The Concept of People-Centred Sustainable Development :
Myth & Reality in Development Experiences in India Dr. Vithal Rajan and Dr. Thimma Reddy
ThinkSoft Consultants, Hyderabad, India
People’s Participation In The Times Of Structural Adjustment Programmes And American Hegemony
Area-wise studies are being conducted today on the impact of structural adjustment programmes on different sectors of the economy. Voluntary agencies have been involved to examine the impact of such changes in economic policies on the poor of this country. There is very little regret on any side at the passing away of unhelpful bureaucratic controls and regimentation. Far from securing the interests of the poor in a socialist, secular State, the control by politicians and bureaucrats of the economy through rules, regulations, and licenses merely ensured what is popularly known as: Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor. That is, while the interests of Indian businessmen and the rich were taken care of by state policy, and their profits grew under state protection, the poor were more or less free to sell their labour power at low wage rates wherever there was a demand. The interests of wealthy and powerful families were strengthened by this process; the gap between the rich and the poor widened; caste interests and antagonism were enlarged; and the role of a few leading families such as the Nehru family ensured. In the new era that is opening up, well-known assurances and securities for the elite of this country have evaporated, and politicians and businessmen alike are beginning to realise that they have to try new ways for securing their profits and power bases.
Despite the hype that Indians are entering a period of high growth and business and technological success, realistic prognostications are far more pessimistic. The commandist structure of the polity of the country has in no sense been weakened. Major decisions, in fact, any decision of note, flow from the top to the bottom. Administrative and managerial systems remain unchanged and hierarchical. All that is of significance is that the political and administrative elite have decided to share some power, and transfer some decision-making areas, to the business elite in the simple hope that businessmen and industrialists would somehow prove to be more competitive in the world market. While it is clear that the arrogant Indian administrative elite has no skills whatsoever in competing for markets, it is misplaced to think that businessmen are any better. Under the closed-door security offered by government, Indian business houses till now have grown to positions of great importance and wealth without actually having to complete with the much larger, more efficient, and more powerful transnational corporations of the world. In the economy of scarcity, their main role was the allocation of their products, many times at much higher prices than prevailing elsewhere. Their managerial elite have not learned the skills of simple selling. They will not be able to allocate their expensive products with inferior technology, and without the advantage of economies of scale under competition with the cheaper, superior products of TNCs, which also have far superior selling abilities. The idea that the nation will grow through an export-led growth strategy is wishful thinking. Dr.Manmohan Singh and his successors, while doing yeomen service in trying to clean out the tangles of red-tap, have still to produce a single worthwhile idea of how the Indian economy is to prove competitive or to modernise itself. Just as the idea of an export-led growth strategy has been going around for the last several decades, so are the ideas for agricultural development that have been dredged up in the Eighth and Ninth Plan documents. Changing the profile of agricultural subsidies, or trying to establish small centres to promote organic farming or integrated pest management, fall far short of the kind of decentralised power sharing, and encouragement of local planning and growth that is needed in poverty-stricken, environmentally-degraded areas.
If anything, the structural adjustment programmes (SAP) will strengthen the elite, and perhaps produce a broader base for it by bringing into the fore a new class of exporters and businessmen who might be able to take marginal advantage of some openings in the global market. The gap between the rich and the poor will inevitably widen; the middle class and salaried classes will be struck by high inflation; and the divide between the rural and the urban sectors would become even more marked. India may be moving into a period in which elite townships are closely guarded by their own security forces within vast urban conglomerations, disease infested, and crime ridden. This fearful scenario is already being acted out in large cities of Latin America. The present main thrust of the structural adjustment programmes aims at converting India into another banana republic.
Liberalisation and SAP is being thrust upon India, and other third world countries, by international organisations, such as the World Bank and the IMF, which are in simple reality not responsible so much to an international community of sovereign states, as they are to the of American State Department, and the Department of the Treasury. Right from the beginning of its institution, the United Nations, and its several functional organisations, have been over-shadowed by the United States of America and have been influenced by American business interests, and the interests of American national security. With the break-up of the USSR, American hegemony over other independent states, the United Nations, and especially third world countries are becoming clearer day by day.
Several unspoken questions linger in Indian minds. The United States has said that it will call into question the right of countries like India to trade on equal terms, when the interests of the Indian workers are not safeguarded according to international labour standards. Americans have shown sudden grave concern for Indian children weaving carpets. There is now a requirement that Indian carpets should carry a certificate that they have not been woven by children. While it is reprehensible that child labour is used shamefully in sweat-shops in the country, it is equally true, as pointed out recently by the well-known designer, Rajiv Sethi, that traditional craftsmen teach their children their own skills, so that they may continue the trade of their forefathers, in a system of family or cottage industry apprenticeship. This is age-old. All our musicians, for example, learn music as children under a similar form of training, which is not exploitative of children. It is amazing that a nation which has ruthlessly destroyed workers' movements throughout the world by supporting tin-pot dictators, and crushed revolt against unpopular governments, should now suddenly espouse the cause of the Indian working class! Further, is whether American interest in human rights is only a ploy to weaken political strength on which economic viability depends, in India? And what human rights would people enjoy without political strength or economic viability? Here we are beginning to see the outriders of a trade war, which in itself is the first wave of an economic imperial war, which the United States may have begun to wage on India. If there is still a feeling that such fears are exaggerated, Indians remember that the United States is threatening India with sanctions under the Super 301 clause, saying Indians are putting limits on free trade, for example, by not permitting foreign insurance companies to operate; while simultaneously threatening Japan under the same clause, because free consumer choice to buy Japanese cars two is to the disadvantage of the American automobile industry! Blatant self-interest could over-ride all international conventions, when backed by sufficient military and political power.
The United States might desire the break-up of the Indian Union into smaller and more manageable states, perhaps, ruled by dictators who will do Washington's bidding, whatever that costs to Indian workers, working children, trade, or human rights. If it cannot achieve break-up of the Indian Union, it might try to leave the national elite so weakened that they are themselves ruled by a strong class of business interests which the United States could foster in India as an ‘economic’ fifth column.
In this rather grim scenario the role of voluntary agencies is neither to be seen as humanitarian nor as non-political. By and large, the voluntary sector has grown in this country in response to the idealism of many of its citizens, and the continuing traditions of constructive work that were emphasised by Mahatma Gandhi as a corner stone of the Freedom Movement. The voluntary movement's attempts to support the government in carrying through modern messages of development to the remotest village ended with the failure of the Five Year Plans to produce marked growth. Turning away from being the hand-maiden of corrupt and self-interested politicians, the voluntary movement tried to join the people's protest movements during the sixties and the seventies. It was encouraged to do so by the funding agencies from foreign countries, themselves influenced by liberation theology, which found its roots among the oppressed peasants of Latin America. With the defeat of the Emergency in India, the voluntary movement had to take stock of its achievements and found that it had gained little by either supporting or confronting the government over the last three decades. Over several workshops called to find out a mutually satisfactory identity, the voluntary movement settled for an advocacy role or a catalytic role, but it still saw itself as playing a crucial role in the economic upliftment of the poor, and in the struggles of the poor to reach self-sufficiency and self-reliance. All of which required economic strengthening of the poor.
However, in the new period that is emerging of American over-lordship, Washington perhaps sees a very different role for voluntary agencies world-wide. One heard, for example, that a major American international donor agency had carefully hand-picked the Indian delegates who would be present at the International Women's Conference at Beijing in 1995. The agenda of these participants had also been worked out, by which in the name of women's liberation, the Chinese Government would be attacked for its human rights record. Delegates to the Conference demanded that they should be given free access to go anywhere in China and talk to anybody they please. While in itself this is an unexceptionable request, the manner in which it was made reminds one of the "open-door policy" for China, which the Americans pioneered during the last days of the Chinese Empire, to permit the free exploitation of Chinese markets and labour. Here again a seeming interest in "human rights" is seen really as a tool for economic aggression, and political subjugation. The American Secretary of State tried a while ago to whip up sentiment against the caning of an American youth in the economically successful city-state of Singapore; while there was no international out-cry at several legal executions that continue to be carried out within the United States. There are many such examples of double standards, and hastily created "human rights" issues, to bolster American attacks on "less-civilized" nations; who presumably need management from the West to be brought into " the comity of civilized nations."
This is not to say that international voluntary and donor agencies have deliberately become instruments of American policy. However, trends in policy-making, academic thinking, and international action programmes also follow fashions, which many times are deliberately initiated, as they have been many times in the past, to serve wider interests. Over a decade ago, Susan George warned voluntary agencies, during an annual convention of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies, at Dakar, Senegal, that they should be a bit more critical of the sudden interest the West was taking in promoting their involvement in development, and that they should ask why this change had occurred. It is difficult from a third world point of view to dismiss such fears as the paranoia of the weak.
The Green Revolution would not have occurred with major boosts to agro-industry, if the Rockefeller Foundation had not systematically enabled the Green Revolution scientific ideology to be discussed in international workshops, and had helped appoint the supporters of such policy in several universities and research institutions throughout the world. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) was created at that time not only to help increase food supply in the world, but to support transnational agri-biz. The selling of the Green Revolution to the third world as a scientific package without which they could not possibly survive is perhaps the best example of how a business opportunity for the West can be presented as aid, and as scientific dogma to poor countries. While great oil companies, such as Shell, were already forecasting that the bulk of profits in the 21st century will come from agri-biz, Indian scientists and politicians humbly accepted a strategy, which enriched richer farmers in selected areas, such as the Punjab, coastal Andhra, and Tanjavur, where the irrigation infra-structure already existed, created long ago by the British, the Moghuls, and the Cholas. In furthering the interests of petroleum-based agriculture, the gap between the rich and poor widened; the Punjab went up in communmal flames; around 80% of the rural population, of small and marginal farmers, and agricultural labour, were neglected over a crucial two-and-a-half decades; a hundred districts were declared drought-prone and left to endemic hunger; with extensive, consequential environmental degradation.
