What is People-Centred Advocacy?
John Samuel
“We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and non violent pressure … Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Martin Luther King
“Be the Change you want”
Mahatma Gandhi
Advocacy means amplifying the voice. But the fundamental question facing activists is whose voice and for what purpose. Across the world large numbers of people are marginalized and unheard in the corridors of power. Advocacy can work to amplify their voices, however, this aspect of advocacy is often less understood or put into practice. Advocacy is more often perceived as a systematic process of influencing public policies. Yet, while policy change is necessary, it is not sufficient to transform the structures, attitudes and values that are at the root of societal inequities and injustice. Instead a more people-centred approach focused on social transformation is needed.
Characteristics of People-centred Advocacy:
People-centred advocacy is a set of organized actions aimed at influencing public policies, societal attitudes and socio-political processes that enable and empower the marginalised to speak for themselves. Its purpose is social transformation through the realisation of human rights: civil, political, economic, social and cultural. People-centred advocacy is by the people, of the people and for the people. Hence, it is the spirit of democracy that drives the very idea of people-centred advocacy.
A 'people-centred' approach acknowledges the critical role of citizens. However, it seeks to go beyond the framework of a" State-Citizen" axis to the arena of the people that include both citizens as well as disenfranchised people not recognized by the state as citizens. That is why the term people-centred, instead of citizen-centred is preferred. As Mikhail Bakunin pointed out “ No state, however democratic…is capable of giving the people what they need: the free organization of their own interest from below upward, without any interference, tutelage or coercion from above. Because no state…….in essence represents anything but government…by an educated, and thereby privileged minority which supposedly understand the real interest of the people better than people themselves.”1 Hence, people-centred advocacy is about mobilising the politics of the people to ensure that the politics of the state is accountable, transparent, ethical and democratic. It is a mode of social and political action.
Ethical Choices:
In people-centred advocacy " being" is as important as " becoming"
· Unless one believes in a cause, one cannot advocate for that particular cause. Integrity and legitimacy of advocates are what provide moral force to advocacy. Hence, it seeks to bridge the gap between the words and the deeds; theory and practice; rhetoric and real life experience. It stresses that unless you challenge and change yourself, you cannot change others.
· People-centred advocacy stresses the compatibility of means and ends. Unjust means can never be used for a just end. In this sense, people-centred advocacy seeks to change unjust power relations through non-violent direct action.
Rights Based Approach: People-centred advocacy encompasses a rights-based approach to social change and transformation
· People are not passive beneficiaries or charity seekers of the state or government. The state’s political and moral responsibility is to guarantee all human rights to all human beings; particularly the right to live with dignity. Hence people have a right to demand that the state ensure equitable social change and distributive justice.
· Citizens are the owners of the state. Hence, the state should be transparent and accountable to citizens and defend human rights. People-centred advocacy mobilises people and civil society against societal violations of human rights.
· It seeks to bridge the gap between micro-level activism and macro-level policy change. It stresses a bottoms-up approach to social change rather than a top-down approach through macro-level policy change. It seeks to strengthen people's participation in the process of policy making and implementation.
Political Perspective:
· People-centred advocacy seeks to go beyond the idea of advocating on behalf of the marginalised to the practice of enabling and empowering the marginalised to speak for themselves. .
· A value-driven process, it works to challenge and change unjust and unequal power relations, e.g patriarchy at every level of society; from private to public, from family to governance. Values of social justice and human rights are at its core.
· It seeks to go beyond a state-centred approach to social change and politics to one shaped and led by the people. Grounded in the right to democratic dissent, it also includes the responsibility to work for just and viable political and policy alternatives.
Integrating Principles: The three integrating principles of people-centred approaches are—Participation, Communication and Legitimacy. They integrate its politics and ethics as well as the various arenas of advocacy.
Participation: Participation is not a mere strategy to manufacture consent, manipulate consensus or extract cheap labour. Participation is a principle based on an inclusive moral choice; participation means sharing power, legitimacy, freedom, responsibilities and accountability. Participation is both a principle and means to include as many people as possible in the process of social change. Built on a deep respect for plurality, tolerance and dissent, it also involves an ability to understand and appreciate differences. Transparency is a pre-requisite for true participation. In people-centred advocacy, participation is a crucial means to initiate, inform and inspire change in all arenas of advocacy.
A deep sense of participation and communication help promote solidarity. Strong social movements sprout from a cause and identity common to large numbers of people sharing a vision and passion for change.
Communication: Advocacy is a communicative act and a set of actions that involves communications designed to promote social action. Community, collectivism and communication are closely interwoven. The process of advocacy involves different elements. These include: Communicate to Convince; Convince to Change; Change to Commit and Commit to Convert to the cause.
Communication is not merely the use of language. It is an attitude—a willingness to share; to learn; to reach out; and to speak. The clarity of the message is as important as the choice of medium. An effective communication strategy involves the creative use of symbols, language, information, knowledge, poetry, prose and politics. The commitment of the communicator is as important as the message. Such a process involves learning from people, sharing with them, and inspiring and being inspired by them. Advocacy communication needs to be consistent, continuous, creative, compelling and convincing.
Legitimacy: Legitimacy is not merely about legality; it is both about ethics and politics. Legitimacy is not something one assumes, but something one acquires. Connected to the perception of power, legitimacy is derived over a period of time through a series of actions. It is the sense of deep commitment, accountability, communicability and action that help to derive legitimacy. It is both relative and dynamic and fosters credibility. Each arena of advocacy demands a particular type of legitimacy.
Arenas of People-Centred Advocacy
Defining the arenas of people-centred advocacy helps clarify the roles and strategies of different set of actors in bringing about social change. As Figure I shows, there are four arenas of people-centred advocacy -- a) People b) Public c) Network/Alliance and d) Decision-makers -- that are linked to each other and overlap at certain points
Diagram 1
People: Key to the process is the arena of people: a) those who are directly affected by an issue b) those with whom an organisation or movement is directly working and c) those who identify with a particular cause or issue.
Advocacy work in this arena involves educating people on an issue, mobilising people around an issue, and organizing a particular group or community for long-term social transformation. Mobilisation is a continuous process of interaction, learning, critical awareness and collective action. It needs to educate, enable and empower the people. Such a process needs a clear political perspective and a long-term strategy for communication and participation.
Public: Public is one of the most used yet least understood terms. People-centred advocacy defines the public principally as the middle class, opinion makers, intellectuals and media. Whether as perpetuators or challengers of the status quo, they play a substantial role in shaping the political agenda and have the means to amplify the voice of the voiceless. To be effective advocacy needs to tap a critical mass of the public.
Media Advocacy is the strategic use of communication and mass media to bring an issue into the public arena and the political discourse. It has two aspects: 1) creating news through building collective action and 2) articulating views through the media [see Box 1].
Knowledge-based activism is an important factor that influences the public. In the information age, it is not only the emotional appeal of an issue that matters, but the overall rationale based on a knowledge-based argument that makes a decisive impact.
Box 1
Both poetry and politics can play a role in developing communication strategies. In a campaign against a Hydroelectric project in Silent Valley, a virgin forest in Kerala India, our experience validates the power of poetry in influencing the public. The Silent Valley campaign (1978-83) was basically meant to protect bio-diversity and to raise critical questions about the nature of development. No community was to be displaced by the project. The entire media, political establishment and trade unions were for the hydroelectric project. Yet over a period of time four poets and five poems changed the public mood and political context. The poems caught the imagination of the young people and many were mobilised through the People's Science Movement. Media could not afford to ignore the concerns of such a large number of middle class youth nor the opinion of poets, writers and intellectuals. This created one of the first public discourses on the environment and sustainable development in India during the late seventies and early eighties. Advocacy strategies focused on the public arena can influence all other arenas substantially.
Networking and Alliance: The arena of networking and alliance is important for sharing resources, co-ordinating multiple strategies and involving a large number of actors in advocacy. Networking widens the outreach and helps to build up a multiplier effect in terms of impact and public discourse. Advocacy seeks to integrate power of knowledge and the power of networking. Advocacy is also a process of negotiating with various institutions, including institutions of governance. Such a process requires long-term commitment and optimal institutional and financial resources. Networking is an important means to synergise the strengths of both institutions and individuals that identify with the advocacy cause. Clarity of goals, compatibility of perspective and convergence of interest are crucial for any sustainable networking. It seeks to bridge the gap between micro-level activism and macro-level policy initiative, developing multiple voices and diverse efforts in favour of the advocacy cause.
Decision-Makers: The decision-makers are those who have authority to make decisions and influence power relationship. This includes not only state policies, but also those who have the power to make decision in socio-cultural institutions, corporations, religious institutions, etc. There are multiple arenas of power and institutions that influence public policies and social attitudes. For instance, many of the religious institutions and practices perpetuate discrimination on the basis of gender and cast.
Lobbying is a strategic process of convincing those in the corridors of power to make decisions or to exert their influence in favour of an advocacy cause. It is a rational process of making a convincing argument, using information and knowledge. However, the real bargaining power of a lobbyist comes from people, the public as well as the process of networking. A people-centred perspective insists that lobbyists should be grounded in real life experience and have an organic relationship with grassroots movements and the credibility and legitimacy that comes from that relationship.
POWER - POLITICS - POLICY
Public policy is a function of the dominant politics. Politics is a dominant set of power relationships, so there is a need to understand the link between public policies and political process on the one hand; and political process and power relationship within the society on the other hand. An issue needs to be framed the way people feel and perceive it. An issue is a social, economic or political concern or phenomenon, which affects a large number of people over a long period of time. It needs to be understood in terms of power relationships within the society, politics of the state and the policy priorities.
One of the key problems in most of the countries in the Global south is the increasing gap between policy rhetoric and real implementation. Radical sounding language is increasingly used to gloss over deprivation, injustice and inequality. Through the co-option of language, symbols and institutions that claim to represent civil society and the marginalised, decision makers tend to create more and more policy mirage. Policy mirage is a public policy statement, which articulates a lofty vision and principles for change, without any clear programme to move toward that vision and without any budgetary allocation to implement the policy. Such policy mirages create illusions of change while perpetuating the status quo. Hence, there is a need to understand and change a public policy in terms policy direction, relevant legislation, accompanying programme, implementing mechanisms and most importantly financial allocation.
People-centred advocacy always considers every aspect of policy, process and negotiation in terms of the real impact it can bring to the lives of the poorest. Every action needs to be inspired and informed by Mahatma Gandhi’s talisman:
“I will give you a talisman… Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away”
1 Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy (1873), translated and edited by Marshel .S. Shatz (Cambridge University Press, 1990). Page 24.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
The Politics of Micro Credit
STRAIGHT TALK
The holy cow of microcredit
Why it's difficult to swallow the development mythology that surrounds the Grameen Bank
by John Samuel
Microcredit is the current buzz-word in the discourse on poverty alleviation. It's the magic wand that's supposed to wish away poverty. The Grameen Bank model has become a legend. The microcredit summit, held in Washington in February 1997, played a significant role in selling the idea of microcredit as a viable and efficient means to alleviate poverty. Though there's nothing wrong with the idea of microcredit per se, the political and institutional framework in which it operates needs to be re-examined.
