committee, autonomous office of the Comptroller and Auditor General. Citizens and Civil Society uses elections, court cases, public interest litigation or political mobilizations.

iv) Legal provisions and effective mechanism for Right to Information as well as information disclosure.

v) Regular and predictable space for citizen’s and people’s participating in the formulation and monitoring of budget.

vi) A new accountability framework for the Political Parties (as they hold enormous power in a democratic polity) to disclose their sources of income, expenditure and provisions to regulate corporate donations for political parties.

Social Accountability:

i) Focuses on people’s actions or civil society initiatives to hold state and its institutions of government to account for using social mobilization, people-centred advocacy, investigative reports, media advocacy, public hearings, social audits, reports card, and citizens’ tribunals.

ii) Addresses such issues such as human rights violations, security of people, judicial autonomy, and access to justice, electoral frauds and corruptions at various levels.

iii) Seeks to expand social and political spaces to seek accountability from Corporate Houses, Media and other powerful actors.

iv) Demands accountability from powerful financial institutions, including all International Financial Institutions such as World Bank, to be accountable, transparent and responsive to the communities where their projects are implemented and to people at large.

v) Seeks to strengthen the accountability mechanism and transparency measures of civil society organisations, NGOs and all such institutions in the public space.

Ethical Accountability

i) Stresses accountability to a certain systems of values within democratic principles as well as values of Justice, equity and Freedom. Ethical accountability has both personal and institutional dimension and scope beyond the conventional territories of the nation-state.

ii) This also means Powerful countries are not only accountable to the people or ‘demos’ of their respective country. They are also accountable to the people of countries affected by the actions of such governments. In this way, the United States should be ethically and socially accountable to the people of Iraq, and Afghanistan who are at the receiving end of military aggressions and conflicts perpetuated for the sake of maintaining the global military hegemony.

iii) It also focuses on seeking accountability of Business Corporation who seeks to monopolize agriculture and food products and those who are in the business of making various kinds of medicine and drugs and research in biotechnology or patenting of life forms. This has deep moral implications beyond one country or people. Hence ethical limits to market monopoly and efforts to regulate such corporations and make them accountable to this and coming generations can be a part of ethical accountability.

iv) Inter-generational accountability in terms of environment and climate change. This includes personal accountability to values of sustainable consumptions, less carbon emissions and accountability to peoples and generations who will be affected by our own individual and societal action, consumptions and behaviors.
v) Includes ethical accountability in terms of attitude, behavior and language to ensure dignity and respect for women, ethnic, religious or racial minorities and resisting all forms of discrimination based on gender, race, language, cast or ethnicity.

Managerial Accountability;

i) Focuses on financial accounting and reporting, system accountability within state institutions, judged according to agreed performance criteria

ii) Regular Auditing , appraisals and systems to ensure internal management integrity and effective and efficient use of financial and management resources

iii) New forms of accountability such as environmental and social audits

iv) Disclosure of the sources of income, expenditure and management principle in a predictable and systematic manner. Managerial accountabilities are often upward accountability. However, increasingly notions of horizontal accountability and downward accountability are recognized.

As accountability is a function of power relations, it is important to identify and expand the spaces and processes of power in each context. This requires legal provisions, constitutional guarantees, social mobilization, information and knowledge as well as the innovative use of media, technology, internet as well as social and policy research. As the power in the international arena and global space are increasing appropriated by the big transnational corporations, operators in the international finance market, and International Finance Institutions (IFI), there is a real challenge to seek accountability and transparency from these organisations.

Weighed voting at the World Bank and IMF means greater control and power by few rich countries in the global north. Though the World Bank and IMF claim that they are accountable to their stake holders and they are relatively better transparent in terms of information disclosure and they have Inspectional Panel and Evaluation agencies, these organisations are far from being democratically accountable and often they become the handmaiden of the rich countries and the business interest of the rich and powerful corporations.