Social forestry projects, funded by the World Bank and other international aid agencies, have swept the country like a forest fire. They did not promote trees to feed and support the poor, but stands of eucalyptus and similar species as raw material reserves for industry. It was only when the indigenous people of Madhya Pradesh took up arms against such plantations that the world's experts started being solicitous about peasants and tribals. Even the phrase, "social forestry," is believed to have been designed in Harvard University, as a marketing tool for selling a package to a third world country as science, as aid, and as community help. While readily accepting this half-baked idea, the Indian Government never enquired into its own long history of people's managed forestry, never questioned how the British by a legal fiction appropriated all forest lands as government property in the 19th century, disinheriting villagers, peasants, and forest dwellers.
Now the latest development fashion is the promotion of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) methods, devised by an Englishman, late of the British African Colonial Service. These techniques are nothing more than an extension of the way British Collectors learnt of village realities by sitting under the village tree. Clearly, government officials are happy to go back to a system in which they are in command, but the subtlety lies in packaging it as "participatory," to suit modern politically correct officialese. The participation of the poor ends with the disgorging of local information to the Sahib, who will, as he always has, take necessary steps, with abundant caution, through proper channels.
In the structuring of development packages, we see how Western governmental institutions, such as the British DFID, research institutions, such as IIED, or IDS, located in Sussex University, and international donors, such as Oxfam or Christian Aid, run as a pack. The fact that aid brings in extra profits through increased trade is openly acknowledged. The Canadian CIDA has always justified its existence on this count alone. The aid research industry is a major source of employment in the West, particularly of a dangerous class of educated unemployables. These, in return for the security of academia, dredge up patent colonial ideology as the new science of development. They are secure in the knowledge that no challenge can come from the third world intelligentia, who are kept locked into convenient subaltern positions with suitably graded rewards of fellowships, visiting assignments, and invitations to conferences, and consultancies. To these rather simple benefits is added the even greater one of pacifing the large body of home-based liberals, who are unhappy with the exploitative nature of their society, and to whom aid and charity are presented as justifications of overlordship. The great christian donors of the West saw aid as an answer in the mid-sixties to the crisis of relevance within the Church, and as a way of attracting youth back to the folds of belief. But behind all these apparent and rather pathetic reasons for the convergence of the interests of government, church, and academia, lies the formidable project of Western civilization, its need to control the people, societies, and resources of the third world, and its lust to destroy other cultures, and other ways of being.
What is alarming is not that the West is developing an armory of neo-colonial control mechanisms, but that there is so little challenge to rather blatant practices of mixing science with disinformation; persuasive aid money to governments and NGOs, and chances of personal promotion to key individuals, with scorn and threats towards dissenters; and media-designed calls to conform to global (i.e. Western) standards, with open relegation of third world needs and perspectives into subordinated and disconnected positions.
We will examine briefly four well-regarded processes of ‘peoples participation for sustainable development’ in : joint forestry management; watershed development; women’s ‘sangam’ formation; and a state ‘people’s plan.’ Governmental or elite control, decision-making, or inspiration have shaped all these initiatives, with varying degrees of local autonomy or decision-making wrested by the people themselves. While none of these processes illuminate a sure path towards sustainable development, or even genuine people’s participation, some hold better promise for the future than others.
The Environmental Initiatives Of The Last Three Decades
The Stockholm conference of 1972 and the Rio conference of 1992 were important milestones, signifying mounting public pressure on the governments; particularly the pressure brought forth by the people of the developed countries on their governments to address the problem of dwindling ecological conditions expeditiously. It is quite another matter that the developed countries tried to shift the onus of reducing pollution on to the developing countries. As described by Reed at the Stockholm conference “ the environmental agenda of the indutrialised societies collided head-on with the political perspectives and priorities of the developing world. In contrast to industrialization problems of the north, developing countries identified issues of poverty alleviation as their most urgent challenge to arresting environmental degradation.” Stockholm declaration accepted “ the developing countries’ perspective that pollution caused by industrialisation in the North imposed tangible constraints on their own development and industrialisation options. A second important concession was acceptance of the South’s view that poverty, not industrialisation, was the overriding cause of environmental problems in the developing world for which economic growth would have to provide the principal answer. Moreover their insistence on placing sovereignty at the centre of this compromise underscored developing countries’ resistance to using international agreements to alter their own development paths, reduce development assistance , or condition financial transfers from the North”.
But this assertiveness of the developing countries did not last long in the face of opposition from the developed countries who bunched up together. The literature that emanated from the developed countries found the source of the degradation of natural resources in the growing populations of the developing countries at the same time turning a blind eye to the non-sustainable resource intensive production system in their own countries. Particularly, the concept of eco-development that focused on the satisfaction of basic needs in an environmentally sound production system did not go down well with the developed countries.
The World Conservation Strategy published in 1980 by International Union for Conservation of Nature and WWF further contributed to the evolution of the idea of sustainable development. It argued for a global framework for conservation and compatibility of promoting development objectives while achieving conservation. It also prescribed the steps to be taken by the national governments in using their natural resources to develop their countries while respecting the carrying capacities of ecosystems.
This was followed by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), also known as Brundtland Commission, Report in 1987. This report formed the background to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also called Rio Conference in 1992. At this conference the concept of sustainable development was formally accepted as the standard for measuring developmental objectives and performance in developed as well as developing countries; and “as the standard against which the behaviour of the governments and international institutions would measure their policies and activities”.
According to the WCED, sustainable development is “the development that meets needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs”, and again “ Sustainable development seeks to met the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future. Far from requiring the cessation of economic growth, it recognises that the problems of poverty and under development cannot be solved unless we have a new era of growth in which developing countries play a large role and reap large benefits”.(1987;9&40)
Besides placing the responsibility for safeguarding future generations’ development options and opportunities with the present generations, the WCED report also talks in terms of changing the quality of growth, placing the alleviation of poverty in developing countries as the central axis around which global sustainability would revolve, and the need to redistribute wealth in order to alleviate poverty. At the international level the Report recognises the need to reorder patterns of international trade and flows of capital in order to achieve sustainability. In this scheme of things the need to enhance the sphere of influence of the developing countries in international economic relations is also underscored.
However, the WCED fails to articulate a well defined strategy for action. As a result it remains more as a philosophical approach rather than a plan of action.
The WCED quickly diluted its own radical propositions by its overall message that the transition to a sustainable world would not require fundamental changes in the current distribution of wealth, consumption patterns, standards of living, or the character of growth in the North and the South.(Reed 1996:30) Its ambiguous stand becomes clear when it contends that ‘growth as usual’ policies would remain the linchpin for promoting sustainable development practices. According to the Commission a 3-4 percent growth rate in industrialised countries was required for poverty alleviation in the developing world. Such an ambiguous stand is a reflection of the dilemma implicit in the traditional view according to which the developed North should consume yet more in order to help the developing countries by providing larger markets. It is not appreciated that in a situation of finite natural resources, such higher consumption in the North can only be at the cost of growth opportunities for the South, and even for the poor within the North. In fact, the WCED called for the world economy to expand by a factor of five to ten, ultimately translating into an annual per capita income rise of 3 percent in all countries, North and South.
According to the WCED “meeting essential needs depends in part on achieving full growth potential, and sustainable development clearly requires economic growth in places where such needs are not being met. Elsewhere, it can be consistent with economic growth, provided the content of growth reflects broad principles of sustainability and non-exploitation of others”. Regarding this Nadkarni comments: “ The consistency of sustainable development with economic growth is qualified, no doubt, but the need for the later is nevertheless conceded. The qualification itself means little, because it is tautological”.
Equity issues often conflict with development strategies; and never have been in-built with policies in India , be it the Green Revolution or the newer economic policies. While the need for economic growth in the case of the poor can be more easily granted, it is much less clear for the rich who already enjoy very high levels of consumption. If the rich cannot show self restraint and curb their consumption, there is nothing to prevent the poor from aspiring to achieve the standards of the rich in an ecologically disastrous race.
If a collapse of the Earth’s eco-system has not been reached so far in spite of the extremely high rates of consumption of the rich , it is not so much due to technological advances as due to the appalling sacrifice on the part of the poor in the world. Sometimes the poor also appear as agents of environmental degradation to some extent. For them and their environment, the concept of sustainable development has immediate meaning, translatable into action plans.
In the real world of natural resources, scarce means have not only alternative uses, but what is more, different uses also serve different sets of interest groups, who compete - or more accurately - struggle for dominance over scarce means. The reconciliation, if it can be called so - between ends and scarce means is decided in the arena of political economy through a struggle between interest groups.
The problem becomes political and hence complex, because the struggle between different interest groups is not equitable. The different parties involved do not have the same economic and political power nor information enough about pay offs resulting from alternative actions of rival groups. This is not a level playing field between the haves and the havenots. From the point of view of sustainablility of resource use, such a situation is disastrous because there is no deterrent to unsustainable use. The polluter-depleter does not have to bear the full cost of his action. Let alone the future generations who are not here to bargain with the present users. The weak among the present generation are unable to protect even their own interests. It is this inequality which is at the root of environmental problems.
The larger economy too has claims over natural resources wherever they happen to be. But the point is not one of barring access of the larger economy to natural resources, but one of how this access is obtained. Is such access to be obtained without conceding the right of the locals to the natural resource base of their economy; without consulting them; without involving them in the decision making and planning of the resource use? Doing so would not only be unfair and unjust, it would wreck any chance of sustainable development. If the resources are to be used by the larger economy, the local people must in any case be involved in the decision making and planning process.
Acceptance of the principle of equity as far as the common property resources are concerned seems to hold the key to the resolution of these conflicts both at the local/regional and international levels. Empowering the local people vis-à-vis the larger economy , making the bargain between the two more equitable, works towards sustainable development. What is required is not just people’s participation alone but also their empowerment. There has to be enabled a socio-political environment in villages where villagers can meet, talk and settle maters of management of community assets on an equal footing.