Micro credit and the market
One of the key characteristics of the emerging trend in global finance is that it legitimises `credit' as an effective means to perpetuate and open up markets. The Bretton Woods institutions like the World Bank and IMF are in the business of giving credit to nation states, especially the less privileged ones of the global South, turning them practically into bonded labour. And of course, Citibank never sleeps in its effort to ensure that more and more of the middle class get into its credit net. In fact, most developing countries and their middle classes are increasingly forced to survive on credit and credit cards. The countries of the North, especially USA, use long-term or short-term loans as bargaining instruments to force open the domestic markets, natural resources, industrial sector and development policies of developing countries. Consumerism is the driving logic of the growing middle class market, and the credit cards of Citibank, Standard Chartered and American Express have become some of the most efficient vehicles of consumerism.
So while middle classes all over the world are increasingly being rated solely on the basis of their `credit worthiness', credit to governments is being used as a lever to liberalise and open up domestic markets to suit the needs of TNCs. Credit cards to the middle classes ensure growing consumption. One of the most formidable databanks on the growing global middle class is with American Express, Standard Chartered and Citibank. These databanks record the purchasing capacity and pattern of purchase of consumer goods and other items by millions of card-holders all over the world. Information really becomes power for this multi-billion credit card business.
But the world is not made up of middle classes alone. When the middle class market is saturated, how do you expand it further? This is where the large majority of the poor, without any purchasing power, come into the picture. The poor cannot possibly dream of purchasing a microwave with a Citibank card. But they can definitely think of purchasing a bottle of Coca Cola if credit is made available to them. It is within this context that one must view the fact that Citicorp, Chase Manhattan, American Express and the World Bank were the powerful sponsors for the Micro Credit Summit, organised by RESULTS Educational Fund, a Washington-based, private non-profit organisation. The logic of market expansion demands the creation of new demand and purchasing capacity among the people on the lowest rungs of the economy. The logic attains a new dimension when it is packaged, advertised and marketed as the latest development gospel.
The question here is, who sets the agenda for microcredit? Is it the poor women in the villages or the financial pundits of transnational financial corporations and the lobby of finance consultants who thrive on the Grameen model? The problem is not so much with microcredit. But rather about the way in which it is being thrust upon the less privileged class, without really bothering much about the empowerment of the people or their long-term community well-being.
Microcredit and the shifting ideology of development
Microcredit also signifies a shift in the very ideology of development. In the '50s and '60s, development was perceived more as a capital-intensive mix of charity and social welfare measures. From the mid-'70s onwards, the development discourse accentuated empowerment on the one hand and professionalism and skills in service delivery and project implementation on the other. And in the later part of the '90s, when the notion of the welfare state is gradually withering away and transnational corporations have begun to incorporate philanthropy as a successful social marketing strategy, development itself is increasingly being treated as a business -- a profitable business at that. The larger-than-life image of microcredit epitomises this basic shift.
At the moment, the Grameen Bank is the presiding deity of poverty eradication through the strategy of microcredit, targeting 100 million people towards the end of the century. The lesson many of us learnt from the Grameen Bank model is not so much about real political or for that matter socio-economic empowerment, but the fact that women from the lowest social strata are credit-worthy. And a well-oiled institutional strategy of delivery and repayment can really help generate profit for the bank. It's the so-called win-win situation, wherein the poor get credit and the bank makes the profit. After all, profit is not a bad word. And if a poor clientele, excellent repayment rate and overall financial viability are the measuring standards, many of the rural co-operative banks, and even rural credit divisions of scheduled banks are probably as successful or more successful than the Grameen model.
The Grameen model has undoubtedly demonstrated a good banking strategy. A remarkable one, in fact. And one cannot fail to be inspired by the pioneering vision, banking acumen and enterprising spirit of Prof Muhammad Yunus. What one does find difficult to swallow, however, is the mythology created around the Grameen Bank experience which sells a neo-liberal market-oriented ideology of development. It becomes problematic if a good banking strategy is being sold in the development market as the best medicine for existing structural disparities. Appropriating the language and institutions of development can at best create delusions of development and empowerment. The financial viability of an institution does not necessarily lead to the economic and social viability of communities.
At a conceptual level, it is not difficult to understand the logic of microcredit as a good strategy for development. There are no two opinions about the sound logic behind giving poor women access to credit. The conceptual rationale is that the availability of finance will help women get access to the much-needed seed capital to generate income. And an independent source of income for women will eradicate poverty and give women more bargaining power within the family. Such basic attitudinal change within institutions like the family will eventually lead to a pattern of social development. The problem arises when this sound rationale is strait-jacketed in an institutional framework and the success of the institutional framework is equated with the empowerment of the clientele. The viability and sustainability of community empowerment depends to a large extent on the grassroots process and praxis rather than on conceptually sound rationales.
The neo-liberal ideology of development lays so much stress on institutional frameworks and success rates of institutions that it tends to sideline the long-term process of empowerment at the grassroots level. When the output of development is measured in highly deceptive quantitative scales such as GNP and GDP and in the financial balance sheet of service delivery organisations, it does not really matter what happens to the everyday lives of the people or what they experience, think and feel. Social change institutions and service delivery organisations may play a significant role in long-term social change. But it will be erroneous to equate the institutional or financial viability of such organisation with the extent of real social development.
Demystifying power relations
It is one thing to have the poor organise themselves and evolve their own micro-finance enterprise or self-help groups, and an entirely different thing to canonise monolithic financial institutions as the new apostles of development. The nature of power relations is very different in both cases.
When the poor organise themselves and adopt various institutional or programme strategies, they are actual participants of and subjects in the whole process. In the process of evolving micro-level institutions and self-help groups, they gradually learn to take decisions for themselves and also develop the capacity to exercise a certain amount of control over the social, economic and political conditions that determine their lives. The 25 years of evolution of Self Employed Womens Association (SEWA) demonstrate the fruitfulness of such a long-term and rather slow process. There are many other interesting examples of small and effective processes at the grassroots level, wherein self-help groups and micro finance programmes are not the end in themselves but the means to facilitate the process of empowerment. Such innovative grassroots initiatives can create conditions for empowerment. The power relation in the whole process is not determined by the financial pundits or consultants but by the poor women and men.
But when the stress is on financial viability of the organisation rather than social and economical viability of the process, we are left with a top-down, target-oriented, lender-centric approach that is preoccupied with disciplinary repayment mechanisms and profit generation rather than community empowerment. Such a model can easily fall prey to the temptations of being vehicles to facilitate marketing strategies for AT&T or other transnational financial corporations. This is how the neo-liberal ideology of the market operates through monolithic micro-credit enterprises to get access to and legitimacy among communities who were till recently outcastes in the market economy. It is precisely because of this that one finds it difficult to swallow the development myth created around the Grameen model.
Going beyond microcredit
The encouraging aspect of micro finance (not mere credit), self-help groups and micro enterprises is very evident in the success story of SEWA.
The success of SEWA is not merely measured on the basis of the financial viability of SEWA bank, though it is one of the best examples of financially viable micro-finance institutions. The essential difference between SEWA and Grameen Bank is that, in the case of SEWA, it is the women who came together first and they who built up a series of institutions including a highly successful co-operative bank. But in the case of Grameen, it is the bank which came first and then women were brought together around microcredit. In the case of SEWA, the movement preceded the institutions and institutions were by and large instruments to empower hundreds of thousands of women who organised themselves into a powerful union of poor working women. In the Grameen model, the institution preceded the movement, and the movement was built on the immediate self-interest of the `target' group to get access to credit. Qualitatively, there is a tremendous difference between these two approaches. In the first case the women and the union would decide what is best for them and how it should be done and in the second case the institution and the mandarins will decide what is best for women and how they should pay back the money.
One is encouraged by the SEWA experience not so much because of its banking miracle. But because of the fact that here is a grassroots-oriented trade union of self-employed women from the lowest rung of the economy. SEWA women attempted to redefine the existing power relations within the social fabric by a fruitful combination of a struggle for identity, women's rights and constructive work that changed the lives of thousands of families. SEWA bank emerged out of the real need felt by the women and its birth and growth is organically linked to the trade union movement and corollary co-operative movement. The SEWA trade union gave rise to not just one bank, but more than 70 co-operatives and hundreds of self-help groups. Of course one may find lapses in the ideological purity or political correctness of some of SEWA's positions. But it is very difficult to deny the efficacy of SEWA's empowerment efforts by bringing the women's movement, labour movement and co-operative movement under the umbrella of the first trade union of its kind in the world.
The holy cow of microcredit
Why it's difficult to swallow the development mythology that surrounds the Grameen Bank
by John Samuel
Microcredit is the current buzz-word in the discourse on poverty alleviation. It's the magic wand that's supposed to wish away poverty. The Grameen Bank model has become a legend. The microcredit summit, held in Washington in February 1997, played a significant role in selling the idea of microcredit as a viable and efficient means to alleviate poverty. Though there's nothing wrong with the idea of microcredit per se, the political and institutional framework in which it operates needs to be re-examined.
Micro credit and the market
One of the key characteristics of the emerging trend in global finance is that it legitimises `credit' as an effective means to perpetuate and open up markets. The Bretton Woods institutions like the World Bank and IMF are in the business of giving credit to nation states, especially the less privileged ones of the global South, turning them practically into bonded labour. And of course, Citibank never sleeps in its effort to ensure that more and more of the middle class get into its credit net. In fact, most developing countries and their middle classes are increasingly forced to survive on credit and credit cards. The countries of the North, especially USA, use long-term or short-term loans as bargaining instruments to force open the domestic markets, natural resources, industrial sector and development policies of developing countries. Consumerism is the driving logic of the growing middle class market, and the credit cards of Citibank, Standard Chartered and American Express have become some of the most efficient vehicles of consumerism.
So while middle classes all over the world are increasingly being rated solely on the basis of their `credit worthiness', credit to governments is being used as a lever to liberalise and open up domestic markets to suit the needs of TNCs. Credit cards to the middle classes ensure growing consumption. One of the most formidable databanks on the growing global middle class is with American Express, Standard Chartered and Citibank. These databanks record the purchasing capacity and pattern of purchase of consumer goods and other items by millions of card-holders all over the world. Information really becomes power for this multi-billion credit card business.