The role of International and National NGOs and Civil Society organisations have increased significantly both in terms of resources, network, knowledge, discourse as well as the power of influencing. These institutions and organisations function in the public sphere and most of them work on behalf of the poor and marginalized people. Hence they are public institutions and depend largely on the financial support from people or from the tax payer’s money through bilateral funding. Hence, there is an urgent need for NGOs and all Civil Society Organisation to ensure effective, transparent and accountable management. Public accountability will be a prerequisite for the moral and political legitimacy of NGOs. Without moral and political legitimacy, NGOs will have less credibility or power to influence the policy and decision makers to be accountable, just or democratic.

A vibrant and accountable political party system is very crucial for sustaining the democratic system of governance. There is indeed a link between the health and maturity of the political party systems and the state of governance in a given country. One of the key challenges for democratic accountability is the marketisation of political parties and media.

Political parties have been increasingly reduced to electoral network or instrumental mechanism to capture the State power. Politics itself has been reduced to a media exercise played by powerful nexus of political elites and media elites, often negotiated or controlled by the corporate interests of the marker forces. In many parts of the world political party system is becoming increasingly made redundant by an unholy alliance of political-corporate- media elites. This is also because of the fact that political parties and elections are more and more shaped by the corporate donations and kick backs by vested interest groups and business corporations. As a result political parties are less based on ideological or moral conviction and more by competing interests among the market elites. The crisis in political parties and its leadership signifies a crisis to the very ideal of democracy and democratization.

Hence, there is indeed a need to work towards a new ethical and political accountability framework for political party leaders and political party institutions. When political parties themselves become business enterprises in the electoral market, the very moral fiber of democratic accountability is in peril.

It is important to revitalize and reinvent the political party System with courage of conviction and deep commitment to democratic accountability. That is why we need a broader movement to rediscover a new politics and ethics of accountability in the public sphere as well as private sphere.

Women’s Rights and spaces in Kerala

2009-09-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

There is indeed a whole range of issues related to gender, women's political participation, space and voice in Kerala. But I also think there is increasing awareness and discussion on these issues in Kerala, in relation to many other states.

In spite of relatively better human development index and gender development index of Kerala, there is indeed a real question about the entrenched patriarchy and less space for women' voice in the political party process, public debates and discussions.

This paradox of gender "development" index and the relative lack of women's empowerment in Kerala need to be discussed and understood. There are a number of paradoxes, contradictions and tension - operating in Kerala society (and that is also the case with almost all other societies.)

The paradox of ‘empowerment’ and ‘space’ is one among them. In spite of having one of the biggest percentage of highly ‘qualified’ or ‘educated’ women in Kerala, there is relatively less space in the leadership roles, articulate voices and empowered roles within the public and private spaces. The fact that such issues are discussed is also the beginning of a change process. Such a process of transformation requires more affirmative action and more active political participation of women in all arena- in academics, politics, media, and social action.

The first thing women and men will have to fight is an entrenched sense of cynicism.
It is important for enlightened and educated women and men to work together to expand the quantity and quality of those spaces. It is important to participate and shape the discussions elsewhere. When we begin to believe in change, change begins to unfold within us and beyond us.

There is nothing like a homogeneous category of ‘women’ or ‘men’- beyond their physical/biological differences. Multiple identities are as much operational among women as much as among men- class, cast, religion, locality, sexual orientation etc.

Both women and men can be perpetrators of patriarchy. In fact, many such values may be perpetuated by women- partly because of the internalized sense of ‘norms’ constructed and made almost pathological over a period of time.

Just because a woman is part of a reactionary, or fundamentalist or established power structure does not necessarily make such structures and processes less patriarchal. Almost all women leaders in South Asia are the torchbearers of a set of conservative values -- and not expressions of feminist politics-- by any stretch of imagination.

I wonder whether the kind of trend of growing fundamentalism is specific to one gender- women. In fact, the "patriarchal" power is perpetuated by the men - who control religious establishment, consumer stores and institutions of spirituality and religion. It seems there is nothing new in the fact that women seem to be more in to "bhakti" mode or more manifestly religious or spiritual. This also may have to do with ‘family' behavioral pattern (again perpetuated by a patriarchy). And there is nothing new about the trend- about relatively more spiritual/religious inclination among women. This aspect requires more serious research in relation to the constructed roles of gender in different societies and its relation to "cultural", "spiritual" "creative", "reproductive" and "fertility" etc.