Decisions regarding sustainability have to emanate from the concerned communities. It cannot be thrust upon them by an external agent - whether it is the World Bank or the United Nations, or even the forestry department of a government - simply because it believes, at any point in time, that it has learnt all the lessons there are to learn. Anil Agarwal argued that sustainable development will be the outcome of a political order in which a society is so structured that it will learn fast from its mistakes in the use of natural resources and rapidly rectify its human-nature relationships in accordance with the knowledge gained…such a society will be one in which decision making is largely the prerogative of those who will also suffer the consequences of those decisions. Sustainability arises not out of mushy headed concepts like care for future generations but out of hard political issues about pattern of resource control; and levels of democracy within the decision making group. Greater the participation, openness and democracy within the decision making group, greater will be the chances of those who are suffering within the decision making group - whether the decision is taken by a community or a nation as a whole - to get a fair hearing, and have decisions changed accordingly. Sustainability thus demands the creation of a political order in which, firstly, control of natural resources rests to the maximum extent with local communities who are dependent on those resources, and secondly, decision making within the community is as participatory , open, and democratic as possible.
With this as background it will be good to look at some of the projects/programes in India that are meant to regenerate natural resources and achieve sustainable development. The joint forest management and watershed development programme are being supported by the World Bank financially and implemented in different parts of the country by the central as well as different state governments.
Government Control Of Joint Forest Management
The Earth's natural guardians are not so much experts and conservationists but the world's poor, the local people in their hundreds of millions. Their survival as communities, as cultures, is interdependent on the survival of Nature itself, with its beautiful regenerative diversity. The search is on to recover our knowledge of how to live in harmony with nature. Conservationists playing such a role would be welcomed by the communities of the poor, for their message would empower the poor and would be dependent on local initiatives, on people's own choices and their knowledge. And as a reward they would get from people a deeper understanding of the science of conservation.
Forests form an arena where interests of many user groups contend. These interest groups range from local forest communities to international timber traders. The interests encompass livelihood interests, commercial interests, and environmental interests. These varied interests can hardly be reconciled. The interests of the pulpwood based industry to cut down forests for timber or propagate mono-species plantations comes in the way of local communities dependence on forests for their livelihoods. At the same time environmentalists contend that denudation of forests either for timber in the industry or for converting them for food production will deprive the globe of its bio diversity as well as its breathing space/capacity. The sustainable development or natural regeneration of forests shall address these contending interests.
In India nearly fifty million, of tribal communities, depend on forests for their living in one way or another. Their lives are closely intertwined with forest conditions. For them the forest question is a life and death question. They also have a vested interest in sustainable maintenance of these forest resources. These interests are opposed by urban based timber traders with a deep profit motive who show no regard for ecological or livelihood sensibilities.
Apart from the economic and social value of forests, the ecological worth of forests is beyond question. Over the years, however, wastelands or degraded forest lands in India have shown a sharp expansion - at present nearly 175 million hectares of India’s land area is seriously degraded. And the implications of this can be seen not only in the worsening state of people dependent on forests but also in the increasing damage on account of floods (costing the exchequer about Rs 2,0 billion annually); water erosion, taking away 6 billion tonnes of top soil and with it about 6 million tonnes of nutrients( more than the total value of fertiliser imports); siltation (reducing the life of irrigation dams and thereby the worth of money spent on these).(Dolly Arora)
While the blame for the increase in forest degradation has for long been laid on increasing population pressure, it has now been admitted that the orientation and direction of state policy on forest management has itself been the primary reason for the worsening state of both forests and forest dependent people. How state policy has till recently evolved in the direction of alienation of people even while it was highly accommodative of powerful economic interests, and, more importantly, how far do the recent efforts in the direction of joint forest management (JFM) reflect any major shift from state regulation to people’s participation in forest management forms the focus of this discussion.
We would like to raise some questions about the real meaning of JFM as embedded in its context and as evident in the actual experience of its operation. Until the advent of British rule the forests in India were of open access to the communities living in and around the forests. Moreover there were various indigenous institutions that evolved over time which embodied norms for nature friendly use of the forest resources. Forests were designated as people’s forests which they could use, as sacred groves which harboured medicinal plants and rarer species; as elephant forests, kept strictly for wildlife; and as the king’s forest, for use in hunting and larger scale exploitation. The concerned communities themselves used to pay attention to the management of the forests. With the intervention of the British colonial administration and its new Forest Act, the people were forcefully kept away from the forests and from their livelihood as well. The colonial administration took all the forests under its control, deeming the King in India to have the same feudal rights as in Europe. The British colonial administration exploited the forests for their commercial interests; and for ship-building. With British oak forests thinning out, large swaths of prime teak in Kerala were felled even before the Battle of Trafalgar. The two great wars also took a massive toll. The forests were also used to expand the railway network and also to export timber. The expansion of markets for several forest products made Indian forest resources economically attractive. As a result of this there surfaced many tribal rebellions against the British colonial government’s forest policy. Even when some concessions were given in terms of use of forest resources to the local communities they were not bestowed any rights to manage these.
Even after Independence there was no change in the government’s policy towards the forests. The new government also looked at the forests as primarily revenue generators for the government and raw material sources for the industry and these were considered as ‘vital national need’. As during the British rule, the approach of the state continued to reflect a lack of faith in the capacity of people to manage or protect their forest resources without state intervention and support. People were in fact seen as a major threat to forests. This also had the effect of alienating people who were traditionally involved in protecting the forests. This was yet another outcome of the expanding powers of the state; the weakening entitlement of the community; and increasing commercial interests in respect of forests.
The almost negligible efforts made to improve the availability for fuel wood and fodder to forest dwellers, however, intensified social conflicts on the forest resource-use and increased pressures on the state for a reorientation of policies. Developments at the international level, particularly environment movements that underlined the necessity to protect green cover as carbon sinks and the need to protect bio-diversity, also led to conservation of forests in the third world.
In 1988, for the first time since Independence, it was declared by the state that forests were not to be commercially exploited for industries but must contribute to the conservation of soil and environment and meet the subsistence needs of the local people. The revised policy also advocated the role of local people’s participation in the protection and development of forests from which they derived benefits like fuel wood, fodder and small timber. To give their formal support to this policy, state after state promoted facilitative rules or orders specifying the institutional mechanisms of their execution. At present the Joint Forest Management programme is being implemented in 11 states. The experiences of the forest department in Arbaari in the state of West Bengal and in Sukhomarji in the state of Himachal Pradesh also have become inputs in the formulation of the JFM programme.
All of this was the outcome of the realisation that without the willing and active participation of fringe communities, no programme to arrest the fast depletion of forests, and to regenerate the already degraded forests, would ever succeed. By empowering the local communities JFM aimed to make them realise that their rights over forest produce was linked to their duties to protects and manage forests. JFM was pictured as a sharing of products, responsibilities, and decision-making power over forest lands between the Forest Departments and local user communities. JFM was based on the premise that local communities can regenerate and protect the degraded forests if they are empowered and compensated for their opportunity costs.
The Joint Forest Management Regulations have attempted to ‘induce’ people’s participation in forest protection by making protection an economically rewarding activity from the viewpoint of the people. This, it was realised, could also be the most cost-effective method of forest management from the viewpoint of the state. Its implications for the overall state of development could be very far-reaching too. For, besides improving the overall state of environment, this could enable people to integrate the local forest management practices with their own development needs. It could thereby provide some relief to the poor and the marginalised without increasing their dependence on the state, already over-burdened with the failure of numerous development and assistance programmes.
Does the adoption of this new policy on joint forest management (JFM) suggest any major change in the prevailing state of relations between the state and people in forest areas? Could the policy itself be used by the people as an effective instrument of their empowerment and thereby not only prevent its reversal but also ensure the realisation of its goal? Even when the necessity of people’s participation through JFM was recognised, the preoccupation of Forest Department officials with so-called scientific forest management continued, and continued on an even larger scale. JFM became only one of the many elements of the new forest policy. According to the World Bank some of the important lessons from its lending programme in the forest sector include the need for “improved seed and extension services; revitalisation of forestry research, particularly applied research at state level; more emphasis on the planning, environmental and management dimensions of plantations and existing natural forests; solutions to deal with the problems of common property rights through a better local participatory process; and inter - agency coordination in the execution of the various project components” (1994 p.9). According to the Bank’s Forest Sector Review, “There are significant oportunities in India to enhance people’s participation in forest management, introduce technologies which improve productivity and permit better land use, redefine the role of government and revise the restrictive regulatory and pricing policies to pave the way for private and public investments in the forestry sector” (ibid p.10).
The real aims of JFM become clear when we look at the forest policy statement of the state government of Andhra Pradesh: “The forest administration would concentrate on high priority areas where it has comparative advantage or unique mandate, and divest itself from activities that can be more efficiently performed by other groups, including local populations, NGOs and private industry, or enter in to partnership with these. This will result in better management and utilisation of available forest resources.
“Where forests are under pressure by local communities for their livelihood, they will be managed for better production and conservation by participatory management through introduction of Joint Forest Management. The local communities together with the concerned Governmental and NGOs will be involved for implementation of Joint Forest Management Plans.
“The forest administration will be streamlined and a new orientation will be given based on intense local participation in forest management, on the one hand, and realistic and flexible planning and implementation of forest activities supported by modern information technology and increased possibilities for specialisation and permanence of staff, on the other…
“ a need-based, production-oriented research programme, concentrating on a limited number of important forest species, will be promoted in support of a vigorous programme of upgrading nursery, planting and silvicultural technologies in order to achieve higher forest productivity.
“Modern planning and monitoring tools, such as MIS and GIS, will be introduced throughout the forestry administration for meeting the changing needs of forestry.
“Private investment in the production of better quality seedlings and I afforestation of wastelands will be encouraged and facilitated. The needs of the wood-based industries will be met through high-yield afforestation programme to be taken up by the Forest Development Corporation alone or in co-operation with the industries. Rules governing timber transport will be suitably modified to encourage private participation in afforestation primarily through farm forestry”.