But the world is not made up of middle classes alone. When the middle class market is saturated, how do you expand it further? This is where the large majority of the poor, without any purchasing power, come into the picture. The poor cannot possibly dream of purchasing a microwave with a Citibank card. But they can definitely think of purchasing a bottle of Coca Cola if credit is made available to them. It is within this context that one must view the fact that Citicorp, Chase Manhattan, American Express and the World Bank were the powerful sponsors for the Micro Credit Summit, organised by RESULTS Educational Fund, a Washington-based, private non-profit organisation. The logic of market expansion demands the creation of new demand and purchasing capacity among the people on the lowest rungs of the economy. The logic attains a new dimension when it is packaged, advertised and marketed as the latest development gospel.
The question here is, who sets the agenda for microcredit? Is it the poor women in the villages or the financial pundits of transnational financial corporations and the lobby of finance consultants who thrive on the Grameen model? The problem is not so much with microcredit. But rather about the way in which it is being thrust upon the less privileged class, without really bothering much about the empowerment of the people or their long-term community well-being.
Microcredit and the shifting ideology of development
Microcredit also signifies a shift in the very ideology of development. In the '50s and '60s, development was perceived more as a capital-intensive mix of charity and social welfare measures. From the mid-'70s onwards, the development discourse accentuated empowerment on the one hand and professionalism and skills in service delivery and project implementation on the other. And in the later part of the '90s, when the notion of the welfare state is gradually withering away and transnational corporations have begun to incorporate philanthropy as a successful social marketing strategy, development itself is increasingly being treated as a business -- a profitable business at that. The larger-than-life image of microcredit epitomises this basic shift.
At the moment, the Grameen Bank is the presiding deity of poverty eradication through the strategy of microcredit, targeting 100 million people towards the end of the century. The lesson many of us learnt from the Grameen Bank model is not so much about real political or for that matter socio-economic empowerment, but the fact that women from the lowest social strata are credit-worthy. And a well-oiled institutional strategy of delivery and repayment can really help generate profit for the bank. It's the so-called win-win situation, wherein the poor get credit and the bank makes the profit. After all, profit is not a bad word. And if a poor clientele, excellent repayment rate and overall financial viability are the measuring standards, many of the rural co-operative banks, and even rural credit divisions of scheduled banks are probably as successful or more successful than the Grameen model.
The Grameen model has undoubtedly demonstrated a good banking strategy. A remarkable one, in fact. And one cannot fail to be inspired by the pioneering vision, banking acumen and enterprising spirit of Prof Muhammad Yunus. What one does find difficult to swallow, however, is the mythology created around the Grameen Bank experience which sells a neo-liberal market-oriented ideology of development. It becomes problematic if a good banking strategy is being sold in the development market as the best medicine for existing structural disparities. Appropriating the language and institutions of development can at best create delusions of development and empowerment. The financial viability of an institution does not necessarily lead to the economic and social viability of communities.
At a conceptual level, it is not difficult to understand the logic of microcredit as a good strategy for development. There are no two opinions about the sound logic behind giving poor women access to credit. The conceptual rationale is that the availability of finance will help women get access to the much-needed seed capital to generate income. And an independent source of income for women will eradicate poverty and give women more bargaining power within the family. Such basic attitudinal change within institutions like the family will eventually lead to a pattern of social development. The problem arises when this sound rationale is strait-jacketed in an institutional framework and the success of the institutional framework is equated with the empowerment of the clientele. The viability and sustainability of community empowerment depends to a large extent on the grassroots process and praxis rather than on conceptually sound rationales.
The neo-liberal ideology of development lays so much stress on institutional frameworks and success rates of institutions that it tends to sideline the long-term process of empowerment at the grassroots level. When the output of development is measured in highly deceptive quantitative scales such as GNP and GDP and in the financial balance sheet of service delivery organisations, it does not really matter what happens to the everyday lives of the people or what they experience, think and feel. Social change institutions and service delivery organisations may play a significant role in long-term social change. But it will be erroneous to equate the institutional or financial viability of such organisation with the extent of real social development.
Demystifying power relations
It is one thing to have the poor organise themselves and evolve their own micro-finance enterprise or self-help groups, and an entirely different thing to canonise monolithic financial institutions as the new apostles of development. The nature of power relations is very different in both cases.
When the poor organise themselves and adopt various institutional or programme strategies, they are actual participants of and subjects in the whole process. In the process of evolving micro-level institutions and self-help groups, they gradually learn to take decisions for themselves and also develop the capacity to exercise a certain amount of control over the social, economic and political conditions that determine their lives. The 25 years of evolution of Self Employed Womens Association (SEWA) demonstrate the fruitfulness of such a long-term and rather slow process. There are many other interesting examples of small and effective processes at the grassroots level, wherein self-help groups and micro finance programmes are not the end in themselves but the means to facilitate the process of empowerment. Such innovative grassroots initiatives can create conditions for empowerment. The power relation in the whole process is not determined by the financial pundits or consultants but by the poor women and men.
But when the stress is on financial viability of the organisation rather than social and economical viability of the process, we are left with a top-down, target-oriented, lender-centric approach that is preoccupied with disciplinary repayment mechanisms and profit generation rather than community empowerment. Such a model can easily fall prey to the temptations of being vehicles to facilitate marketing strategies for AT&T or other transnational financial corporations. This is how the neo-liberal ideology of the market operates through monolithic micro-credit enterprises to get access to and legitimacy among communities who were till recently outcastes in the market economy. It is precisely because of this that one finds it difficult to swallow the development myth created around the Grameen model.
Going beyond microcredit
The encouraging aspect of micro finance (not mere credit), self-help groups and micro enterprises is very evident in the success story of SEWA.
The success of SEWA is not merely measured on the basis of the financial viability of SEWA bank, though it is one of the best examples of financially viable micro-finance institutions. The essential difference between SEWA and Grameen Bank is that, in the case of SEWA, it is the women who came together first and they who built up a series of institutions including a highly successful co-operative bank. But in the case of Grameen, it is the bank which came first and then women were brought together around microcredit. In the case of SEWA, the movement preceded the institutions and institutions were by and large instruments to empower hundreds of thousands of women who organised themselves into a powerful union of poor working women. In the Grameen model, the institution preceded the movement, and the movement was built on the immediate self-interest of the `target' group to get access to credit. Qualitatively, there is a tremendous difference between these two approaches. In the first case the women and the union would decide what is best for them and how it should be done and in the second case the institution and the mandarins will decide what is best for women and how they should pay back the money.
One is encouraged by the SEWA experience not so much because of its banking miracle. But because of the fact that here is a grassroots-oriented trade union of self-employed women from the lowest rung of the economy. SEWA women attempted to redefine the existing power relations within the social fabric by a fruitful combination of a struggle for identity, women's rights and constructive work that changed the lives of thousands of families. SEWA bank emerged out of the real need felt by the women and its birth and growth is organically linked to the trade union movement and corollary co-operative movement. The SEWA trade union gave rise to not just one bank, but more than 70 co-operatives and hundreds of self-help groups. Of course one may find lapses in the ideological purity or political correctness of some of SEWA's positions. But it is very difficult to deny the efficacy of SEWA's empowerment efforts by bringing the women's movement, labour movement and co-operative movement under the umbrella of the first trade union of its kind in the world.
Freedom Postponed.
Freedom Postponed: Tales of Broken Promises
John Samuel
At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom…..The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and the inequality of opportunity…. So long us there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over….”
Jawaharal Nehru, August 14, 1947
Dharavi Devi, wife of dalit rickshaw puller Lalubabu Paswan , a resident of Ambedkar Colony on the outskirts of Patna, sold her two months old son to a village nearby Patori for six thousand rupees. She used the money to repay her debt. She could not afford to provide medical care to her two-month old child who had fallen ill. Just a couple of months earlier, her other child, two year old Manish, had died as they could not get access to a hospital or doctor. By selling the two months old, Dharani hoped to give him a chance of survival. Her husband, Lalbabu Paswan, who used to earn around 50 rupees a day, is now unable to earn even that meager amount as he is suffering from TB. Neither Lalbabu could access the governments’ free TB treatment programme, nor could the family get covered by the government’s Below Poverty Line (BPL) food schemes. This story is reported in the Media on Sept 14, 2004, fifty seven years after we made the ‘tryst with destiny’ and India woken up to ‘life and freedom’. The story repeats every day, the names and places may change. But not the plight of Dharani Devi, Manish, Lalbabu and the nameless child. They are the ‘broken people’ of India. Millions of children dye in ‘free’ India. Millions go to bed hungry every day. Promises are broken, rights are violated and freedom gets postponed. Whose India is shining?
Millennium Declaration adopted by the UN at the dawn of the new Millennium does not make sense to the millions of poor people in India. When the right to live with dignity is denied to millions, Millennium Development Goals are a millions miles away from the poorest of the poor .So are the National Development Goals, envisaged by the tenth five year plan. In this land of unprecedented GDP growth and ever-growing military expenditure, promises to the poor are meant to be broken. Even after 30 years of ‘Garibi Hatao( banish poverty)’promise, the balance sheet of public policy in the country is littered with broken promises, unimplemented schemes and millions of Dharani Devis in the villages and streets of India. Election Manifestos and promises have become a part of the democracy rituals, to be kept in the deep freezer till the next election date.
When the policy makers are very effective in postponing the freedom from fear and freedom from want, the very preamble of the Constitution of India gets undermined. The Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of the State policy of the Indian Constitution guarantee the freedom from fear , freedom from want, freedom of association and freedom of belief. The UN Declaration(1986) on the Right to Development clearly articulate development as a human rights, and further reiterate the fulfillment and realization of Economic, Social and Cultural(ESC) rights in realizing development and eradicating poverty.
With appropriate policies of taxation and reordering of expenditure priorities, there is no reason why substantial progress can not be achieved visa-a-vise a set of basic rights, such food and nutrition, drinking water, sanitation, shelter, primary health and basic education. The neglect of economic , social and cultural rights generally leads to increased resource burden for the state to maintain civil and political rights. This means spending on schools, hospitals, creating livelihood and poverty eradication may be the desirable option for any society to spend less on police and prisons.
The policy making process need to move away from a conventional and patronizing approach of the state rooted in the desirability of basic needs, which smacks charity, as if pro-poor policies are a favour done by the to poor and needy. The policy making process should move towards a rights based approach to development: all citizens must have a set of core entitlements which are justiciable and in whose provisioning the state must be held primarily accountable. Obstacles in the way of fulfilling such entitlement must be confronted, and efficient ways of meeting the necessary obligation ought to be explored on an ongoing basis. Such a policy making perspective demands citizens as active participants in development and claim holders , rather than passive beneficiaries of development hand outs.
John Samuel
At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom…..The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and the inequality of opportunity…. So long us there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over….”