There is indeed a revival of religion- in its conservative as well as consumerist avatars. And this new revival of religion - in institutional, political and market varieties- is a larger trend. So how can one link this only with "gender"- or say that "why women are like that?" Of course, we tend to see what we look for.

The new revival of religion- and "spiritual" customer-care oriented new market approach has a lot to do with new sense of alienation and insecurity - in the midst of economic growth, increasing disintegration of community/family spaces, saturation of "secular" dreams, and increasing sense of social, economic and political insecurity, as well as political reactions to perceived sense of marginalization, exclusion etc. So it is nothing peculiar to Kerala. This is happening all over Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia, Europe and the USA.

The new revivalism is also partly a reactionary response to and partly a byproduct of aggressive economic globalization. These days there are many "drive in Churches"- very customer-care oriented, well-marketed, no-strings attached- of course one is expected to pay for a well-organized/managed "Sunday" service. There is no-community or real communion. They are the new service providers in a new market place- because there is new demand for a particularly packaged "psycho-comfort," "feel-good" product- available, accessible and affordable.

We need serious discussions and explorations about the "gender spaces" in Kerala. We need to explore the apparent dichotomies and tensions of such gender-power relationship in the ‘public’, ‘private’ and ‘intimate’ spaces. There are serious contradictions in Kerala between the perceived ‘empowerment’ of women- taking the social development and gender-development indicators and real ‘disempowerment’- particularly in the private spaces of family and ‘intimate’ spaces of bedrooms, though seemingly ‘empowered’ in the public sphere.

This also may have to be done by challenging our own personal attitude, behavior and communication. It is true many of men (including me) tend to be arrogant and argumentative in our communication- without enough patience or grace to listen to the perspective and perception. Many may find the aggressive argumentative mode of communication (which many of us men are used to) as a sort of masculine behavior. At a personal level, it is indeed a struggle to challenge and change our default mode of aggressive mode of arguments and modes of communication. I hope we all can continue to challenge and change ourselves at the personal and societal level.

Though there are some discussions in the Kerala on issues related to women's space and empowerment and the entrenched patriarchy, I think Kerala society has to go a long way in terms of recognizing and addressing the issue of women's space and empowerment -at all levels.

( This is a part of my discussions on women's rights in the Fourth Estate e-mail discussion group- moderated from Kerala. I would like to thank my partner Dr. Bina Thomas and my friend Mr.NP Chekkutty, senior journalist, for stimulating and compiling the discussions on women's rights in Kerala)

On Leadership and Organizational Culture

2009-09-26T20:36:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

The quality of an organization- its culture, its over-all character- is to a large extent influenced by the quality of its leadership models. Many institutions unconsciously tend to imitate the leader in terms of culture, character and leadership styles. The character of Leadership can be contagious in a positive as well as negative sense.

Confident leader will induce a confident organization. Insecure leader can induce an insecure organization.

Insecure leaders and organization can also develop an acute sense of paranoia; a derivative of "self-doubt"-and internal crisis of conviction. When a leader or an organization suffers from "self-doubt"- or credibility-deficit, they tend to externalize a problem. They will not take the responsibility for their leadership gaps and the consequent crisis within an organization. Usually insecure leaders tend to find fault with others, external factors rather than taking responsibility by themselves. They tend to correct others and less inclined to introspect or correct themselves.

Any one in leadership positions in any organization will have to be aware of one slippery road. Once your are in a position of power within the hierarchy of an organization, most of the people will tell you what you want to hear. Once you get in to that mode, slowly there will be more and more people around you, telling what you want to hear. Gradually only those people who say what you want to hear- will be around you. That is how coteries are being formed. They will tell you that you are the most fantastic leader they have ever "experienced". - They will use "superlative' to tell more and more lies about you to make you happy. Who does not like to be flattered? Who does not like praises?