Based on the above policy as spelt out in detail, the World Bank had released a loan of US$77.4 millions under the Andhra Pradesh Forestry Project in 1994 forr a five year period. Under this project, after all pronouncements in its favour, JFM gets only 6.2% of total project allocations. Under the project, implementation of participatory management is supposed to cover only 49% the area to be developed under the project.
An examination of the way the JFM programme is carried out will explain how little people centred the whole exercise is. The JFM resolutions of various states suggests that the main feature of this is the sharing of economic ‘gains’ with the people. While this undoubtedly strengthens the hands of the poor and marginalised who suffered under the earlier system of state control, the extent, nature and limits of power so obtained by the people are worth taking note of. In most states the formation of forest protection committees by the people has been facilitated by the forest department with the help of voluntary agencies only in respect of degraded forest.(Dolly Arora1994, Shashi Kolavalli 1995 p.1936) The forest with good tree cover is kept with the forest department itself under reserve forests which are effectively kept out of bounds of ordinary people. In other words, the forest is taking the help of the people only in regenerating the degraded forests but not prepared to share fruits from the forests tracts which are in good condition. The forest department would like people’s participation in the area which is difficult to operate but would like to keep the good parts to itself, underscoring its ‘ownership’ of the forests. The JFM committees are also not given jurisdiction over the total forest land abutting their settlements/habitations. Only a portion of it is given for protection and management.
‘empowerment’ for which social activists are calling. To instill a sense of ownership, the communities should be given an opportunity to participate in planning as well. The legislation in some states - Bihar, for example - is clearly intended to ‘use’ people to meet the objectives of the forest department and not engage in joint management in any meaningful sense. The societies established by the district forest officers are expected to assist the forest department. They do not have even the freedom to decide what they do with their share of benefits. Such legislation is hardly likely to instill ‘direct interests’. (Shashi Kolavalli p.1937)
The powers bestowed on the JFM committees are very limited and these are in any case circumvented. As a prelude to the JFM exercise a micro-plan is supposed to be prepared with participation of the committee. But in most cases it is the forest department personnel at various levels who prepare these, and thrust them on unwilling local communities. Thus, the people even lose the opportunity to choose the species to be planted in their area. According to the scheme the local committee is expected to operate a bank account in its name and disburse the money allotted for the works. But in reality it is the forest department which controls even this function. All the relevant records that are supposed to be kept maintained by the JFM committee are rarely seen in their possession. (State Secretariat, AP NGO Committee on JFM).
The forest department has been authorised even to dissolve these protection committees or to cancel the membership of particular individuals without having to give any reason. People are thus made dependent on the state even for their right to organise the protection committees or to remain as members, let alone their right to participate in decision-making, or to challenge the decisions of the forest department. Contrary to the expectation that JFM increases the power and participatory potential of people, its regulations actually turn out to limit these.
The number of forest protection committees in various states has no doubt registered an increase, but it has also been noticed that in many areas, the complusion of the forest department to achieve targets has resulted in the formation of a very large number of ‘people’s committees,’ which are effectively under the control of a few dominant individuals.
In Andhra Pradesh the JFM committes are allotted forest tracts in such a way that they cut the smuggling routes. These committees, for instance, are expected to ‘assist’ the forest department in preventing trespass, encroachment, grazing, fire, poaching, theft or damage but hardly enjoy the power to ‘punish’ or to decide the nature of punishment for those caught indulging in any of these prohibited activities. While the responsibility of curtailing smuggling falls to the JFM committee, honest committee members face real danger,given the present nexus between the politician, the smuggler, the police, and the forest department officials. JFM regulations also specify that in the event of capturing smuggled timber, the committee will be given a share of value of the captured timber. But this commitment is not kept. Even in cases where the committee receives its share it is made to run from pillar to post to get it. JFM committees are also assured a share in the output resulting from JFM activities. Even in realising their legitimate share of benefits the members of the committees have to undergo at times humiliation at the hands of forest department functionaries. Though the rules have changed the old habits of the forest bureaucracy have not changed much.
The increase in the forest cover is mostly because of the regeneration of forests brought about by people; and the spread of green cover through social forestry. Local people have themselves observed improvement in soil preservation, rainfall, as well as temperature. This improvement has to be attributed to the participation of local communities. While reaping the benefits, in many cases the local communities do not appear to participate. The personnel of the department ensure that all the benefits fall into their lap. All the sermons on participatory approach for sustainable development fell on deaf ears. According to Binay Kumar Pattnaik & Sumana Dutta “The FD has to make the people feel time and again that they are equal partners in the affairs of forest protection. For example, in the Vedusol FPC, after the first harvest of the sal forest in 1995 the FPC members were waiting to receive their share of 25 per cent of the harvest which was approximately Rs 6,000 per household. Similarly, in Kamdebpur FPC in 1995 during the first felling after launching of JFM, wood logs were taken to forest development corporation for auctioning purpose but the local FPC members are in darkness about the auctioning and its price. For this villages relied fully on the concerned forest officials such irregularities and unilateral decisions of the FD alienates the people from their responsibilities and at the same time it makes one partner in JFM more that equal. This may defeat the very purpose and kill the basis of JFM. So the communities must always be associated in almost all the decisions about JFM activities be it a policy matter or matter related to marketing.”
The forest department’s alienation of some of its rights to communities in exchange for their participation is not an act of generosity. They would retain all the rights if they could regenerate forests without cooperation of the people; they have no choice given the current technology of exclusion.(Shashi Kolavalli p.1937).
The present framework of JFMs, conceived as it is without any effective mechanisms for people’s empowerment, autonomy, self-realisation and secure implementation, is unlikely to accomplish much even in terms of its own proclaimed objectives. Where colonising and centralising practices have introduced or strengthened exploitative relations, policy support must be aimed at introducing correctives rather than strengthening such forces which dominate these relations. Finally, can well-intentioned policy escape capture and transformation at the hands of vested interests?
GOVERNMENT AND COMMUNITY DESIGN OF WATERSHEDS
At the all-India level 53.2 percent of geographical area is facing degradation. Till 1992-93 only 20.9 percent of the degraded soil was treated. The rainfed area constitutes 70 percent of the total cultivated land in India and nearly 42 percent of the food production comes from dry land farming. Watershed development is a comprehensive and integrated approach which includes soil and water conservation, designed to improve and develop the economic and natural resource base of economically disadvantaged and ecologically fragile regions, such as dry and semi-arid areas. The focus of development instead of being on an administrative region is on the ecological definition of a watershed.
Since land distribution remains heavily skewed, the National Watershed Development Projects for Rainfed Areas.(NWDPRA) obviously benefit land-owning people. The plight of the landless remains the same. As a result, if remedial measures are not taken, it may further exacerbate the inequalities in the rural sector. Though environmentally speaking, watershed development is sustainable, socially it is difficult to see that the fruits of it go to every section of the society. If this is not done, the whole exercise will turn out to be unsustainable, and the project itself will fail. In the few cases where watershed development proved to be quite successful, measures were taken to achieve social equity, as in Ralegaon Siddi and the pani panchayaths, through leaders from civil society ensuring genuine participation of the people and equitable distribution of the benefits. “ The experiment succeeds to the extent the bulk of the village population is convinced (a) of the merits of n equitable sharing of common resources, and (b) of the long-term advantage of a sustainable development programme as against the lure of short-term gains of a few and the consequent degradation of resources” (Ghosh and Sinha 1997 p.283).
Interventions cannot be sustainable unless they have been a response to a felt need in a manner and at a time in which the people are the main actors, and the intervener at best is a facilitator. What is interesting to note in several such interventions is that all of them were carefully planned, adapting technology to local requirements. The Kabbanala Watershed project in Karnataka state even went one step further and talked of people’s participation in the programme and the need to involve people in the maintenance of assets created. This concept was taken to its logical conclusion when even soil conservation works in individual fields were done departmentally and the owner was then called upon to partake in its maintenance. In spite of the project being executed with technical skill and competence, little capacity building of the community itself occurred. Mere participation of the people in project implementation did not automatically lead to sustainability. The community did not feel they had ‘earned it,’ nor feel confident about their capacity to carry on. Institutional arrangements were not stabilised so that an equitable sharing of the water was made possible. There was a failure to recognise systems of ownership and control of resources, and the power structures that existed, which governed local production and exchange. Having organised water availability the question of organising people for its use was taken for granted. As a result, one of the first acts of the farmers, once the project had come to an end, was to merge the waterways with the fields by bringing them under the plough! The project concentrated on the technology of engineering and neglected the technology of social organisation. Watershed development to be sustainable requires an unique blend of technical competence with an understanding of local social processes. In Kabbanala we see technological victory and social failure. The importance therefore, of systems development, to reconcile individual perceptions of benefits with the community good for ensuring sustainability, cannot be overemphasized. (A.S. Mathew)
Apart from participation what is required for sustainable development is that the fruits of it are distributed equally among all the stakeholders. This factor comes out clearly from watershed development experiences from the state of Maharastra. Examples include the success stories of Anna Hazare of Ralegaon Shindi and Pani Panchayat experiments poineered by Vilas Rao Salunke. Nadkarni explains: “ The successful efforts at regeneration of CPRs involved no revolutionary redistribution of private assets like land. They involved, however, equal rights over, or equal distribution of, benefits from the commons through collective or participatory management…To operate this principle of equity, it required a socio-political environment in villages wherein the villagers could meet, talk and settle matters of management of community assets on an equal footing” (1996 pp.42-43).
The experience of Ralegaon highlights that one of Gandhi’s precepts needs to be taken seriously: economic development should necessarily be accompanied by moral development as well. It has become quite common among experts to minimise the impact of socio-religious factors on Ralegaon’s success. Anna Hazare had in a way established his moral authority among the people of the village by taking up issues which villagers believed to be right religious and moral conduct. His actions obtained legitimacy from the people of the village. He over time evolved social techniques to establish civic control over public spaces and later over agricultural production itself. But there has been something more to the development of Ralegoan, and that has been the creation of the role of ‘civil society.’ According to the decision taken by the village panchayat, each household which was to benefit by the percolation tank had to volunteer labour for work at the tank. Only reasonable exceptions were allowed, but that too if they agreed to pay the labourers who would have to work in their stead. The percolation tank was theirs, collectively, and not a gift from outsiders. The tangibile economic benefits only further encouraged them to build on the success of the percolation tank. (Meena and Rajivlochan). Mathew argues that an important reason for the lack of sustainability of development interventions is because they fail to address questions of equity as it exists, or as is thrown up by the intervention. He explains that Anna Hazare addresses the question of equity through a peripheral yet effective treatment of the issue. Community conduct of marriages, establishment of grain banks, the institution of ‘Shramadhan’ or the gift of labour for community assets, providing supplementary occupations for the landless, all play their role.