Jawaharal Nehru, August 14, 1947
Dharavi Devi, wife of dalit rickshaw puller Lalubabu Paswan , a resident of Ambedkar Colony on the outskirts of Patna, sold her two months old son to a village nearby Patori for six thousand rupees. She used the money to repay her debt. She could not afford to provide medical care to her two-month old child who had fallen ill. Just a couple of months earlier, her other child, two year old Manish, had died as they could not get access to a hospital or doctor. By selling the two months old, Dharani hoped to give him a chance of survival. Her husband, Lalbabu Paswan, who used to earn around 50 rupees a day, is now unable to earn even that meager amount as he is suffering from TB. Neither Lalbabu could access the governments’ free TB treatment programme, nor could the family get covered by the government’s Below Poverty Line (BPL) food schemes. This story is reported in the Media on Sept 14, 2004, fifty seven years after we made the ‘tryst with destiny’ and India woken up to ‘life and freedom’. The story repeats every day, the names and places may change. But not the plight of Dharani Devi, Manish, Lalbabu and the nameless child. They are the ‘broken people’ of India. Millions of children dye in ‘free’ India. Millions go to bed hungry every day. Promises are broken, rights are violated and freedom gets postponed. Whose India is shining?
Millennium Declaration adopted by the UN at the dawn of the new Millennium does not make sense to the millions of poor people in India. When the right to live with dignity is denied to millions, Millennium Development Goals are a millions miles away from the poorest of the poor .So are the National Development Goals, envisaged by the tenth five year plan. In this land of unprecedented GDP growth and ever-growing military expenditure, promises to the poor are meant to be broken. Even after 30 years of ‘Garibi Hatao( banish poverty)’promise, the balance sheet of public policy in the country is littered with broken promises, unimplemented schemes and millions of Dharani Devis in the villages and streets of India. Election Manifestos and promises have become a part of the democracy rituals, to be kept in the deep freezer till the next election date.
When the policy makers are very effective in postponing the freedom from fear and freedom from want, the very preamble of the Constitution of India gets undermined. The Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of the State policy of the Indian Constitution guarantee the freedom from fear , freedom from want, freedom of association and freedom of belief. The UN Declaration(1986) on the Right to Development clearly articulate development as a human rights, and further reiterate the fulfillment and realization of Economic, Social and Cultural(ESC) rights in realizing development and eradicating poverty.
With appropriate policies of taxation and reordering of expenditure priorities, there is no reason why substantial progress can not be achieved visa-a-vise a set of basic rights, such food and nutrition, drinking water, sanitation, shelter, primary health and basic education. The neglect of economic , social and cultural rights generally leads to increased resource burden for the state to maintain civil and political rights. This means spending on schools, hospitals, creating livelihood and poverty eradication may be the desirable option for any society to spend less on police and prisons.
The policy making process need to move away from a conventional and patronizing approach of the state rooted in the desirability of basic needs, which smacks charity, as if pro-poor policies are a favour done by the to poor and needy. The policy making process should move towards a rights based approach to development: all citizens must have a set of core entitlements which are justiciable and in whose provisioning the state must be held primarily accountable. Obstacles in the way of fulfilling such entitlement must be confronted, and efficient ways of meeting the necessary obligation ought to be explored on an ongoing basis. Such a policy making perspective demands citizens as active participants in development and claim holders , rather than passive beneficiaries of development hand outs.
Portrait of a Village
Legends of Choar Mumtaz:
Saleiha Chachi Smiles
John Samuel
Saleiha Chachi kept smiling. Her tobacco stained teeth gave some hints about her age. She must be in her mid sixties or early seventies. She lived at Choar Mumtaz a remote island in the Meghana river of Bangladesh. It took almost eighteen hours of trip by boat to reach Choar Mumtaz- near Gloachipa
Saleiha Chachi is a ray of hope in an otherwise hopeless world of Choar Mumtaz. Saleiha Chachi remembered the horror of the flood in the 1970. As the flood washed away most of the people of Choar Mumtaz- Saleiha Chachi lived to tell the story. She lived to change Choar Mumtaz. She lost her first husband, children and everything in the flood. She was a young and beautiful woman at that time. She found herself stuck on the branch of a tree almost four days after the flood. She still remembered the stench of death. She realized that her house and the places nearby did not exist anymore.
But her will to live prevailed. She slowly picked up the pieces of life, rebuilt again- all by her. Those days there were no NGOs or anyone to support. Saleiha Chachi married again, she has three children. She never had any chance to go to school. But she picked up the Bangla alphabets. Today she runs a school- a ray of hope in Choar Mumtaz. She was one of the few women without the veil in the whole island and she encouraged her daughter in laws and daughter not use veil. Her smile, bright eyes, perspective, her boldness to change the situation within and around her made her a rare women leader in the far away land of Choar Mumtaz.
She inspired me and she signified the thousands of unsung, unheard and invisible leaders- both women and men- who make change happen. Most of them are real volunteers, driven by a sense of purpose and courage of conviction to make change happen within and around them. They speak in their local language. They do not have the luxury to travel out. I was happy to discover Saleiha Chachi and was happy when Actionaid Bangladesh decided to felicitate her during its twentieth anniversary. That must be one of the very few times she traveled out.
Choar Mumtaz is in a time wrap. It seemed like visiting a village in the 1970s. There is no electricity in Choar Mumtaz, no telephone, no hospital, not many roads and no car. The elite of Choar Mumtaz travel by bicycles. Choar Mumtaz looked beautiful in the afternoon- like a green patch in the midst of the shining Meghana River. Choar Mumtaz boasts a weekly market- where goods from the mainland Bangladesh reach by boats. I saw a rather impressive poster of Sadaam Hussain- he looked like a film hero- in the main barbershop at the gateway of Choar Mumtaz. It seems to be a poster appeared in some magazines- Saddam with a gun! The barber knew that the photo was that of Saddam. But he did not know what happened to him. Somehow Saddam sneaked in to Choar Mumtaz in a small boat as a myth…the handsome macho man with a gun- challenging all the Kafirs (unbelievers)! It hardly mattered to the barber whether he was still ruling or captured or dead! In fact Saddam was the only visible symbol of globalisation there. Choar Mumtaz too needed heroes and their own myth. Barbershop seemed to be right place for that!
There is one pharmacy and a young “doctor” who runs it. The ‘doctor” is one of the enlightened souls of the village- as he claimed that he finished school and learned ‘pharmacy’ in Calcutta. He was the answer to all usual ailments. He was ready with quick diagnosis and medicines that he sold. His 10X 10 small room was the one and only primary health care system. I met the only globalised man during an evening walk in the main street. He showed off his own little English- to the wonder of around ten people who were curious to hear our conversation. He was the only “engineer” in the town and maintains few generators owned by the ‘elites”. He said that he worked in the ‘Gulf’ and knew about the ‘world’ quite a bit. He also supported the electric generators and “projector” in the lone entertainment centre – a thatched cinema hall. The young people of Choar Mumtaz sneaked out in the evening to catch a glimpse of Bollywood!
The weekly market is the one and only market place as well as a sort of public sphere. People across the island come here to sell, buy, to exchange and to entertain themselves. Market is a bit of celebration in the rather quite island On the side of the market, there was a cattle market- around hundred cows, goats and bullocks wait impatiently for buyers! The most astonishing thing was that I could not find many women at the market. Even the few who came covered their face, behind the black veil.
On the way back from the market in the evening, I saw a rather well made house, by the standard of the village. My friend told me that it was the house of Haji Sattar Chacha. Haji Sattar Chacha was the only man in the villages who could go to Mecca for Hajj. He is relatively well off- with farming. A short, dark man, with white beard and tobacco stained teeth. He became a father at the age of 72. His third wife was in her twenties and his son was four years! He told me the legends of Char Mumtaz- the flood, the farm, the people, the market, his trip to Mecca and development. He gave zakat and he started the first high school: Haji Sattar High School - the lone high school in the whole village. With a young wife, a little son, white beard and a school to his credit, Sattar Chacha looked a happy man- who lived a happy life in lush green of Char Mumtaz!
Choar Mumtaz looked beautiful. Choar Mumtaz looked Sad as well. A sad beauty standing alone in the midst of an unpredictable river – a danger concealed deep beneath the silver-green waves and flow. A soothing wind. No pollution. Not much noise. The sound of the flowing river and the sight of naked children running around in the green. The smell of the fertile earth. The smile of the people on the street. No police. No State! No globalisation! I went to the local Kali Temple with few young Muslim friends. There is no discussion on secularism and pluralism! But few Hindu families happily coexisted with majority Muslim population. Choar Mumtaz seemed to be blissfully unaware!
Choar Mumtaz almost looked like an imaginary island- where the big world beyond the vastness of the river- commenced at Golachipa and ended with Dhaka. The lone NGO is the sign of “development” in the island. I stayed at their place- a mix of shelter home and office. That one of the few concrete constructions among scattered huts in the midst of plantains, bamboo and coconut trees.
There are few hundreds of thousands of unsung and unheard leaders in such villages across South Asia and indeed across the world. They may not have the “development funda’ or jargon or a theoretical or strategic master plan to “deliver development”. But they act with courage of conviction. They bring together people. They help to mobilize resources. They plan with people and make things happen- help to get water, build schools, and challenge unjust practice and reform society and culture. Saleiha Chachi made me humble. She taught me a couple of lessons about survival, development and change.
The tragedy of development discourse is that the key proponents, experts and missionaries of modern development discourse often spent more time in seminar rooms and board rooms. Those who take decisions regarding development, women’s rights, human rights, and governance are often far away from the lives of the real poor people in the real lives. They often derive power from their sleek ready made “power- point” presentations rather than the power of experience or power of people. Such encounters with the real lives of real poor people make me still restless about my own validity and role in relations to hundreds of thousands of Saleiha Chachies in the world.
For me trip to Choar Mumtaz was like a pilgrimage – a cleansing act, a spiritual exercise and offer of myself to learn, to unlearn, to feel, to touch, to smell, to feel my own roots- an act of nostalgia. It reminded me of my own beginning in the villages as an invisible and inspired teenager who passionately wanted to make change happen- without any knowledge of development and NGOs. It brought back the nostalgia of my living for two years in the remote tribal villages in Mizoram of India. It reminded me of my work with slum dwellers in Pune.
Legends of Choar Mumtaz stirred me. The legends keep growing within me, make me feel and imagine. The legends that keep making me restless!
On my way back from the legends of Choar Mumtaz, sitting on the deck of the boat looking at mild waves of the Meghana River, I realized: I feel therefore I am; I think therefore I do!
.
Saleiha Chachi Smiles
John Samuel
Saleiha Chachi kept smiling. Her tobacco stained teeth gave some hints about her age. She must be in her mid sixties or early seventies. She lived at Choar Mumtaz a remote island in the Meghana river of Bangladesh. It took almost eighteen hours of trip by boat to reach Choar Mumtaz- near Gloachipa
Saleiha Chachi is a ray of hope in an otherwise hopeless world of Choar Mumtaz. Saleiha Chachi remembered the horror of the flood in the 1970. As the flood washed away most of the people of Choar Mumtaz- Saleiha Chachi lived to tell the story. She lived to change Choar Mumtaz. She lost her first husband, children and everything in the flood. She was a young and beautiful woman at that time. She found herself stuck on the branch of a tree almost four days after the flood. She still remembered the stench of death. She realized that her house and the places nearby did not exist anymore.