Such coteries will keep “alerting” you about impending dangers, problems, about lurking trouble makers or about those who are not loyal. Coteries create a power-grid around the leader- to derive power for themselves. Coteries are usually formed by those who do not have their own steam or capacity and they derive their power through their perceived proximity to the leader. And those insecure leaders who cultivate and nurture a coteries around her/him need them to boost her/his sense of confidence and to guard against their perpetual fear about those who may try to undermine them. Eventually the coterie becomes an insulation around the leader- and the leader begins to lose touch with the pulse of an organization or the real issues within the organization. That is the beginning of the down fall of those who are in the leadership.

Usually those leaders with the courage of conviction and ability to rise above the rest will not cultivate or encourage coteries or partisan groups within the organization.

But those who get in to the trap of coterie will never “grow- within”. To grow- “within’- one has to constantly outgrow oneself. And one can not outgrow oneself if someone does not challenge oneself- constantly and consistently. Unless one keeps challenge oneself, one can not grow. Unless one begins to learn to listen, to be challenged and learn to absorb and manage them, one can not outgrow oneself. Unless one constantly learn and unlearn, one can not nurture her/his leadership quality.

Leadership is all about Integrity, Imagination, Ideas and Influence. Leadership is all about the ability to learn, listen, advance, enable, renew, and synergize. Leadership is all about the capacity and confidence to be honest, to initiate, to innovate and to inspire. Finally good leadership is driven by deep sense of people and purpose. The corner stone of good leadership is a sense of integrity, fair-play and courage of conviction. Leadership is also the ability to manage people, resources, and systems to make the best impact. Those with good leadership skills and capacity can become good managers. Those with managerial capacity do not have to be necessarily leaders or those endowed with high leadership qualities.

Managers are those with ability to make the best use of available resources in an effective and efficient way to get the best desired output or out-come. Managers are often driven by their task and targets within a given point in time. Good managers can optimize the use of people, and systems through plans, process and performance. Leadership requires the ability to inspire, envision and conceptualize strategies much larger than a given task or target or an operation. Leadership requires an ability to see the big picture and small picture at the same time.

An ethical and empowered leadership means enabling a creative, learning and confident culture with in the organization- through walking the talk and consistently bridging the gap between words and deeds. This also means the ability to be challenged and challenge – in an enabling manner. Such leaders will encourage colleagues to be frank and honest about their perception and perspective.

One of my most respected colleagues was the one who asked tough questions to me; the more he questioned, the more I learned- the more I listened to him, the more I learned. And when he realized that the more I learned, the more he supported and respected me. In the course I learned something I was less inclined to: Financial Management.

How does a leader derives power? What are the sources of power within a leader?

It matters weather a leader derives a sense of "power" from deep "within: - (from his or her sense of mission or calling) or from the positions he/she occupies in the organization

Many who derive power from "positions" tend to exert "power over"- through 'control' and 'manipulations. Their "empowerment" is directly proportional to the position they climb. When such people are internally insecure -emotionally insecure, they may even have 'self-worth" issue. When someone is internally insecure, they will begin to suspect many people who are smarter than them; who are more competent than them, who may be more recognized by the peers than them. Then they need a coterie to keep them float. They will use power over others to dictate, to discipline and to control. Those who manage a team through dictation, discipline and control will not induce a sense of ownership and consequent sense of creativity.
Such leaders may be able to “deliver” a project efficiently – but they will not be able to make change happen or to make path-breaking innovation within an organization.

Such people want to climb the ladder somehow- and since they may not have their "steam"- they derive it from those in positions of power. Those who get power- through loyalty or through "patrons"- also tend to cultivate "loyalty" and a coterie. They need a "coterie" to get a sense of power- because internally they are neither inspired nor empowered.

Loyalty is demanded. Commitment is committed. Commitment requires conviction.

In the case of "loyalty"- the agency is with someone more powerful. The more powerful may demand loyalty from the less powerful.