According to Mathew it is in the treatment of the equity issue that the Pani Panchayat model of Vilas Rao Salunke has made unique headway. He describes the model thus: “The hypothesis on which the Pani Panchayat model is based is that land in a watershed should be so developed that the uplands are available for forestry, the medium lands for rain fed cultivation and the low lands where water can be easily transported should be used for irrigated agriculture to meet the subsistence needs of the community, both landed and landless. Subsistence either through production for consumption or production for exchange. This land for the landless is made available through the concept of inalienable and equal rights for the entire community over water resources. Because of equal rights over water, irrespective of the amount of land a farmer owns, and because this right cannot be either sold or leased out, people who have land in access of the area that is going to be irrigated will find it more profitable to lease out their excess land to the landless. Rent to be had from irrigated land would be higher than profits to be had by cultivating rainfed land in dry areas, is the assumption. Since, water for irrigation cannot be had for more than what each person equally entitled for (works out to and 1 to 2 hectares per family) the land owned in excess of what can be irrigated becomes available for leasing out to people, who then irrigate it using their water entitlement. Because this entitlement cannot be sold or leased it is the land which will be sold or leased. The Pani Panchayat concept provides for social sanction only for low water acquiring crops, so that the water available is used by the largest number of people possible. In this system there are two versions. Either water is taken to the field of each individual farmer, or a series of mutual exchange, lease and sale is conducted within the community, so that a large patch or a number of patches is developed in suitable places where water can be transported to, at the minimum possible cost. In this central patch each member of the watershed community will have an equal per capita or per family share of land which will be given assured irrigation. This ensures satisfaction of minimum needs of the community” (1995 pp222-223).
These solutions hold good for the resource poor regions where majority of the population lives below the survival/sustainable livelihood line. But, what happens once people start living better? The experience with pani panchayaths showed that within a short span of five years individual farmers started breaking away despite strict rules in terms of water rights and started growing water intensive high value crops with the help of private wells, which were now possible because of improved ground water levels in the region and higher income levels of the farmers. Therefore the question arises whether such social processes are sustainable in the long run, once people cross the survival threshold line? This is a contradiction in the broader context of inter-generational equity of the sustainable development paradigm (Ratna Reddy 1995 p. A-25).
Leading NGOs in the State of Andhra Pradesh have over the last two decades catalysed the development of village women’s ‘sangams’, or associations. These, while brought together as primary thrift and credit groups, soon branched out confidently into several self-managed development activities including environmental regeneration. Their growth in numbers, their resilience, and the community strength these poor, mostly dalit, women built up over the years encouraged government to initiate the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWACRA) programme, with total savings of such groups standing today in the region of over 2700 million rupees, amounting to almost half of such savings in the country!
But, perhaps, the greatest success of these women’s sangams has been in their ability to regenerate the degraded environment of their fields and in bringing back slowly and in some effective measure the carrying capacity of their lands. This success was based ultimately on the decisions and implementation of the local people themselves, of rural women. Such cases present not a methodology as such, but rather a way, a set of principles, for taking development and environmental issues to the people to await their leadership.
These experiences show how very poor rural women, living in the heart of the degraded semi-arid Deccan plateau, are creating a new future for their communities, managing an informal banking system, bringing wastelands under cultivation, and producing additional employment especially in the dry summer months. What is of interest to environmentalists is the fact that at the heart of their work lies the regeneration of their environment through agro-forestry, micro-water-harvesting designs and soil conservation works. Unspectacularly, they are increasing the carrying capacity of their region, making their agricultural livelihoods more sustainable. A measure of their success is the already increased social status that these women command, who were but very recently invisible and voiceless.
The Deccan plateau is a vast region of the semi-arid tropics where the land has suffered environmental degradation with loss of forests and top soil. In the days of the moghuls, farmers carried out careful cultivation by building a system of village tanks, which have long since gone into disuse through neglect, and the introduction of modern agricultural practices. The integration of forests and agriculture has also disappeared as well as traditional practices of organic manuring, multiple cropping, and community service for maintaining the environment. Today, half the world's poverty stricken marginalised farmers of the semi-arid tropics live in the Deccan.
The princely state of the Nizam of Hyderabad, once acclaimed as the world's richest man, has also left enduring marks on the poor. In many of the villages of the interior Telengana region feudal values still hold a sway, with the landlords, whose own wealth is crumbling with the environment, still controlling the villages and the land, holding many in debt as bonded labour, and exacting tribute and allegiance from all. Those who suffered most were the women of the lowest castes. While the harsh social and environmental realities of Telangana are not unique, they offer one of the worst picture of exploitation, and of the poverty trap from which development policies, shaped in far-away Delhi or remote Washington, have failed to rescue the people.
Voluntary agencies have mushroomed in India to meet the challenge of ineffective global policies tailored to suit elite interests by western university trained experts. Andhra Pradesh has seen NGO numbers multiply over the last several decades, perhaps because of strong missionary traditions in the most neglected parts of Telangana and Rayalseems. Community self-help itself has a long history in India, and as "constructive work", was raised to the level of a moral force in the freedom struggle by Mahatma Gandhi.
The principle of the sangam, or free association of people, was first enunciated by the Buddha, and is reflected in all spiritual traditions. At a basic level a sangam is a thrift and savings self-help association. But its meanings reach deep into time. For the Buddhist, a sangam is one of "the three jewels", as crucial as Dharma for salvation, and mirrors the early Christian Church of a few, who are met in His Name. In present-day India's political space, it is a social seed of enormous potentiality. If it finds roots and bursts out, it becomes the organisation of self-governance for the poor, replacing the decayed traditional village political structures. It is a training ground in self-conscientization for the disinherited. It is the village spring for the re-creation of a vibrant rural economy, which till two hundred years ago produced sophisticated products, particularly colourful and delicate Indian fabrics, that sold around the world.
These ‘sangam’ women while holding up the fabric of community life, had till recently been voiceless and invisible, suffering from the oppression of class, caste, and male domination. They have now found a new courage in their own organisation and won social respect and government support. They manage all their own credit needs, profitably take in land under cultivation, utilise a wise mixture of modern and traditional technologies, help regenerate the environment by afforestation, and manage programmes of community health and education. An important achievement has been mobilising the poor to protect the young trees by "social fencing", or people's watch and ward. Above all, they are breaking the age-old bonds of subservience and are producing a new dignity for the poor.
Access to land for cultivation, and employment throughout the year are the two crucial needs of people. The sangams have been able to assure steady regular employment for most of the poor. As a result wages increase in their area even for those not connected with their work. People who once were only agricultural labour now join together and lease in lands for profitable cultivation. Land which has been fallow is being brought under cultivation and gradually a process of environmental regeneration is taking place in the community.
Capital-intensive high-technology agriculture cannot benefit the environment or the poor. Sangams work with the farming communities to help them recover their age-old traditional wisdom in agriculture, and community-support cultural practices. Organic farming practices and ‘Permaculture’ designs and methods are also being used and demonstrated in the fields. A beginning has also been made in replacing pesticides with integrated pest management projects in harmony with nature.
Many sangams introduce an inexpensive community health programme based on traditional and herbal medicines dispensed by village women, who are encouraged to practice their traditional health knowledge scientifically. At the same time they try and integrate modern immunisation methods. Such a community-based health net gives low cost and immediate protection to the very poor, the best example being the work of the Drs Arole in Jamkhed, Maratwada. ( Jamked by Drs Arole)
The poor are both wise and illiterate. A non-formal educational approach for adults, women and children is being developed by NGOs of Andhra Pradesh through village-level teachers through discussion and practice. Modern audio visual technology is integrated along with the simplest of teaching aids, like clay work, singing and dancing, story telling, and nature walks. Experiments design creative learning and playing environments for the children of the poor.
While the results of many of these NGO-led experiments in social development are varied in quality and lasting impact, much depending on non-quantifiable factors such as personal leadership, vision, organisational cohesion, and so forth, any success that emerges seems to result not so much from the qualities of the NGO as from the qualities of the women themselves.
Village Voices
The villages of Medak district of Andhra Pradesh which border on similar dry and dusty villages in the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra are part of the heart of the ancient Deccan plateau, made more bare and brown by the present generation. The villages depend on timely rains to grow the hardy millets that form the staple "rotis" of the poor, some sparse red and green gram for their "dhals", and onions and bright red chillies to spice their food. Buttermilk when available is welcome, though strong tea is a great sustainer. Water is always scarce, and during droughts women trudge several miles through the heat to collect a potful of dirty brown water from the sunken bottom of deep wells. The great trees are gone, and lean buffaloes and goats graze under shadowless accacias, the predatory Latin-American prosopis, that came into the country thirty years ago, and is known to the people as the "government thorn". Here, the Deccan Development Society, an NGO of average size and potential, and a fair reputation, has worked for many years with women sangams. The experience of the sangam women leaders is illuminating.
Narsamma of Kalmela village tells a typical story of how a sangam project works: Under her leadership two fields of 16 acres were divided into two plots: One plot of 13 acres which they used for irrigated sugarcane. Another field of three acres for rain-fed crops mainly for personal cultivation. However, they have been able to get two crops in one year out of their rain fed plot. A very beautiful multi-cropping system was developed by the women. Narsamma says they all sat and discussed what they should do.