But her will to live prevailed. She slowly picked up the pieces of life, rebuilt again- all by her. Those days there were no NGOs or anyone to support. Saleiha Chachi married again, she has three children. She never had any chance to go to school. But she picked up the Bangla alphabets. Today she runs a school- a ray of hope in Choar Mumtaz. She was one of the few women without the veil in the whole island and she encouraged her daughter in laws and daughter not use veil. Her smile, bright eyes, perspective, her boldness to change the situation within and around her made her a rare women leader in the far away land of Choar Mumtaz.
She inspired me and she signified the thousands of unsung, unheard and invisible leaders- both women and men- who make change happen. Most of them are real volunteers, driven by a sense of purpose and courage of conviction to make change happen within and around them. They speak in their local language. They do not have the luxury to travel out. I was happy to discover Saleiha Chachi and was happy when Actionaid Bangladesh decided to felicitate her during its twentieth anniversary. That must be one of the very few times she traveled out.
Choar Mumtaz is in a time wrap. It seemed like visiting a village in the 1970s. There is no electricity in Choar Mumtaz, no telephone, no hospital, not many roads and no car. The elite of Choar Mumtaz travel by bicycles. Choar Mumtaz looked beautiful in the afternoon- like a green patch in the midst of the shining Meghana River. Choar Mumtaz boasts a weekly market- where goods from the mainland Bangladesh reach by boats. I saw a rather impressive poster of Sadaam Hussain- he looked like a film hero- in the main barbershop at the gateway of Choar Mumtaz. It seems to be a poster appeared in some magazines- Saddam with a gun! The barber knew that the photo was that of Saddam. But he did not know what happened to him. Somehow Saddam sneaked in to Choar Mumtaz in a small boat as a myth…the handsome macho man with a gun- challenging all the Kafirs (unbelievers)! It hardly mattered to the barber whether he was still ruling or captured or dead! In fact Saddam was the only visible symbol of globalisation there. Choar Mumtaz too needed heroes and their own myth. Barbershop seemed to be right place for that!
There is one pharmacy and a young “doctor” who runs it. The ‘doctor” is one of the enlightened souls of the village- as he claimed that he finished school and learned ‘pharmacy’ in Calcutta. He was the answer to all usual ailments. He was ready with quick diagnosis and medicines that he sold. His 10X 10 small room was the one and only primary health care system. I met the only globalised man during an evening walk in the main street. He showed off his own little English- to the wonder of around ten people who were curious to hear our conversation. He was the only “engineer” in the town and maintains few generators owned by the ‘elites”. He said that he worked in the ‘Gulf’ and knew about the ‘world’ quite a bit. He also supported the electric generators and “projector” in the lone entertainment centre – a thatched cinema hall. The young people of Choar Mumtaz sneaked out in the evening to catch a glimpse of Bollywood!
The weekly market is the one and only market place as well as a sort of public sphere. People across the island come here to sell, buy, to exchange and to entertain themselves. Market is a bit of celebration in the rather quite island On the side of the market, there was a cattle market- around hundred cows, goats and bullocks wait impatiently for buyers! The most astonishing thing was that I could not find many women at the market. Even the few who came covered their face, behind the black veil.
On the way back from the market in the evening, I saw a rather well made house, by the standard of the village. My friend told me that it was the house of Haji Sattar Chacha. Haji Sattar Chacha was the only man in the villages who could go to Mecca for Hajj. He is relatively well off- with farming. A short, dark man, with white beard and tobacco stained teeth. He became a father at the age of 72. His third wife was in her twenties and his son was four years! He told me the legends of Char Mumtaz- the flood, the farm, the people, the market, his trip to Mecca and development. He gave zakat and he started the first high school: Haji Sattar High School - the lone high school in the whole village. With a young wife, a little son, white beard and a school to his credit, Sattar Chacha looked a happy man- who lived a happy life in lush green of Char Mumtaz!
Choar Mumtaz looked beautiful. Choar Mumtaz looked Sad as well. A sad beauty standing alone in the midst of an unpredictable river – a danger concealed deep beneath the silver-green waves and flow. A soothing wind. No pollution. Not much noise. The sound of the flowing river and the sight of naked children running around in the green. The smell of the fertile earth. The smile of the people on the street. No police. No State! No globalisation! I went to the local Kali Temple with few young Muslim friends. There is no discussion on secularism and pluralism! But few Hindu families happily coexisted with majority Muslim population. Choar Mumtaz seemed to be blissfully unaware!
Choar Mumtaz almost looked like an imaginary island- where the big world beyond the vastness of the river- commenced at Golachipa and ended with Dhaka. The lone NGO is the sign of “development” in the island. I stayed at their place- a mix of shelter home and office. That one of the few concrete constructions among scattered huts in the midst of plantains, bamboo and coconut trees.
There are few hundreds of thousands of unsung and unheard leaders in such villages across South Asia and indeed across the world. They may not have the “development funda’ or jargon or a theoretical or strategic master plan to “deliver development”. But they act with courage of conviction. They bring together people. They help to mobilize resources. They plan with people and make things happen- help to get water, build schools, and challenge unjust practice and reform society and culture. Saleiha Chachi made me humble. She taught me a couple of lessons about survival, development and change.
The tragedy of development discourse is that the key proponents, experts and missionaries of modern development discourse often spent more time in seminar rooms and board rooms. Those who take decisions regarding development, women’s rights, human rights, and governance are often far away from the lives of the real poor people in the real lives. They often derive power from their sleek ready made “power- point” presentations rather than the power of experience or power of people. Such encounters with the real lives of real poor people make me still restless about my own validity and role in relations to hundreds of thousands of Saleiha Chachies in the world.
For me trip to Choar Mumtaz was like a pilgrimage – a cleansing act, a spiritual exercise and offer of myself to learn, to unlearn, to feel, to touch, to smell, to feel my own roots- an act of nostalgia. It reminded me of my own beginning in the villages as an invisible and inspired teenager who passionately wanted to make change happen- without any knowledge of development and NGOs. It brought back the nostalgia of my living for two years in the remote tribal villages in Mizoram of India. It reminded me of my work with slum dwellers in Pune.
Legends of Choar Mumtaz stirred me. The legends keep growing within me, make me feel and imagine. The legends that keep making me restless!
On my way back from the legends of Choar Mumtaz, sitting on the deck of the boat looking at mild waves of the Meghana River, I realized: I feel therefore I am; I think therefore I do!
.
Globalisation and Trade: Interview
firstperson
John Samuel
The alternate globe
WTO is offering no level playing field. Unequal economies are being forced to compete under a system in which the United States, European Union and Japan are primarily calling the shots.
By Muhammad Badar Alam
John Samuel is Bangkok-based international director of Actionaid International, an organisation working on development and human rights issues in more than 45 countries. He leads the organisation's work on the issues of governance and democracy, besides running its affairs in the Asia-Pacific region. He brings to Actionaid a vast experience spanning more than twenty years in the fields like social mobilisation, human rights and social justice advocacy, public policy research and institution building.
Before taking up his current assignment, John played a major role in setting up National Centre for Advocacy Studies in India and served as its chief executive till 2003. He is also the founder and co-editor of internet-based Infochange News and Features, one of the most frequented websites in South Asia.
John, also an adviser to the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals Campaign and a member of the civil society advisory board of the Commonwealth Foundation, served a stint as a member of Planning Commission of India's working group on governance. He is one of the co-founders and co-chairperson of Global Call to Action Against Poverty, a conglomerate of 15,000 organisations from across the world.
John, who has a multi-disciplinary academic background, has been a fellow at Washington-based the Advocacy Institute and a visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.
He talked to The News on Sunday last month on the sidelines of World Trade Organization's biennial ministerial conference in Hong Kong. Excerpts of his interview follow:
The News on Sunday: If you believe WTO (World Trade Organization) is not good for people in the developing and least developed countries, then what do you think can be an alternative?
John Samuel: WTO in its present form and mode needs to be challenged. Of course the world needs a multilateral trading system to ensure just and fair trade but the rules of the game in the present WTO negotiations -- Agreement on Agriculture, General Agreement on Trade in Services, Non-Agriculture Market Access, Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights -- are all being manipulated to suit the needs of the rich countries. Though WTO is supposed to be based on a one-nation-one-vote system, in practice poor countries are being pushed to open their markets and eliminate their subsidies while the rich countries have kept their markets protected. They still provide annual subsidies worth $ 300 billion to the exporters of their agriculture produce.
So, the crux of the matter lies in the fact the WTO is offering no level playing field. Unequal economies are being forced to compete under a system in which the United States, European Union and Japan are primarily calling the shots. The only counterweight to these powerful countries available under the current WTO negotiation process is a group of around 20 developing countries called G-20 which is led by advanced developing countries like India and Brazil. Even this group does not adequately address the issues facing the least developed countries.
We are not talking about creating alternatives to WTO per se. We are rather seeking an alternative to the current WTO process. If WTO needs to survive, the present unjust rules and practices need to be redefined in a manner that enables the poor countries to nurture their agriculture and industry. What is needed is a much more just and fair trade than now to alleviate poverty and induce the respect and observance of human rights.
TNS: But such revolutions as you are talking about seem no longer possible. Even if they are, don't you think that the opposition to WTO ends up supporting the national industry and business of individual countries?
JS: I don't think that revolutions are no longer possible. Only the character and nature of the revolution has changed. The information and communication revolution that swept the world in 1990s, has changed the rules of the game. Today millions of people across the world get mobilised through the internet. It is one step forward in the direction of a revolution when, courtesy the internet-induced change, thousands of poor women, HIV affected people and farmers, who have otherwise never stepped out of their houses, end up protesting in front of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (the venue of WTO meeting). When more than 500,000 people walked across all countries of South Asia to challenge the unjust trade regime, they are all creating a revolution by other means. Revolution is all about challenging the unequal and unjust power relations which are a threat to justice everywhere. The fact that millions of people marched against the war in Iraq in an unprecedented way in the developed and the developing countries, the fact that people from 150 countries came together in World Social Forum in Bombay, the fact that more than 15,000 organisations -- including trade unions, faith-based groups, human rights groups -- have decided to work under the umbrella of Global Call to Action Against Poverty show that there is an unprecedented discontent and antagonism to the present unilateral and unjust world order. So, it is not that there is no action taking place. In fact there is plenty of it and most of it unprecedented. Only the media pretends not to have seen it.
On the second part of the question, the opposition to WTO does not necessarily mean support for national industry and business. Most of the people protesting belong to civil society organisations which are fighting for justice. For instance, many of the Indians who have come to Hong Kong are Dalits. They are the poorest of the poor.
