I would like to present some thoughts inspired by the workshop "Land, Community, and Governance" organized in Udaipur by Seva-Mandir during 12-13 September, 2003. (Published in the Seva-Mandir Newsletter, Volume October 2003 - March 2004.) The discussion is brief and provocative, and many of the arguments will betray my physicist background. I am not familiar with the history and literature in the fields of land, community or governance, so I will not attempt to attach and correlate my thoughts and observations to what Seva-Mandir or any other organization is or is not doing. Instead, I would like to present my overall impressions and what I have learned as an outsider. My hope is to enlarge the discussion from what took place at the conference.
First and foremost I would like to express my very warm and sincere appreciation and thanks to Seva-Mandir. There is no question in my mind that Seva-Mandir, host to the conference and originator of many publication and studies of methodologies and outcomes, is a pioneering organization. Their contribution to rural development is huge and comprehensive. This is also true of many other organizations throughout India. The existence of such a large number of first rate individuals and organizations dedicated to rural development, poverty eradication, accelerated delivery of health care and education is, in my opinion, major reason for optimism. India can rapidly make substantial strides in the development of a broad based civil society if we can harness their tremendous potential and make the sum of their efforts much larger than a collection of individual efforts and if we can use their examples and methodologies to motivate and facilitate others.
The conference provided a very complete discussion of land management, reclamation, and reforestation. The processes by which land holdings can be made more profitable and how common lands can be put to better use and reforested was very illuminating. I do not have anything significant to add to it. So I wish to look ahead.
Empowering people on land holdings of less than one hectare is, at best, an intermediate solution. Mechanization, globalization, technological innovations, and market forces all favor larger land holdings. Similarly, the global trend has been that the more educated (measured even in terms of just school grades) the public becomes the more it moves away from agriculture. Unless rural communities can offer white collar jobs and modern amenities for physical and cyber connectivity, health care, education, and entertainment there will be remain a tremendous incentive and draw for people (especially youth) to migrate to urban settings. Concomitantly, of those that continue farming their expectations of land holding will continue to grow as their wealth increases.
Environmental factors (including water and quality of land) dictate the amount of produce a given unit of land can yield. These, along with the nature of the crop (cereals versus high priced cash crops like white Musli) give us some overall idea of the size of land holding that can provide a reasonable lifestyle (access to health care, education, healthy leisure time activities, and savings to protect against crises, for future investments, and old age security). Today, even a family of four living on less than a hectare cannot generate enough surplus to compete with their urban counterparts or to lift their children into the knowledge society in one generation.
Community land used for pasture also has its limits in terms of the size of livestock it can sustain. It is therefore important to assess, at any given time, what is this size of individual land holding and the number of livestock community lands can sustain and to incorporate this information into the planning. Let us assume, for example, it is estimated that in 2003 the typical size of land holding in a given area (say a village in Udaipur district) should be 2-5 hectare (depending on the terrain and quality of soil and water) and the public pastures can sustain a total herd of 500 goats, then, the current fragmentation of land holdings is below this long term desirable level. Therefore, in addition to other development strategies, it is very important to simultaneously focus on facilitating small planned families and to develop exit strategies for a significant fraction of, at least, the next generation to migrate to non-agricultural professions.
Planning and delivery of exit strategies is easy to recommend but very hard to implement especially since most NGOs are understaffed and overwhelmed by crisis mitigation. NGOs urgently need help and support to think and plan long term and not be stuck in a reactive mold. The good news is there are many NGOs capable of doing this, and I can only hope that the society recognizes their potential and offers help.
In my discussion of community I include all three entities, the public at large, the NGOs, and their target populations. To implement rural development schemes one needs financial and human resources. These projects cannot be expected to yield profit or or be self-sustaining in the short term. Making many of the projects functional and sustainable before handing them off to local (village) governance takes decades at times. During this time they are very fragile, need constant help and soak resources. So the government (whose work the NGOs are doing) and the private sector (who will benefit in the long term) need to support this work.