Initially, after paying the rent for the land with the loan from the NGO of rupees 13,000 - they purchased a pair of plough bullocks for rupees 6,200. Forty bags of urea at rupees 3,500 were also purchased by them and each member contributed four cart loads of manure, roughly costing rupees 25 - 30 per cart load. For watering the fields they engaged a person at rupees 250 per month, and in all they paid him about rupees 2,600. The patel also gave 11 tractors-loads of manure.
From the small field of rain-fed crops they got the following crops:
Wheat, oats, maize, sorghum, chickpea, safflower, onions, garlic, field beans, groundnut, chillies, tomatoes, mustard, and fenugreek. All of the produce was shared equally with the landlord. Their share of wheat was six bags (market price rupees 350 per bag); 11 bags of oats; 11 bags of sorghum (market price rupees 230 per bag) which was sown as a second crop; 16 bags of chickpea and 7 bags of groundnut(market price rupees 600 per bag) also sown as a second crop. They say they planted the wheat where the land retains more moisture, whereas safflower was grown on the border drier regions. They planted 60 kg of maize seed all along the border of the field essentially as green cattle-feed. All of them have one or two calves and these were allowed to graze along the borders of the fields. People offered them rupees 300 per week to harvest the maize but they refused. Only once did they sell rupees 700 worth of maize stalk. Similarly the field beans were essentially meant for their buffaloes. While it is good to eat they felt it was better for the buffaloes and broadcast the seed throughout the field. Onions and garlic they made into bundles of 10 kg each and 20 bundles were their share. Each member got rupees 100 worth of onions and garlic. Similarly they got 30 kg of chillies which were also sown on the borders. Tomato they had in plenty and since they were selling at 25 paise a kg they just ate all they could when they worked on the fields. In addition, they grew some mustard and some fenugreek and with their safflower crop they made pickles and "chatni" for all their households. A circle of banana trees in a corner belongs to the patel but he gave them some bananas. There are also a standing row of large mango trees around the field belonging to the patel who sold the mangoes for rupees 2000 and gave them rupees 500. From his 20 tamarind trees each member got three kg worth of tamarind which costs rupees 10 per kg. For the groundnut crop, she sent away to various villages for the seed. People who went to work on daily wages to Basanthpur, and other places, kept back the groundnut they were given. They saved the seed along with the patel's seed. Out of the produce seven bags were given to the patel and they kept seven bags which were mostly eaten by the children. Six bags they retained for next year's seed. Similarly they got 10 kg of fenugreek and each member took away a glass-full for cooking. Each member also got a mud-pot full of mustard. Narsamma says that their cattle had all the food they needed from the stalk and crops from this one field, and "till yesterday they were eating their sorghum and wheat". In all, she took out 60 quintals of produce from these three acres.
Chilkamma of Krishnapur is even more skillful in land management. The profits made out of working one parcel of land is used to acquire more fallow land. By rotating its profits, Krishnapur sangam is turning into a manager of large-scale cooperative farming. Without a political revolution, the age-old individualism of the peasant has been overcome by the women, who are establishing a new mode of working the land without benefit of ideology. Several such land lease programmes have been initiated by members of the other sangams. A few years ago they would not have dared even to speak in public. Now, village headmen invite them in, give them a chair, and negotiate business. And after an evening's meeting a woman can get home, riding on a bike behind some man! The fact that she manages to lease in a large acreage of fallow land, bring it back to life, and helps her sangam to reach towards food security has added to her stature. But working the land on close margins requires considerable skill.
After working for a few years, it became clear to the women leaders themselves that a certain plateau had been reached in sangam work. Their organisations had become stronger; the women had learned to manage credit among themselves; they had also learned to carry out profitable programmes in agriculture, leasing in land, animal husbandry, and social forestry. An economical housing programme with their own designs was also being conducted by many of the women leaders. Their social status had gone up and many of them were beginning to negotiate on almost an equal footing with the leaders in their villages, the patels and the sarpanchs. Revival of the benefits of the traditional herbal medicines and a new interest in education and literacy had begun to spread among the women.
Yet, there was a general feeling that the time had come to assess successes and problems and locate issues which might be opened up for further development of the sangams. The regular meetings of the sangams and the weekly meetings of the karyakartas of the sangams were of necessity devoted to immediate business issues. While an attempt for reflection and analysis was badly needed, a way had not been found by which to establish such a space for social reflection. Nor a way found for ‘sangam’ women to wrest decision-making roles from their NGO leadership.
Women's Sangams: Some Key Features
The innate qualities of leadership and good sense of these group leaders have perhaps been permitted to blossom through voluntary agency action.
All the women received affectionate support from their families in childhood; hence the need for designing girl-child development programmes that would be supportive of girl-family relations.
All the women have fully supported the sangam model of development. They have also opted for pure women sangams rather than those dominated by men.
All the women naturally follow the democratic procedures of organisation and reach agreement by consensus. They are against splits or punitive decisions and would rather help the recalcitrant than exclude them. All the women put a premium on working very hard. All of them believe in working step by step and in consolidating their gains. Their work is an example of "small is beautiful".
All of them unanimously declared courage to be essential for development of women and of men.
All of them wisely mixed traditional knowledge with modern technology in efficient packages. They have produced profit out of produce from leased-in fallow lands, and protected scattered social forestry areas through "social fencing."
The work of the sangams has increased employment opportunities for sangam members and others. In many villages the women have assured employment of anywhere from 180 days to 270 days a year. The land lease programme produced anywhere from 50 days of work per acre of rain-fed degraded land to 250 days of work per acre for better lands irrigated with well water.
The work of the sangams has also doubled the wages for all agricultural labour in the area. This factor is recognised both by sangam members and by the landlords.
The sangams by giving timely loans at no interest have produced a local banking system within the control of the community which puts the least burden on the poor and first meet their emergencies and crisis with the greatest expediency. In consequence the borrowers have also been exemplary in the repayment of loans to sangams. The sangams have also adjusted repayment terms depending upon the ability of the borrower to repay, the state of health of the borrower and the quantity and quality of the crops.
The sangam loans have brought under check the system of bonded labour from the villages.
All the women see a great difference in the attitudes of men and of women. The leadership for the women has come from the women themselves and not from their men, let alone rich farmers or high caste powerful men.
They all have a wide range of political, social, cultural, and technical knowledge which they bring into play when offered an opportunity, means of employment and resources such as land or a forestry programme.
The women manage crises with skill and manage the contradictions between government, the rural elite, their husbands and women followers also with great skill, and with no leverage except their powers of persuasion.
The women do not present a radical image but accept conservative norms of society to struggle courageously and constantly within accepted norms for a better deal for women and the poor. Working within the village value structure, they prefer to bring change by moderate reformist policies, rather than by radical action, or what they perceive as potentially dangerous options.
The sangam leaders have stood up and denounced local superstitions such as the fear of "banamati" or witchcraft and have saved so-called witches. Their approach to life is also remarkable for its common sense. However the community continues to support the practice of child marriage for economic, social and cultural reasons and this question needs to be investigated in great depth in future.
The pressure maintained by the women has brought about change in the status of women at the village level and these low caste women of agricultural labour families are now sitting down with village patels to negotiate programmes with them. They also speak to, and even question, the District Collector. This demonstrates that important changes are still possible within village communities, and that the women produce these changes by accepting small important victories one at a time.
The women wish to work the land to build a secure future,and not just depend on loans and grants.
Throughout the study, the women have shown an interest in being exact in relating particular stories connected with local issues or the sangams. They have an acute memory for details, sentences of conversation, gestures and looks, as well as for figures and expenditure. However they have no interest at all in theorising or making general remarks based on experience.
Many sangam women enthusiastically support the concept of the sangam and say that "ten women coming together" gives them the strength and the confidence to do things they could have never done by themselves. In the experience of the voluntary agency movement, the sangam model of intervention has proved successful in different regions and with different structures of voluntary work. This recognition of its importance from the perceptions of women at the grassroots corroborates the experience of development experts. Further investigation needs to be carried out regarding what forms of sangam, what structures, and with what objectives, are preferred over others by grassroot activists and workers.
Along with their enthusiastic acceptance of the sangam model has come a natural democratic process of working the sangam organisation. At moments of crisis, or when a doubtful issue is to be solved, these women karyakartas have instinctively called for a sangam meeting and discussed all issues openly. They have gone back sometimes on their own preferred strategies and accepted the opinion of the group. Narsamma of Kalmela village said that the intricate crop production system that they planned evolved out of group discussions. Ratnamma of Humnapur went back to her sangam repeatedly when she was bargaining on lease agreements with the patels. Sushilamma of Metlakunta took a group of women to face up to the man who was denying them their just share and she accepted the democratic decision arrived at by them and the patels. Ratnamma of Algole, perhaps the most skilled "political leader", repeatedly defers to the sangam on several issues of loaning and technical management. The women's easy acceptance of a democratic style of working was never taught to them, but has arisen out of the village women's culture of self-support. None of these women have tried to create splits or take hard options but have chosen moderate and kinder options while dealing with people who are difficult, that is, who do not repay loans or attend meetings or in other ways can be considered anti-group. Close to this form of democratic functioning has been collaborative hard work. In any case, agricultural labour families work very hard and strenuously all their lives all over India. Conditions are even harsher in the resource-poor Deccan area where in dry years even 150 days of employment is difficult to get. While the men do relieve the harshness of their existence by drinking, visiting towns and spending money on themselves, for the women there is no let up from the time they are married till they die. They are conscious all the time of having to support their families, look after their children and put up with their husbands and in-laws, apart from the crushing burdens of poverty itself. This school of hard work the women have turned to good account within their sangams, by working closely with each other and by consolidating their work step by step. Unlike men they have no dreams of quick money but borrow only small sums and work with strict accounts. Their ability to produce a concrete profit out of leasing in a buffalo or breeding goats or cultivating fallow land or manipulating household accounts to be able to pay for necessities and yet repay loans, all form a small but significant saga of development. The work of these women is a grassroot example of what Schumacher called "small is beautiful".
The two main practical benefits that have accrued to the women and their communities are:
The steady increase in the wages of agricultural labour in all the villages where sangams have been set up.