But it is also important to develop national industry and business for self-reliant and vibrant economies so that they are not poached by huge multinational corporations. Don't forget that at the end of 19th century, Asia accounted for 60 per cent of world trade. Look at its share today: Compared to what it was in the 19th century, it is negligible. Also don't forget that the rich countries have protected their industries for 300 years until their markets got completely saturated. Without the markets in Asia and the global south, many of the transnational companies will be closed down. So, supporting and protecting the national industry and business is nothing new. South Korea is a classical example of how protection and development go hand in hand. For long, the country has protected their industry before opening up their market recently. If it hadn't done so, it wouldn't have been able to develop, for instance, their own car. They would have rather become a market for the Japanese car. Also, emerging economies like China and India are on the bargaining table for global trade because they have a robust industrial base.
Regulation is another important factor. National companies can be regulated much more easily than multinational ones. The former are more accountable to their people and the government than the latter which are too illusory and amorphous to allow effective regulation.
Industry and business should be accountable to people, both as consumers and communities. For instance, in India Tatas are one of the biggest corporation and their major market is India itself. They provide millions of direct and indirect jobs as well as invest in the social and academic development of the country. Toyota and Ford would never have done that for India.
National industry is not necessarily another word for everything bad. It is the free trade missionaries of the multinational corporations who project it as inefficient, incapable and incompetitive. Facts from India, China and South Korea belie these projections.
TNS: Critics claim that the opponents of WTO are the opponents of development and growth. They want to take the world back to the pre-industrial age. What's your reaction?
JS: This is one of the biggest myths propounded by the neo-liberal free trade missionaries. Anybody who challenges the unjust policies of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and WTO will be dumped as anti-globalist, anti-development and often anti-nationalist. Any dissidence is suppressed or challenged in the name of globalisation, development and national interest. This is totally against the facts. The people who challenge WTO are not just human rights and social justice activists. In fact, poor countries' blocs like G-20 and G-33 also challenge the current trading regime. At least on this one point most of the poor countries and their civil societies have a convergence of ideas. Civil society and governments, for instance, all ask for the elimination of agriculture subsidies being provided by the developed countries to their farmers. How can you say that all G-20 countries are anti-development?
Before trade liberalisation, Indian economy grew by an average of 5.6 per cent between 1980-1900. Even in the 1990-2000, the average growth has been 5.6 per cent. So, where is the miracle growth that liberalisation will bring?
There are only two per cent people in the developing and the least developed countries, primarily in the services sector, who are the beneficiaries of north-centric neo-liberal globalisation. These people are elites who run media and governments and increasingly they run academic institutions. In a sense, they tend to become public opinion-makers. So, anyone who questions the hegemony of these national and international elites will be dubbed as anti-development, anti-globalisation and anti-nationalism.
I am not against a fair and just globalisation. If there had been no globalisation of people, communities and communications, both of us would not have been sitting in Hong Kong, talking about issues that affect the poor people of both Pakistan and India. I don't mind globalisation as far as it brings about a unity against the compartmentalisation in the name of the nation state.
TNS: The critics also say that you are using the tools of globalisation, like information
technology, internet and cheap international travel, to mobilise against WTO. What's your view?
JS: Yes, of course. Information technology, internet and cheap travel is nobody's favour to the world. These tools are not developed by one country but by the people across the world. There is nothing like an American or European technology. In research and development, there are hundreds of thousands of Asians who are doing commendable work. So, we will certainly use these tools. It's like using language.
Tools are as good or bad as the ones who use them. Each of these tools can be used both for peace and war. We are not against globalisation. We are against an unjust, unequal globalisation pushed by a few rich countries. We strongly support globalisation which leads to peace, solidarity, justice and inter-faith and inter-culture dialogue. We don't support globalisation which induces war, economic plunder and discrimination.
TNS: These are very ambitious political ideals. Do you think organisations like Actionaid have the ideological and organisational paraphernalia to achieve them?
JS: Action Aid international is a global platform as well as an international development organisation. We are, however, just another ripple in the waves of change. We derive inspiration and strength from the poor and ordinary people across the world and we work with compatible civil society alliances that stands for peace, justice, human development and human rights. We have learnt through Global Call Against Poverty that millions of citizens across the world can be mobilised if you have a just cause to advocate. More than 250,000 people marched in Edinburgh in 2006, asking G-8 countries for trade justice, for debt cancellation and for a better and more accountable mechanism for giving aid.
It's in this togetherness of people and communities across the world that we have a hope for a just and equitable world where everyone goes to bed with dinner, where every woman enjoys dignity and where the last person on the earth can elaborate his or her own sense of freedom. People in India and Pakistan need to work together in the realisation of this dream. South Asia has the capacity to eradicate poverty among its people. We have the largest number of educated people in the world as well as the largest number of the poor. We have the largest number of millionaires as well as the largest number of slum dwellers. Last year, growth in South Asia's military expenditure was the largest in the world. Whose freedom this expenditure is supposed to protect if hundreds of millions of our people are forced to sleep on empty stomachs. If we cut our military expenditure, if we support each other to nurture our industry and market, we will be one of the most prosperous regions in the world, with a huge market and competitive technological base. Only, our leaders need to be imaginative to think about a South Asian community that can nurture a just globalisation, eradicating our own poverty and the poverty across the world.
John Samuel
The alternate globe
WTO is offering no level playing field. Unequal economies are being forced to compete under a system in which the United States, European Union and Japan are primarily calling the shots.
By Muhammad Badar Alam
John Samuel is Bangkok-based international director of Actionaid International, an organisation working on development and human rights issues in more than 45 countries. He leads the organisation's work on the issues of governance and democracy, besides running its affairs in the Asia-Pacific region. He brings to Actionaid a vast experience spanning more than twenty years in the fields like social mobilisation, human rights and social justice advocacy, public policy research and institution building.
Before taking up his current assignment, John played a major role in setting up National Centre for Advocacy Studies in India and served as its chief executive till 2003. He is also the founder and co-editor of internet-based Infochange News and Features, one of the most frequented websites in South Asia.
John, also an adviser to the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals Campaign and a member of the civil society advisory board of the Commonwealth Foundation, served a stint as a member of Planning Commission of India's working group on governance. He is one of the co-founders and co-chairperson of Global Call to Action Against Poverty, a conglomerate of 15,000 organisations from across the world.
John, who has a multi-disciplinary academic background, has been a fellow at Washington-based the Advocacy Institute and a visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.
He talked to The News on Sunday last month on the sidelines of World Trade Organization's biennial ministerial conference in Hong Kong. Excerpts of his interview follow:
The News on Sunday: If you believe WTO (World Trade Organization) is not good for people in the developing and least developed countries, then what do you think can be an alternative?
John Samuel: WTO in its present form and mode needs to be challenged. Of course the world needs a multilateral trading system to ensure just and fair trade but the rules of the game in the present WTO negotiations -- Agreement on Agriculture, General Agreement on Trade in Services, Non-Agriculture Market Access, Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights -- are all being manipulated to suit the needs of the rich countries. Though WTO is supposed to be based on a one-nation-one-vote system, in practice poor countries are being pushed to open their markets and eliminate their subsidies while the rich countries have kept their markets protected. They still provide annual subsidies worth $ 300 billion to the exporters of their agriculture produce.
So, the crux of the matter lies in the fact the WTO is offering no level playing field. Unequal economies are being forced to compete under a system in which the United States, European Union and Japan are primarily calling the shots. The only counterweight to these powerful countries available under the current WTO negotiation process is a group of around 20 developing countries called G-20 which is led by advanced developing countries like India and Brazil. Even this group does not adequately address the issues facing the least developed countries.
We are not talking about creating alternatives to WTO per se. We are rather seeking an alternative to the current WTO process. If WTO needs to survive, the present unjust rules and practices need to be redefined in a manner that enables the poor countries to nurture their agriculture and industry. What is needed is a much more just and fair trade than now to alleviate poverty and induce the respect and observance of human rights.
TNS: But such revolutions as you are talking about seem no longer possible. Even if they are, don't you think that the opposition to WTO ends up supporting the national industry and business of individual countries?
JS: I don't think that revolutions are no longer possible. Only the character and nature of the revolution has changed. The information and communication revolution that swept the world in 1990s, has changed the rules of the game. Today millions of people across the world get mobilised through the internet. It is one step forward in the direction of a revolution when, courtesy the internet-induced change, thousands of poor women, HIV affected people and farmers, who have otherwise never stepped out of their houses, end up protesting in front of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (the venue of WTO meeting). When more than 500,000 people walked across all countries of South Asia to challenge the unjust trade regime, they are all creating a revolution by other means. Revolution is all about challenging the unequal and unjust power relations which are a threat to justice everywhere. The fact that millions of people marched against the war in Iraq in an unprecedented way in the developed and the developing countries, the fact that people from 150 countries came together in World Social Forum in Bombay, the fact that more than 15,000 organisations -- including trade unions, faith-based groups, human rights groups -- have decided to work under the umbrella of Global Call to Action Against Poverty show that there is an unprecedented discontent and antagonism to the present unilateral and unjust world order. So, it is not that there is no action taking place. In fact there is plenty of it and most of it unprecedented. Only the media pretends not to have seen it.
On the second part of the question, the opposition to WTO does not necessarily mean support for national industry and business. Most of the people protesting belong to civil society organisations which are fighting for justice. For instance, many of the Indians who have come to Hong Kong are Dalits. They are the poorest of the poor.
But it is also important to develop national industry and business for self-reliant and vibrant economies so that they are not poached by huge multinational corporations. Don't forget that at the end of 19th century, Asia accounted for 60 per cent of world trade. Look at its share today: Compared to what it was in the 19th century, it is negligible. Also don't forget that the rich countries have protected their industries for 300 years until their markets got completely saturated. Without the markets in Asia and the global south, many of the transnational companies will be closed down. So, supporting and protecting the national industry and business is nothing new. South Korea is a classical example of how protection and development go hand in hand. For long, the country has protected their industry before opening up their market recently. If it hadn't done so, it wouldn't have been able to develop, for instance, their own car. They would have rather become a market for the Japanese car. Also, emerging economies like China and India are on the bargaining table for global trade because they have a robust industrial base.
Regulation is another important factor. National companies can be regulated much more easily than multinational ones. The former are more accountable to their people and the government than the latter which are too illusory and amorphous to allow effective regulation.
Industry and business should be accountable to people, both as consumers and communities. For instance, in India Tatas are one of the biggest corporation and their major market is India itself. They provide millions of direct and indirect jobs as well as invest in the social and academic development of the country. Toyota and Ford would never have done that for India.
National industry is not necessarily another word for everything bad. It is the free trade missionaries of the multinational corporations who project it as inefficient, incapable and incompetitive. Facts from India, China and South Korea belie these projections.