Those leaders and organization that demand "absolute" loyalty are those who are perpetually "insecure" about themselves- and they need "loyalists" - to sooth them- to tell them what they want to hear. Those who question or challenge the leader will be seen as someone who is less loyal to the leader and those are seen as less loyal to the leader will be projected as those who have less loyalty to the organization. Insecure leaders also induce insecurity all around. Such a sense of insecurity can create an organization consisting of people driven by a sense of “fear” and “punishment”. If the overall culture of an organization is that of mistrust, fear and insecurity, that organization will be a less effective organization and if such an organizational culture prevails, decay and degeneration sets in and the very organization itself may collapse or fade away.

Unlike loyalty, "commitment" is a choice made by a person out her/his own conviction- with a sense of freedom.

Good leadership thrives on challenges within and beyond. Without people challenging them, probing them, questioning them - there is no excitement. And if they are confident, they will induce confidence. The entire organizational culture will become positive, energetic and confident.

Confident leaders will recruit people smarter than them- better than them. A good leader is as good as her/his team. And one can only make creative team when you get the best of people- better than the leader in many ways. Smart leader takes smarter people. When you are surrounded by a creative, committed and competent team- the creative instincts and the learning curve of the leader keep moving to a higher plain- someone with an ability to see the big picture.

Someone whith high leadership quality will have greater instincts to understand and perceive a situation, a group of people and crisis, in much sharper and quicker way. They can understand the individual psychology of a person and the social psychology of the group. Such leaders will have a sense of critical self-awareness.: aware about their own strengths and limitation, opportunities and threat. Such leaders with critical self-awareness will constantly seek feedback from colleagues. They are not afraid to make mistakes and admit a mistake. They are not averse to take risk. They are keen to share credit with others.

A leader with highly evolved leadership quality can rise above the rest and see the things others can not see. Someone who can see the same issue from various angles. Some one who can see the sky and earth at the same time. A good leader is someone whose feet are firmly on the ground and eyes seeks to go beyond the horizon. Someone in a constant mode of learning and listening begin to develop instincts and wisdom to see the unseen, to hear the unheard, to feel the ripples and make the waves. Such leadership will be intuitive enough about the future to shape and make future.

Inspired leaders will induce inspiration. If they are honest with themselves, they will induce people to be honest about their perception. Good leaders can induce positive energy- and once people learn that they can share their perception and feeling honestly- without fear or favor, then the magic happens. Everyone get energized because everyone begins to feel this is "my organization"; this ‘our’ cause- and I too have space and freedom.

The moment people have sense of space and freedom- they take initiatives, they begin to innovate, they begin to create. A good leader is someone who can induce a sense of space, freedom and ownership to each and every person in the team, treating every person as unique. An organizational culture that nurtures a sense of freedom from fear and freedom of expression can become a creative organization.
A creative organization can do wonders. Good leaders are those who can nurture leadership and leaders. The sign of great leader is not how or she is competent or charismatic. The sign of a great leader is how many leaders he/she helped to create. Someone with high quality leadership can simply outgrow herself/himself and move on to new arenas of learning and new sources of challenges. When they outperform themselves, they become redundant within an organization. Such leaders will soon outgrow the organization itself to become the leadership of a the whole sector or the larger society itself.

When the leader gives full credit to the individuals and team- they begin to transform together- and they enjoy mutual critiquing- as friends. Then the most creative discussions and ideas come through fierce arguments and endless debates in a pub or park. They thrive on arguments – and not on submissions.

A good leader will be empathetic, enabling, educative, empowering and enduring.
That is the magic of good organization- a magic of leadership willing to listen and learn; a leader who is slightly skeptical about his/her own ideas- someone who search for the best of ideas from anyone and anywhere- willing to learn constantly. Their enthusiasm and energy can radiate across the organization. They do not need any coterie- because they are driven by a sense of mission much larger than them.