Secondly, sangams making available small loans to members upon call has removed the dependence of the poor on landlords and moneylenders for timely credit.
For several years now the Government of India has been trying to abolish the bonded labour system, tenaciously existing in different parts of the country. Despite legislation and close governmental supervision, the system continues to exist because the poor have nobody to turn to except their landlords and moneylenders in times of crisis. A marriage, or illness, or failed crops, or even lack of food to eat lands the poor into bondage from which they may or may not be able to release themselves. The simple expedient of giving sangam loans to meet emergencies, which are extended to members after open and general discussion, has brought under control the bonded labour system in all the villages. In addition it is stated by many women that they are now in a position to discuss wage and employment terms with landlords in detail so that no free work is asked of them as was the custom.
These women also displayed fine political sense in managing crisis within their societies. When necessary they have confronted and shamed men for drunkenness or wife-beating. At the same time they have been careful to be conservative, and without question have accepted their communities' accepted norms. Their struggles, which are constant, are carried on within these conventional norms, and they have tried to question the actions of patels, landlords, and husbands within such norms.All these women have insisted that the traditional values of justice and fair play be followed by the powerful in their community while struggling for a change.
In this management of crisis it is also important to note that these women, who keep saying that they are ignorant and don't know much, managed to exploit the contradictions within their own communities with great skill. To the landlords and patels when they were being unfair, they talked about government support. To government officers they talked about community solidarity. To women members they talked about the necessity of following programmes laid down by important people. They have managed change skilfully, while in reality having very little leverage except their power of persuasion.
Only Women Represent Women
Many sangam women are unanimous in emphasising there is a great difference in the attitudes of men and those of women. While men of their own communities are also victims of great oppression, the women are even more oppressed. While poverty-stricken men seem to have some illusions and vices, which lead them to being tools of the powerful, the women are thrown in upon themselves with all the responsibility for the children. Their grit and common-sense in these conditions are not easily found even amongst the privileged. It is important to investigate how programmes may be developed specifically for women, which do not involve men, for as the women say even a little boy thinks of himself as the master of many older women. It is also important in this context to ask ourselves who are the real representatives of the rural poor. The question arises that if poor rural men cannot be considered to be true representatives of their own women, much less so can we consider upper caste men, or landlords, or rich farmers involved in agribiz. This study locates the leaders of the poor women among poor women themselves.
The women also have displayed a range of knowledge, political, cultural, social, and technological. Their ability with managing credit, sangam organisation, housing, social forestry, wasteland development, agricultural crop production and other programmes, and their ability to manage social crisis, as well as their clear political understanding of power and management seem to indicate that very little knowledge as such needs to be reached down to the poor. This is not to imply that training and other programmes are not needed for activists and volunteers. What it does imply is that the best way forward is really to try to remove the shackles, burdens, and other impediments that are today obstructing the poor from realising their potential, and from organising themselves for self-development.
A last and important point is that the rural elite and power mongers are not in an unassailable position any more. By forming sangams poor rural women created social organisations, and produced new economic wealth in their communities. As a consequence women who were merely labourers at one time are now looked upon as people with whom the powerful in the village are willing to negotiate. The women want to work the land themselves, and build a future.
Women sangam leaders mention with pride how ‘patels’ have come and sat down with them and asked them to take up this project or that. Such changes are being brought about by the village women themselves and the powerful of the village are willing to accord a new status to low caste women of agricultural labour families. It is equally important to note that these women in turn accept for the present their small victories: victories of being called to negotiate; of being given a cup of tea; of being invited into the office and offered a chair; of riding to town on a cycle behind a man other than their husbands. These are small victories but very important for the women in social, economic, and political terms. The women realise the value of these victories and are careful not to jeopardise these victories by trying to take larger social steps than concretely possible at present. In this they have displayed a good sense of political reality, and a knowledge that freedom of action depends on a clear recognition of necessity.
THE FIRST OFFICIAL STEPS TOWARDS PEOPLE’S SELF GOVERNANCE
The above analysis shows that sustainable development depends on two important aspects. One of them is that the people’s participation is ensured in taking decisions and another is that the equity principle is ensured in partaking of benefits of the programme. In Kerala in preparation of the state’s ninth five year plan(1997-2002) people in all the habitations were mobilised and involved in formulating this plan. As a result of this exercise this plan has come to be called the People’s Plan. Kerala’s decentralisation programme is probably the largest of its kind in the world at present. Three million people, 10 percent of the state’s population, took part in the gram sabhas, that aired complaints and identified major problems in their villages and urban wards in September and October 1996.
This formed the first stage in a five-stage evolution of the People’s Plan. The participants at these meetings were divided into 12 topic groups and each one was assigned an area. Each topic group elected two representatives for the next stage, the development seminars. But first all the group members engaged in an intermediate activity: to collect data from village and district offices, interview elderly residents about local history, and put together a report with all their information and ideas. Each of Kerala’s 991 panchayats and 54 municipalities produced a development report. Panchayat development reports have become a great source of pride in many Kerala Villages. The local drafting of a local report has given people a sense of confidence that they really can plan their own projects. These development reports have become the basis for the development seminars that formed the second stage of the exercise. The development seminars produced a consensus on the list of problems and project ideas to be carried forward to the third stage. The seminars also elected activists into task forces to carry out the third stage. At the third stage each of the 12 subject areas got a task force to distill the various project concepts into specific proposals, giving the appropriate technical , cost-benefit, and time frame considerations as well as an assessment of the resources of the local community to carry out each project. In the fourth stage the existing elected panchayats selected the projects to implement. In the final stage the panchayat level plans were consolidated in to district level plans.
Though it is too early to make any serious comment, a quick survey indicates uneven response. George Mathew comments “while thousands came together in grama sabhas in many areas, in some places it was difficult to get the quorum and urbanised villages did not attract large participants. The enthusiasm was evident in the countryside. Wherever women had come forward, the gram sabhas had better attendance. Advance publicity and awareness campaign produced a better participation “ (the Hindu, May 9, 1997). This was natural. Had there been full attendance all round that would have smacked of regimentation. Exercise of people’s choice includes the right to choose to attend or not to attend. (Richard W Franke and Barbara H Chasin 1997).
According to an informal assessment the success rate of participation was about 60 percent. Would apathy and disinterestedness in the 40 percent less-interested areas adversely affect the motivation and morale of the 60 percent which participated in the initial year?
The People’s Plans were preceded by village level resource mapping. The role played by the Centre of Earch Science and KSSP (Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad) in the land literacy movement requires a mention. “In its simplest terms, the Kerala programme (land literacy consisted of the survey and mapping of the village level natural resources (primarily land-water-biomass) not as an external scientific input but participatively with the local community”. The Centre for Earth Science and KSSP completed resource mapping of 170 GP, out of 990 GPs through the help and co-operation of the local people mainly youth. In the preparation of GP plans, many panchayats used these ready-made data sources. Elsewhere they had to collect primary data by participatory rural appraisal method. Total literacy campaign and land literacy movement being precursors of the people’s campaign for planning, considerable groundwork was already covered by the use of participatory method which helped in organising the plan campaign.
It must be pointed out that the whole effort was not an abstract exercise, as is so often the case. In the fifth plan stage that part of the plan that emerged from the people’s plan was allocated 40% of the budgeted resources. The Preface of the Brochure on people’s plan prepared by the state planning board states, “35-40 per cent of the Ninth Plan programme will consist of schemes formulated and implemented by the local bodies within the respective areas of their responsibilities. In order to empower the panchayats and municipalities to undertake this task in a scientific and participatory manner the board resolved to organise a ‘People’s Campaign for the Ninth Plan”.
But it could not have achieved what it did had not the government and the political system come forward with their supportive action. This move meant more than 40 percent diminution of their influence, patronage and power. A tussle is on between the pro-changer and no-changers, between the pro-people elements and the established orthodoxy. Only recently the chairman of the Agriculture Commission expressed his dismay to a very senior member of the SPB in a private meeting over the reduction of agriculture department’s own plan budget by 40 per cent. One point he could not clarify was why agriculture production in Kerala fell sharply when for the last eight plan periods the agriculture departments controlled 100 per cent of their plan budget.
It would be farcical if panchayats make one set of plans for economic development, which might accentuate social and economic inequality, mal-distribution of resources in favour of the affluent depriving the non-affluent and then prepare another set of plans in respect of social justice attempting to reduce the evil effects of plans for economic development. In fact that is the consequence of the macro-level planing process which simultaneously promotes economic growth and inequality of income, and then almost as an afterthought under compulsion of electoral politics, where number counts, prepares another set of plans for alleviating poverty. Obviously, the intention of mandating panchayats to undertake the planning function was to avoid that contradictory possibility at the micro-level.
The masses, particularly the deprived masses should play an active role in the preparation of plan at least at the gram panchayat level - the lowest tier of the three-tier local government system. Only the victims of social injustice could through their direct participation in the planning process promote social justice. A rational and harmonious interpretation would be that each tier of panchayats plans for economic development and social justice, and that the plans prepared by them would also be implemented by them within their own resources and technical competence.
Matching limited resources with competing demands necessitates a planning process where priorities have to be fixed for fulfilling them within a fixed time frame. In the fixation of priorities the dominant classes would always try to ensure that they get what they like to serve their class interest. In this process the silent sections of the community, even though numerically in stronger, would get by-passed. The Kerala model of people’s campaign for decentralised planning aims at preventing this contingency. Through this process they become active subjects of development from being mere passive and inert object of development. (D.Bandyopadhyay)
When we look at the 73rd Constitutional Amendment that made panchayats not only constitutional bodies but also mandated them to prepare plans for economic development and social justice, Kerala’s People’s Plan may not appear anything new. But it was in Kerala that it was given concrete shape, based on its historical roots and other social factors.