TNS: Critics claim that the opponents of WTO are the opponents of development and growth. They want to take the world back to the pre-industrial age. What's your reaction?
JS: This is one of the biggest myths propounded by the neo-liberal free trade missionaries. Anybody who challenges the unjust policies of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and WTO will be dumped as anti-globalist, anti-development and often anti-nationalist. Any dissidence is suppressed or challenged in the name of globalisation, development and national interest. This is totally against the facts. The people who challenge WTO are not just human rights and social justice activists. In fact, poor countries' blocs like G-20 and G-33 also challenge the current trading regime. At least on this one point most of the poor countries and their civil societies have a convergence of ideas. Civil society and governments, for instance, all ask for the elimination of agriculture subsidies being provided by the developed countries to their farmers. How can you say that all G-20 countries are anti-development?
Before trade liberalisation, Indian economy grew by an average of 5.6 per cent between 1980-1900. Even in the 1990-2000, the average growth has been 5.6 per cent. So, where is the miracle growth that liberalisation will bring?
There are only two per cent people in the developing and the least developed countries, primarily in the services sector, who are the beneficiaries of north-centric neo-liberal globalisation. These people are elites who run media and governments and increasingly they run academic institutions. In a sense, they tend to become public opinion-makers. So, anyone who questions the hegemony of these national and international elites will be dubbed as anti-development, anti-globalisation and anti-nationalism.
I am not against a fair and just globalisation. If there had been no globalisation of people, communities and communications, both of us would not have been sitting in Hong Kong, talking about issues that affect the poor people of both Pakistan and India. I don't mind globalisation as far as it brings about a unity against the compartmentalisation in the name of the nation state.
TNS: The critics also say that you are using the tools of globalisation, like information
technology, internet and cheap international travel, to mobilise against WTO. What's your view?
JS: Yes, of course. Information technology, internet and cheap travel is nobody's favour to the world. These tools are not developed by one country but by the people across the world. There is nothing like an American or European technology. In research and development, there are hundreds of thousands of Asians who are doing commendable work. So, we will certainly use these tools. It's like using language.
Tools are as good or bad as the ones who use them. Each of these tools can be used both for peace and war. We are not against globalisation. We are against an unjust, unequal globalisation pushed by a few rich countries. We strongly support globalisation which leads to peace, solidarity, justice and inter-faith and inter-culture dialogue. We don't support globalisation which induces war, economic plunder and discrimination.
TNS: These are very ambitious political ideals. Do you think organisations like Actionaid have the ideological and organisational paraphernalia to achieve them?
JS: Action Aid international is a global platform as well as an international development organisation. We are, however, just another ripple in the waves of change. We derive inspiration and strength from the poor and ordinary people across the world and we work with compatible civil society alliances that stands for peace, justice, human development and human rights. We have learnt through Global Call Against Poverty that millions of citizens across the world can be mobilised if you have a just cause to advocate. More than 250,000 people marched in Edinburgh in 2006, asking G-8 countries for trade justice, for debt cancellation and for a better and more accountable mechanism for giving aid.
It's in this togetherness of people and communities across the world that we have a hope for a just and equitable world where everyone goes to bed with dinner, where every woman enjoys dignity and where the last person on the earth can elaborate his or her own sense of freedom. People in India and Pakistan need to work together in the realisation of this dream. South Asia has the capacity to eradicate poverty among its people. We have the largest number of educated people in the world as well as the largest number of the poor. We have the largest number of millionaires as well as the largest number of slum dwellers. Last year, growth in South Asia's military expenditure was the largest in the world. Whose freedom this expenditure is supposed to protect if hundreds of millions of our people are forced to sleep on empty stomachs. If we cut our military expenditure, if we support each other to nurture our industry and market, we will be one of the most prosperous regions in the world, with a huge market and competitive technological base. Only, our leaders need to be imaginative to think about a South Asian community that can nurture a just globalisation, eradicating our own poverty and the poverty across the world.
Towards Democratisation
In search of Democratisation
John Samuel
Subversion has become the hallmark of the postmodern politics- where everyone only has a user value. Politics is less becoming less of an expression of intrinsic values or beliefs. It is has become an exercise in unethical instrumentalism to control the Sate and Market. The very ideal and idea of democracy is being subverted by the political elites, political parties and those technocrats who swear by democracy and undermine the very democratic process in a million ways!
Democracy works when citizens and the most marginalized people have the capability to ask questions, seek accountability from the state and participate in the process of governance. Democracy becomes meaningful when people can shape the state and the state, in turn, is capable of creating enabling social, political, economic and legal conditions wherein people can exercise their rights and realize the freedom from fear and want.
It is not merely elections or universal adult franchise that defines the process of democracy. While constitutional framework and human rights guarantees can form the grammar of democracy, it is always people and the ethical quality of political process that make democracy work. Democracy involves dignity, diversity, dissent, development, participation and accountability. Unless even the last person can celebrate her sense of dignity, exercise democratic dissent and inform and involve in the process of governance and development, democracy becomes an empty rhetoric. Democracy dies where discrimination begins and politics of exclusion takes root.
The most visible and dominant discourse on democracy is derived from the Athenian legacy (where women and slaves were excluded from the very process) of western- liberal democratic theory and the ideas that emerged during the enlightenment. So there is a need to reconstruct a pluralistic history of the process of democratization in other cultures as well as ethical traditions such as Buddhism and Islam. Amartya Sen in his recent book, The Argumentative Indian, discussed the various trajectories and histories of public argument and ethical governance (particularly that during the reign of Ashoka and later by the Moghal Emperor Akbar). Some of the most inspiring experiments of grassroots democratization and the claiming democracy at the national level emerged during the struggle against colonialism and apartheid. In the good governance, democratization and “rule of law” discussion there is hardly any mention about the freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela.
The process of Democratization is also a function of the culture and history at a given point in time. However, such histories and experience are often ignored or marginalized by the academic institutions and other proponents of the Euro- American model of liberal democracy. The very political economy of knowledge production, dissemination and marketing is still controlled by the privileged institutions and think tanks in the global north. Hence most of us are taught a privileged history and model of western-liberal democracy.
Democratization is a political as well an ethical process based on human dignity as well as empowerment of people wherein they participate, irrespective of gender, race, identity or age, in those decisions and institutions that affect their lives. Democratization involves devolution of power in all institutional arenas. This also means democratization of information, knowledge, economic resources and technology. Thus the ethics and practice of democratization is relevant from all institutional settings from family, to the state and global institutions. Democratization as political and ethical value depend on the equality of all human persons, and their rights to participate in social and political process, rights to development and rights to live with dignity.
While democratization is more of an ethical and political value, democracy is political System of government... True democratic governance requires both the process of democratization and the effectiveness of democracy as a political system, based on the Rule of Law and accountable institutions.
. The present predicament of the discourse on democracy is well captured by John Gaventa: “Around the world, the forms and meaning of democratic participation are under contestation. In Iraq, Fallujah is bombed in the name of making the country ready for democracy; in Indonesia, Ukraine and United States, voters and observers are gripped in debates and protest against electoral democracy; in Cancun and other global venues, streets are occupied by those demanding more democracy in global processes; in small villages and neighborhoods and grassroots groups are claiming their places in local democratic spaces. Democracy is at once the language of military power, neoliberal market forces, political parties, donor agencies and NGOs. What is going on?” He further elaborates: “the way to deal with crisis of democracy or democratic deficit, is to extend democracy itself- that is to go beyond traditional understanding of representative democracy, through creating and supporting more participatory spaces of citizens engagement, which in turn are built up on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship”
A substantive democratic governance demands radicalizing democracy, through the deepening and widening of the process of democratization of state and all institutions of governance. Social movements and civil society organizations, which act as counterbalances and counterweights to the dominant powers of state and non-state actors, have an important role in deepening democratic process and expand the spaces wherein poor and excluded people can participate as well as challenge the process of governance. Power relationship is inherent in the process of governance at various levels.
The process of democratization has both grassroots and global dimensions. Such a process will necessarily involves the empowerment of women, minorities and the disenfranchised people, due to historical of structural reasons. Democratization at the global level requires free flow of information, knowledge and coordinated action and a shared sense of global solidarity based on the values of Justice, equality and human rights. Such a sense of solidarity can be built in the public sphere through “communicative action”. Habermas explains the conditions for reaching a common understanding: “I speak of communicative action when the action orientations of the participating actors are not coordinated via egocentric calculations of success, but through acts of understanding. Participants are not primarily oriented towards their own success in communicative action: they pursue their individual goal under the condition that they can coordinate their action plans on the basis of shared definitions of the situation”. Such a shared sense of communicative action also implies argumentative rationatinality, where in participants in a discourse are open to be persuaded by the better argument and the relations of power and hierarchies recede in the background. The goal of such communicative action is to reach reasoned consensus. Sense of solidarity, a sense of identifying with fellow human beings with a sense of shared bond of humanness and dignity, can make the process of democratization deliberate, creative and participatory.
John Samuel
Subversion has become the hallmark of the postmodern politics- where everyone only has a user value. Politics is less becoming less of an expression of intrinsic values or beliefs. It is has become an exercise in unethical instrumentalism to control the Sate and Market. The very ideal and idea of democracy is being subverted by the political elites, political parties and those technocrats who swear by democracy and undermine the very democratic process in a million ways!
Democracy works when citizens and the most marginalized people have the capability to ask questions, seek accountability from the state and participate in the process of governance. Democracy becomes meaningful when people can shape the state and the state, in turn, is capable of creating enabling social, political, economic and legal conditions wherein people can exercise their rights and realize the freedom from fear and want.
It is not merely elections or universal adult franchise that defines the process of democracy. While constitutional framework and human rights guarantees can form the grammar of democracy, it is always people and the ethical quality of political process that make democracy work. Democracy involves dignity, diversity, dissent, development, participation and accountability. Unless even the last person can celebrate her sense of dignity, exercise democratic dissent and inform and involve in the process of governance and development, democracy becomes an empty rhetoric. Democracy dies where discrimination begins and politics of exclusion takes root.
The most visible and dominant discourse on democracy is derived from the Athenian legacy (where women and slaves were excluded from the very process) of western- liberal democratic theory and the ideas that emerged during the enlightenment. So there is a need to reconstruct a pluralistic history of the process of democratization in other cultures as well as ethical traditions such as Buddhism and Islam. Amartya Sen in his recent book, The Argumentative Indian, discussed the various trajectories and histories of public argument and ethical governance (particularly that during the reign of Ashoka and later by the Moghal Emperor Akbar). Some of the most inspiring experiments of grassroots democratization and the claiming democracy at the national level emerged during the struggle against colonialism and apartheid. In the good governance, democratization and “rule of law” discussion there is hardly any mention about the freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela.