Rural development is very demanding and challenging work and not well paid. So there is high incidence of burn out and turnover in the staff of most NGOs. Given these challenges I feel that in the end it will be the role and the combined efforts of the extended community that will make or break the system. To elaborate, the key points I wish to make are
Facilitating behavior change is very hard work and change often occurs slowly over a long time. NGOs face burn-outs if communication channels are poor, innovation and enterprise is not supported, and if the "professionals" pretend to have the tools which fail to work and exercise control through micromanagement. Organizations need to promote resourcefulness and responsibility at all levels while adapting to local circumstances. Three things are essential. First, development work should be given more respect by society along with the understanding that NGOs can attract better professionals at all levels only if their workers are paid market salaries. Second, there constantly needs to be [re]training and evaluation programs. Third, NGOs need to adopt better communication and knowledge management tools so that they can share their experiences, evaluate progress and demonstrate to the public the efficacy of their programs. Unfortunately, if NGOs are always working in crisis mitigation and survival mode, these three aspects are the first to be sacrificed.
I will present a rather simplistic view of governance. In this view civic participation leads to civic consciousness which in turn provides the basis for good governance. Traditional power brokers - landlords, factory and mine owners, and royal families - created a system that denied people participation. India's constitution guarantees one person one vote as a corner stone of its democratic system, but this system got hijacked because a large fraction of the population was/is illiterate and the public was not educated on the power and responsibility of this vote. So traditional power brokers remained and were simply relabeled as the politician, the bureaucrat, and the business person.
In my view India, in principle, has the desired system of government - all the way from village panchayats to district, state and central government. The problem is that a robust and working public participation that holds people in the public jobs accountable did not evolve concomitantly. Instead, the law and order system has, over time, been subverted by those in power. There is hope as most of the people in these jobs are not irredeemable and would behave very differently if the public exercised its civic power and held them responsible through collective action. Creating and nurturing the right leaders has to begin with civic participation and organization, whether it is in a village or a slum or a suburb. This is a slow process that requires much sacrifice, but I don't see an alternative to it.
The challenging problem that we must confront is -- raising this consciousness without creating an antagonistic relationship between the public and various arms of the government. Doing so would undermine faith in the system and such lack of trust once established is very hard to overcome. Since I believe in a democratic system, creating an antagonistic relationship is not a desired strategy or even an acceptable tactic. NGOs that constantly blame and undermine the system by going around it are inadvertently contributing to the corruption. Making people aware of the power of the vote and one's responsibility in selecting good leadership has to go hand in hand with fostering the notion that the village panchayat has to learn to negotiate and work with the district level government, which in turn has to interface with the state and central governments. It is unfortunate that the heavy handed, non-transparent and corrupt working of the government frustrates even the best of us to the extent that we often feel that the system itself needs change. My hope is that we maintain faith in the system and focus our energies on generating civic participation at all levels. Civic participation is the pre-requisite for good governance and there is no better way of learning why it is important to work cooperatively and for the collective good than by doing so.
NGOs cannot function assuming that they are or can be an alternate to the government. They can, at best, be society's conscience and advocates of a civil society. The very long term goal of any NGO should be self-termination or metamorphosis into a CBO. Once its target population has been empowered to negotiate its planning and development, an NGO becomes irrelevant. Fortunately for the NGOs, this eventuality is not of immediate concern as the desired empowerment will take decades to complete even under the best of circumstances. In short, until the government can deliver basic services to all, the public has to respect the role of the NGO in developing a civil society. So, rather than hurling accusations at NGOs of being boondoggles, people should invest in the good ones and help make them better through involvement and review. In fact I believe the institution of the NGO is the secular version of historic charities and is here to stay as there will always be some fraction of the population, especially among the poor and the marginalized, that will fall outside the system and need help to stand up.
As attested to by many present at the workshop, the very high level of alcohol use is a major impediment to development in rural India. It is undermining the excellent work of even the best NGOs. So far alcoholism is mainly a male phenomenon, and contributes significantly to the exercise of control by males over their families and gives rise to very depressing home conditions. Heavy alcohol use is a prime cause of domestic violence, and is a major factor in risky sex leading to sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS. It gives rise to poverty not just for the individual but for the whole family, is an extreme health hazard especially when people get used to drinking high alcohol content home-brews, often laced with toxic chemicals. Resultant poverty, lack of proper nourishment, health care and education curtails the development of children. Given the current magnitude of the problem, addressing alcoholism should be integral part of all development programs.