The core of this people’s campaign was to “make use of the legacy of collective social intervention and the strength of mass movements to meet the contemporary crisis in development”. Some reasons for this local planning initiative include: Kerala’s rich history of mass movements and its high level of education and her complex social diversity.Local participation could overcome the biases of many international development projects where democratic structures on paper would become new mechanisms for elite dominance and exploitation of the poor. Another reason for the democratic decentralisation taking place in Kerala is the achievements of the progressive movements that have held sway in the state for most of the past 50 years. Several elected Communist Party and Left Front governments have carried out the demands of large-scale popular movements leading to a better quality of life, collectively referred to by some development experts as “The Kerala Model”.
Kerala’s left wing activists recognise that inevitably they will have to make some compromises with structural adjustment, but they cannot accept its overall terms - their right wing political opponents do that already. Furthermore, they apparently have no intention of handing over most of the economy to the largest private capitalists whose profit-making desires are inconsistent with the needs of most of the state’s people. Even now they are struggling with private bankers who are moving capital out of the state rather than invest in Kerala’s future: the bottom line reality is that private profits and local development do not automatically mesh.
The question also arises, can grama sabhas, development seminars, over-55 volunteers, mini power stations, and people’s bridges really compete with an unchecked, aggressive new world order of capitalist bankers and industrialists whose financial and political powers seem unlimited? Strong traditions remain of volunteerism, mutual aid, and mass organising to produce results, which now inspire part of the Ninth Plan campaign. (Richard W Franke and Barbara H Chasin 1997) The Kerala People’s Plan also brought to the fore new environmentally sustainable practices. In Kanjikuzhy farmers could evolve an alternative to their disease prone coconut cultivation with vegetable cultivation based on organic farming. (D.Bandyopadhyay)
A similar working panchayat system could be found in West Bengal also. Similar political, social and cultural movements could also be found in West Bengal. But it is only in Kerala that the People’s Plan is taking shape. As contended by Ghosh and Sinha, “ what has happened in West Bengal so far is largely a financial disaggregation to the panchayat levels, without proper developmental planning based on local initiatives and local resource availability” (1997 p.282). Given the freedom of choice the common people in Kerala could respond to local problems and issues in an effective manner, by helping to design their own plans, rather than merely ‘participating’ in the plans of the higher-ups. The future will tell us whether the People’s Plan has created a model that others could try to replicate; and in what scale this improves natural resource management.
THE PROCESS OF SELF-REALISATION AND SELF-DEVELOPMENT
The process of self-realisation and self-development is not dependent on asking anybody's leave. Mahatma Gandhi once when asked if democracy was his goal said no, democracy was the path. He and the present-day activists of civil society in India expect that the strengthening of the communities of the poor, who are the great majority of the Indian people, through decentralised processes, will result in the growth of purchasing power among the great masses. The careful husbanding of the environment will lead to regional agricultural growth, based upon increased carrying capacities, with a renewal of local soils, local water-harvesting capabilities, and the natural regeneration of local flora and fauna. While this process might be slow, and go through a period of "latent development", it will be a period of sure growth, broadly based in terms of regional development, and in terms of social depth, touching all castes. Such growth augurs would well for the nation. It will produce employment at home within the villages. It will no longer make it necessary for rural people in desperation to migrate to urban areas in search of work which is not there. The fear will recede that the cities will turn into huge ugly urban conglomerations, without even drinking water to supply to its citizens. Above all, the routine savings of the rural masses will fuel industrial growth, similar to what has happened for the "East Asian Tigers". Indians will not need to catch up to the West; but they might break through into an era of ecological and social stability which the West may envy. All of this depends on the elite of the country coming to understand that the great masses are the best people to plan and decide their own future; that the people though illiterate are skilled and cultured; that the poor though in extreme difficulty still have a stake in guarding their environment; and that the poor though short in cash would still support the elite to find a way outof their wasteful habits. If the great masses are given the right, which is their inalienable right, to decide on their futures, and have access to their natural resources, which is also their inalienable right, the elite may be assured of their own future. The great vision of the architects of this country, such as Mahatma Gandhi, will be achieved in the future, neither by politicians, nor by the learned, but by the masses acting in their wisdom for the welfare of all.
Steps in Self-Management at the Grassroots
The writers broadly subscribe to the strategy of Gandhian economics outlined above. Further they would like to emphasize that:
1) The concept of people's participation is many times confused with the involvement of people only as implementers of a plan or as forming an audience while a development plan is being prepared. In our view such a concept is totally insufficient. Meaningful people's participation can only be secured through local structures at the community level of participatory governance. That is, communities of the poor must be entrusted with political power for the governance of their communities, and the development of plans according to their own priorities. Without such organisational power so called participatory processes still leave critical decision making in the hands of elites, who are distanced from the interests of the poor, and requisite local knowledge.
2) Again while laying an emphasis on local communities - that is village level communities and their importance - we must distinguish between the hierarchies in such communities. It is a fact that village leadership or tribal leadership in Third World situations are many times more closely linked to westernised, centralised elites, and the interests of the West. Therefore, when we talk about emphasising the local community we must clearly stipulate we are talking about organisations or associations of the poor themselves without the over-lordship of traditional village or tribal leaders. The involvement of such basic communities of the poor, brought together around activities or development plans, are essential to achieve development goals.
3) In this context we would like to emphasise that many such newly formed associations or communities of the poor around development activities should be composed only of women since gender biases even among the poorest of the poor stifle the voices of women who bear the greatest responsibility for the survival of poor communities.
4) Again, there should be sufficient emphasis on community building, and development strategies for the poor, which should be necessarily based on environment regeneration, wasteland reclamation. This issue is important since land is the greatest resource available to the poor, apart from their own skills, and social traditions of community help, and hence all development strategies must have at its core environment regeneration on degrading land areas to enable the poor to increase the carrying capacity of their region, and reach a measure of self-provisioning.
5) Similarly, at the very core of such a linked development- environment strategy there must be a focus on achieving localised food security. That is, the regions where the poor live must be carefully developed through ecological methods to provide sufficient food and nutrition for the local people, not only in terms of necessary energy giving bulk foods, such as cereals, but also through bio-diversity in terms of insuring supply of pulses, greens etc. for giving them balanced nutrition.
6) Such environmental, and developmental foci would require a reorientation of agricultural, and other sciences towards incorporating the traditional wisdom, and ecological knowledge of several communities of the poor so that destructive agricultural and production systems established by government may be stopped forth-with, and ecological measures on slower but sounder growth path-ways followed as an economic necessity.
7) The above mentioned point pre-supposes that we will not only emphasise research, and involvement of educational institutions such as universities, but place a far greater emphasis on people's knowledge, and developing village-level educational and research centers. Such processes would be impossible unless there is already in place structures of localised, participatory governance, as was envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi when he elaborated his famous principle of Gram Swaraj, or true independence at the village level.
8) A call for improvement of health standards would be impractical unless at the very centre of public health security we build enabling processes for local medicinal traditions to be practiced, and for local people to be recognised, and trained in such practices. Such an institution of "barefoot doctors" can also only be founded on improving bio-diversity and local medicinal plant resources. Structures may be created to integrate such medicinal traditions with the modern medical system, so that basic nutrition, and preventive care is taken care of for 100% of the population at a very low cost, while a referral system exists for the treatment of more complicated cases.
9) Similarly, a general call for improvement of educational standards does not have much meaning unless local educational priorities are understood, and diversified educational systems are developed to meet the primary educational needs of different communities. In practical terms this means that apart from basic literacy, and numeracy, it is important that communities of the poor should be educated in environment regeneration, ecological farming, primary health-care, community organisation, and their own local histories and culture, and the linkages of all these areas of knowledge made with modern democratic systems, and their priorities. I would like to underline that I am not talking about "inferior" systems of public health or of education, but relevant systems of public health and education which are accessible to all.
10) All leaders mention over and over again the prime importance of employment. This factor is crucial, and it is a failure of modern centralised government structures that by denying access to the poor over natural resources, the poor have been deprived of control over their own lives and communities. Hence an important focus of all development strategy should be the creation of sufficient person-days of employment in each region; not, as so often happens, in activities which are meaningless to the lives of the poor, but in such terms as sketched out above. That is, employment must be facilitated in the area of environment regeneration; for local nutritional self-sufficiency; and for promoting bio-diversity to help develop local health-care capabilities, among other benefits; and for improving educational capacities of the poor, whether in the class-room or while carrying out ecological farming or pursuing traditional crafts. It is well known that the structured, and timely, food for work and famine-relief programmes of the Government of India have prevented massive famines from taking place in India, though the per capita availability of food-grains in drought-hit regions have been many times lower than in famine-hit Sahel. Hence there are governmental precedents for successful implementation of largescale employment programmes to meet economic and social guidelines. But the structure and priorities for such employment programmes should be based on an accumulation of priorities articulated by organisations of the poor, and not on work programmes designed by a Central Government.
11) The coming decades will see a deep penetration of all third world economies by TNCs and large industrial houses.We should rapidly provide credit and marketing facilities to rural communities of the poor to enable them to manufacture many items which perhaps they can make better than large companies (such as bio-pesticides, soap etc.). Attempts should be made to establish networks of rural cottage industries, and manufacturing centers so that the flow of manufactured goods stem not only from central urban areas to the rural hinterland. Rural areas should supply manufactured goods also to mega-cities, and trade among themselves. This is one of the surest ways of increasing the savings, and purchasing power of the great masses; of preventing uncontrollable increase of urban slums; and ultimately of strengthening our economy.This step may be the greatest we can take to halt the uncontrolled growth of cities, which lead to disastrous consequences to the environment, and any prospect of sustainable use of natural resources.
12) Unfortunately, most plan documents do not recognise the social fact that most communities of the poor happily retain many of the beneficial aspects of community cohesion and fellow feeling, as important aspects of their pre-industrial culture. This sense of community and identity is the strongest cultural source that the poor people have for a sense of well being and a sense of purpose, and public morality in life. Unfortunately modern development has tended to destroy community cohesion, cultural values, and the binding sense of morality based on such values. There is also an unfortunate tendency in our western trained elites of looking down on traditions as non-modern, superstitious, or even as fundamentalist. The spiritual meanings of life have been written out of development dialogue as obscurantist and non-modern.
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