The process of Democratization is also a function of the culture and history at a given point in time. However, such histories and experience are often ignored or marginalized by the academic institutions and other proponents of the Euro- American model of liberal democracy. The very political economy of knowledge production, dissemination and marketing is still controlled by the privileged institutions and think tanks in the global north. Hence most of us are taught a privileged history and model of western-liberal democracy.
Democratization is a political as well an ethical process based on human dignity as well as empowerment of people wherein they participate, irrespective of gender, race, identity or age, in those decisions and institutions that affect their lives. Democratization involves devolution of power in all institutional arenas. This also means democratization of information, knowledge, economic resources and technology. Thus the ethics and practice of democratization is relevant from all institutional settings from family, to the state and global institutions. Democratization as political and ethical value depend on the equality of all human persons, and their rights to participate in social and political process, rights to development and rights to live with dignity.
While democratization is more of an ethical and political value, democracy is political System of government... True democratic governance requires both the process of democratization and the effectiveness of democracy as a political system, based on the Rule of Law and accountable institutions.
. The present predicament of the discourse on democracy is well captured by John Gaventa: “Around the world, the forms and meaning of democratic participation are under contestation. In Iraq, Fallujah is bombed in the name of making the country ready for democracy; in Indonesia, Ukraine and United States, voters and observers are gripped in debates and protest against electoral democracy; in Cancun and other global venues, streets are occupied by those demanding more democracy in global processes; in small villages and neighborhoods and grassroots groups are claiming their places in local democratic spaces. Democracy is at once the language of military power, neoliberal market forces, political parties, donor agencies and NGOs. What is going on?” He further elaborates: “the way to deal with crisis of democracy or democratic deficit, is to extend democracy itself- that is to go beyond traditional understanding of representative democracy, through creating and supporting more participatory spaces of citizens engagement, which in turn are built up on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship”
A substantive democratic governance demands radicalizing democracy, through the deepening and widening of the process of democratization of state and all institutions of governance. Social movements and civil society organizations, which act as counterbalances and counterweights to the dominant powers of state and non-state actors, have an important role in deepening democratic process and expand the spaces wherein poor and excluded people can participate as well as challenge the process of governance. Power relationship is inherent in the process of governance at various levels.
The process of democratization has both grassroots and global dimensions. Such a process will necessarily involves the empowerment of women, minorities and the disenfranchised people, due to historical of structural reasons. Democratization at the global level requires free flow of information, knowledge and coordinated action and a shared sense of global solidarity based on the values of Justice, equality and human rights. Such a sense of solidarity can be built in the public sphere through “communicative action”. Habermas explains the conditions for reaching a common understanding: “I speak of communicative action when the action orientations of the participating actors are not coordinated via egocentric calculations of success, but through acts of understanding. Participants are not primarily oriented towards their own success in communicative action: they pursue their individual goal under the condition that they can coordinate their action plans on the basis of shared definitions of the situation”. Such a shared sense of communicative action also implies argumentative rationatinality, where in participants in a discourse are open to be persuaded by the better argument and the relations of power and hierarchies recede in the background. The goal of such communicative action is to reach reasoned consensus. Sense of solidarity, a sense of identifying with fellow human beings with a sense of shared bond of humanness and dignity, can make the process of democratization deliberate, creative and participatory.
Empower People, Transform India.
Empower People, Transform India.
John Samuel
I
Empowerment is the ability to ask questions, make strategic choices and decisions that affects and influences one’s own life and environment. Empowerment is also the process wherein each human being can realize her or his sense of dignity and power within to make change possible. It is the process of unleashing the creative potential of human beings to imagine, to think, to communicate, to act and to be in communion with others. Empowerment is the power to challenge oneself and make change possible and the power to resist injustice.
There are two stages of empowerment. The first stage is the realization freedom from fear and freedom from want: acquiring a sense of security and rights. The second is acquiring a sense of confidence to make choices in one’s own life and the ability to go beyond oneself to make a positive difference in other’s life; ability to initiate, inform, influence and inspire change: acquiring a sense of vision, mission and leadership. True empowerment helps a person to be both humble and confident: a critical self awareness wherein one is humble enough to know what one does not know and confident enough to realize what one can do.
Imagine more than a billion of such empowered people in India. Imagine an India wherein more than a billion people are in communion with a shared sense of dignity, dreams, purpose and vision: an India that can be creative, democratic, confident, humble and driven by values of freedom, human rights, pluralism, diversity and justice. Imagine one billion people who can afford to dream and make others to dream of a just and peaceful world. India is empowered when even the last person in this country is educated and enabled, and celebrates the art of living, beyond mere survival.
How can we think about an empowered India, when one in every four of us goes to bed hungry everyday? When millions of children are denied the right to education? When thousands of people are made to die everyday due to poverty related causes? When a billion acts of discrimination based on gender, cast, and creed that happen every single day? India can not be empowered when a large majority of Indians are disempowered
There are five key conditions to move towards the collective empowerment of a billion people: Economic growth with distributive justice; Democratisation of knowledge; social and economic justice to the most marginalized communities; responsible management of natural and energy resources; and infrastructure, agriculture and industrial development in the rural areas. However, democratic and accountable governance is a necessary condition to empowerment of the people.
The economic growth of 8 to 10% should help us to make sure that not a single person in India goes to bed hungry .Economic growth and creation of wealth is a crucial conditions for empowerment of India, provided that there are conscious policy choices and budget priorities to ensure the economic empowerment of every sections of the society, from urban slums to the rural deprivation. This means conscious policy choices to develop rural infrastructure as well as employment. Employment guarantee can only be sustainable when the whole scheme can create rural infrastructure, industrialization and sustainable development and environmental protection that guarantee long term economic growth and gainful employment to millions of people.
Democratisation of knowledge necessarily involves quality, free and compulsory education for all. Quality education, from the village schools to universities and centres of higher learning, needs be more accessible, available and affordable. People should be able to make use of information, knowledge and technology at every level of the society. Economic, technological and political literacy is an important step towards democratization of knowledge.
We need public policies to sustain and manage natural resources in a way that would help us achieve energy independence , without dislocating and displacing the poor and marginalized from their habitat. We should make sure that every person in this country can enjoy the right to water, food, education and health.
Accountability is key pillar of governance. Political parties are the legitimizing vehicles of a parliamentary democracy. So democratic accountability, transparency and ethical leadership of political parties are a prerequisite transform India. Increasingly political parties are being turned into family owned or controlled enterprises to capture state power and to sustain vested interest of few. Our parliament and legislative assemblies are increasingly looking like family clubs, wherein inheritance, rather than capability or political conviction, is the key to power. When most of our political party leaders and parliamentarians are not truly empowered, how can we dream of creating enabling conditions for the empowerment of a billion people?
We need collective conviction and commitment to challenge the process of discrimination and disempowerment that happen in the midst of us every single day and turn that into a process of empowerment. Let us dream of an India where every Indian feel proud of; where every single Indian can make a difference, where in India can reach out to the world and make difference to less privileged peoples and countries, where India can initiate, inform and inspire the world. Let us imagine that our children and grandchildren wake up in such a land of ours. Such a dream is indeed worth living.
John Samuel
I
Empowerment is the ability to ask questions, make strategic choices and decisions that affects and influences one’s own life and environment. Empowerment is also the process wherein each human being can realize her or his sense of dignity and power within to make change possible. It is the process of unleashing the creative potential of human beings to imagine, to think, to communicate, to act and to be in communion with others. Empowerment is the power to challenge oneself and make change possible and the power to resist injustice.
There are two stages of empowerment. The first stage is the realization freedom from fear and freedom from want: acquiring a sense of security and rights. The second is acquiring a sense of confidence to make choices in one’s own life and the ability to go beyond oneself to make a positive difference in other’s life; ability to initiate, inform, influence and inspire change: acquiring a sense of vision, mission and leadership. True empowerment helps a person to be both humble and confident: a critical self awareness wherein one is humble enough to know what one does not know and confident enough to realize what one can do.
Imagine more than a billion of such empowered people in India. Imagine an India wherein more than a billion people are in communion with a shared sense of dignity, dreams, purpose and vision: an India that can be creative, democratic, confident, humble and driven by values of freedom, human rights, pluralism, diversity and justice. Imagine one billion people who can afford to dream and make others to dream of a just and peaceful world. India is empowered when even the last person in this country is educated and enabled, and celebrates the art of living, beyond mere survival.
How can we think about an empowered India, when one in every four of us goes to bed hungry everyday? When millions of children are denied the right to education? When thousands of people are made to die everyday due to poverty related causes? When a billion acts of discrimination based on gender, cast, and creed that happen every single day? India can not be empowered when a large majority of Indians are disempowered
There are five key conditions to move towards the collective empowerment of a billion people: Economic growth with distributive justice; Democratisation of knowledge; social and economic justice to the most marginalized communities; responsible management of natural and energy resources; and infrastructure, agriculture and industrial development in the rural areas. However, democratic and accountable governance is a necessary condition to empowerment of the people.
The economic growth of 8 to 10% should help us to make sure that not a single person in India goes to bed hungry .Economic growth and creation of wealth is a crucial conditions for empowerment of India, provided that there are conscious policy choices and budget priorities to ensure the economic empowerment of every sections of the society, from urban slums to the rural deprivation. This means conscious policy choices to develop rural infrastructure as well as employment. Employment guarantee can only be sustainable when the whole scheme can create rural infrastructure, industrialization and sustainable development and environmental protection that guarantee long term economic growth and gainful employment to millions of people.
Democratisation of knowledge necessarily involves quality, free and compulsory education for all. Quality education, from the village schools to universities and centres of higher learning, needs be more accessible, available and affordable. People should be able to make use of information, knowledge and technology at every level of the society. Economic, technological and political literacy is an important step towards democratization of knowledge.
We need public policies to sustain and manage natural resources in a way that would help us achieve energy independence , without dislocating and displacing the poor and marginalized from their habitat. We should make sure that every person in this country can enjoy the right to water, food, education and health.
Accountability is key pillar of governance. Political parties are the legitimizing vehicles of a parliamentary democracy. So democratic accountability, transparency and ethical leadership of political parties are a prerequisite transform India. Increasingly political parties are being turned into family owned or controlled enterprises to capture state power and to sustain vested interest of few. Our parliament and legislative assemblies are increasingly looking like family clubs, wherein inheritance, rather than capability or political conviction, is the key to power. When most of our political party leaders and parliamentarians are not truly empowered, how can we dream of creating enabling conditions for the empowerment of a billion people?
We need collective conviction and commitment to challenge the process of discrimination and disempowerment that happen in the midst of us every single day and turn that into a process of empowerment. Let us dream of an India where every Indian feel proud of; where every single Indian can make a difference, where in India can reach out to the world and make difference to less privileged peoples and countries, where India can initiate, inform and inspire the world. Let us imagine that our children and grandchildren wake up in such a land of ours. Such a dream is indeed worth living.
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