Alcohol and gambling have become the most common escapes from reality and the prime ways of spending "leisure" time, especially among the poverty stricken landless villagers and urban menial workers. In certain parts of India (my direct experience is in Haryana, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal), where women have been helped to recognize their abilities beyond doing domestic chores, and have started to earn money through income generation schemes, the men have slowly lost jobs or are finding work on fewer days of the month. To pass time and for entertainment, they are resorting to alcohol and gambling. As their drinking becomes a severe problem and consumes a significant fraction of the family's earnings, more and more men become almost totally dependent on the women for livelihood, but continue to exercise control over the household through physical violence. The men learn to hide behind lame excuses for why they cannot find work, or why it is below their dignity to accept work that pays less than what their women earn. In such families social norms that define restrictive roles for women have been hard to change. On the other hand, in families not tormented by alcoholism, the respect and status of women that earn has grown.
When alcohol abuse becomes so prevalent and so ingrained in a community, how does one deal with it? The one outstanding example of a large community in which alcohol abuse became severe is Ireland in the mid 19th to early twentieth century. The British could have provided a large influx of money (the British Empire was at its height) to help build the infrastructure and prevent the famines but did not. This neglect had profound consequences on the Irish society and, in addition to alcoholism, many people died prematurely (through starvation and disease) or migrated - the population of Ireland fell from about eight million in 1840 to around three in the 1910s. The leading factor by which Ireland able to come out of it (alcoholism is still very high in Ireland) was through migration - a very significant fraction of the hard workers, go getters and those unhappy with the system migrated (predominately to the USA) but maintained contacts and helped their families improve by investing in Ireland. This allowed a sufficiently large fraction of the youth to get out of local stagnant systems and find jobs in the growing industrial boom. The question before us is how does one create similar positive conditions in different parts of India and prevent a repetition of a long hard struggle -- a hundred years in the case of Ireland? Fortunately, some of the basic necessary steps have been recognized by many NGOs but need to be implemented as part of a holistic program for rural development.
Given the current levels of alcohol abuse and its impact on development, NGOs must incorporate alcohol reduction strategies into their programs. In fact, the high correlation between alcohol abuse and risky sex (leading to the growing menace of STDs and HIV/AIDS) has created the need for urgent action. Control of both relies on behavior and lifestyle modifications and should be part of a common program on awareness and empowerment.
I have frequently heard the statement that different NGOs or CBOs, operating within even the same city and doing similar work, cannot work cooperatively. The justifications for non-cooperation - the very strong egos of the leaders, their intense and passionate drives, and competition for limited resources - seem to be worn, with pride, as medals. As a consequence the cost of cooperation has, so far, been prohibitive. While I understand many of the reasons, "continuing this tradition" is a contradiction and a failing since the first thing any NGO tells any village or slum community is that change can come only through unity and collective action.
On a practical side I do not foresee all the NGOs hugging each other tomorrow. But what is eminently possible today is virtual cooperation as we have much better understanding of the larger picture and new communication tools. NGOs do not need to share projects or work in the same geographical areas to cooperate, but they should share information, strategies, and data. As a start, they can come together to recognize common grounds for action, understand the spectrum of issues and their interconnections, and contribute to consensus building through regular workshops like this one. NGOs cannot afford to focus excessively on differences or forever argue about means and strategies and stubbornly carry their most important issue and agendas to their grave. Society is facing many challenges simultaneously and NGOs should be free to choose to work on one or more issues depending on their passion and competence. At the same time they need to recognize the interconnections between the many issues and that transformation of communities can happen when there is progress on all fronts. One positive consequence of globalization could be that the world of NGOs is subjected to the same scrutiny and pressures to perform that corporations are, but instead of competition the investors should promote cooperation.
It is essential that NGOs document their work and let it be scrutinized. Even though different NGOs are, in general, not working with the same set of people, the efficacy of one NGO's approach versus another's can be evaluated. Hopefully, funding agencies will increasingly respond to product and not rhetoric, recognize the good NGOs and empower them to see profit in working cooperatively and not in destructive competition.
In summary, what rural India needs to transform itself is 3000 "Ela Bhatts", and it has them. What is missing is collective action. Even leaders of good NGOs rarely talk to each other, instead they doubt and fight each others approaches and passions. They do not present a collective front. So it is ironic that I should end with a twist on a note that was repeated throughout this conference and with which all NGOs working on land development start - "only through collective action and selfless leadership can the common lands be reclaimed, reforested and bring bounty to the village. Even tiny encroachments undermine the process and soak up all the energy." Today, we have the communication tools to allow the 3000 "Ela Bhatts" to come together and forge this cooperation without impeding each other. Let us not deny this opportunity for low-overhead cooperation and stay waiting for the perfect but unknown solution.
Rajan Gupta