When leaders have a sense of history and purpose larger than them- they know they are actually simple human beings- with feet of clay. Then they know how much they do not know. They should be able to laugh at themselves. When someone say “Sir/Madam you were not in element" or say" your lecture was boring"- they can laugh at themselves and say "Thank you for your feedback. I will try next time”

When we have sense of how much we do not know, then we begin to learn. And leadership is all about learning... from every single person and occasion...endless learning, unlearning, reflection and reworking- constantly thinking and acting....driven beyond the immediate interest, immediate criticism or immediate "loyalists”

Unfortunately in most of the organizations, there are more bureaucrats- and less leaders- with inspired leadership qualities.

Bureaucratic leaders derive power from their appointment letter, those who above them- from their chair. Without their chair, they become zero. So they self-preserve- somehow. There are indeed many good and sincere bureaucrats within organizations- those who go by the books, those with integrity. But they are a product of a structure and system. - not the vehicle for a larger mission- much larger than the person.

(This is a part of my interventions in a discussion on Modes of organizations and power in the Fourth-Estate Critique – an e-mail discussion groups moderated from Kerala, India. I thank my friend Mr. Damodar Prasad of CDIT, Trivandrum for stimulating this reflection largely based on my twenty years of experience in leading and managing organizations and team)

What Constitutes Knowledge?

2009-09-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

John Samuel

What constitutes "knowledge"? What and how "knowledge" is generated require more explorations and discussions.

During various periods of history, there have been privileged paradigms of "thought process" "analytical modes" of thinking and expressions. How "knowledge" get constituted, generated, documented and conveyed, need to be understood from a historical, linguistic, technological and political perspective.

For example, stories, parables and poetry ( Jathaka Kathas to one line Taoist sayings to biblical parables) were also means of expressing knowledge at a given point in time. Alchemy was also a knowledge process at one point in time. So was theology. Many of the religious rituals also might t have had a knowledge-constituting function. A novel like Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov may give us more insights, illuminations and understanding than a well-argued and academically valued book on Existentialism, Human Behaviour and personality types.

So "critical thinking"( and critical theory etc) are only one of the many modes of thinking. Knowledge get constituted through language, communities, communications, signs, symbols as well through socialization. Various modes of thinking and expressions of such thinking can be involved in such process. The old carpenter could easily find the "sthanam" or "location" for a well and a house, without the aid of any modern technology or “formal knowledge”. His modes of thinking and expressions of thinking and technology may be different from that of a formally trained water-engineer.- who would use 'scientific" tools to understand "water-table" etc

Our own "privileged" notions of what constitute knowledge may be because of particular Institutional acculturation, 'disciplines", and socialization of knowledge through the modes and modules of "education" many of us have gone through. It may also because of our own preoccupations with the credentials, degrees, skills and language competence

. To a large extent we see what we are trained to see, what we are "socialized" to see, what we are "used" to "seeing" and "reading". We all may have delusions about our own "knowledge" and "competence"- because we are all "products" of particular institutional model of "education" and "knowledge process". It is also because of a particular "disciplinary legitimation'
. For example, for someone publishing a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly( EPW) is seen as signifier of "knowledge generation". For some other's it may be something else. This is also that we have our own "received" notions about who is an "intellectual" or who is a "scientist" or who is an "expert" etc- due to specific forms of legitimation and institutionalized power in various arena and domains of knowledge process.

One of my relatives is a top-rate mechanic- a school drop out. He has deep "critical" understanding and "knowledge" of what will work and what will not work and how to make an Ashok Leyland truck run in the top conditions. His cumulative understanding and knowledge of repairing - around 10 thousand vehicles a year- is amazing. I am almost sure that it is better than a top-end automobile engineer (who got a formal systematized knowledge- acquired in a particular manner).

The only difference is that modes of acquisition and modes of expressions of such knowledge are very different from each other. While the society at a given point in time "legitimize" on form of knowledge because of the received “statuses, other forms and modes of knowledge generation in every day world get ignored.

( This is a part of a discussion on Media and Knowledge in the Fourth Estate Critique – an active google discussion forum moderated from Kerala, India)