Rural India Needs Simple Solutions, Not Grandiose Plans
By Moin Qazi
07 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org
During my assignments in rural India I witnessed how seemingly simple knowledge can have a big impact on farming communities. I have been puzzled ever since why information-driven initiatives have not flourished. Many of the Self Help Groups I worked with struggled to come together to save Rs. 20 per month, never mind to become the catalysts of change in their communities. Their struggle was not due to lack of ability, but merely a lack of willingness. My boss had emphasized this point many times, but I did not truly believe him until I witnessed the construction of a community well and installation of a hand pump, the money for which came as voluntary contributions from women. Without any external assistance or prompting, the villagers convened and decided to take up the challenge.
At the site, there was a high level of organization. Records were being kept on how much each family had contributed and worked. Men and women were working diligently together hauling stones up the hill. The entire project was scheduled to be completed within a month. And yet this was the same village whose SHGs could not manage to meet together once a month to save Rs. 20. If only they could be convinced that building the foundations for development, such as constructing water-harvesting structures, or investing in good breed animals for future dairy profits, was of equal importance to that of building the a community well, then rapid changes in the livelihoods of the people could happen.
The project was a watershed. It showed us the potential for collective action that lay beneath the villagers’ apparently passive exterior and paved the way for the building of the village centre. Villagers worked together, stitching banners, painting posters, erecting flagstaffs on the roofs, and stringing wires across the street for the reception of government officials who came to visit. They marvelled at this voluntary initiative of the local community. It was a major lesson even for them.
I saw villages that enjoyed a dramatic increase in crop yield and incomes after agricultural scientists advised farmers on watershed techniques—a fancy term for digging ditches so good that soil is not washed away. While it will not solve India’s deep-rooted agriculture problems, better information can significantly boost food production and rural incomes. Although there is much discussion in public forums of involving stakeholders for appropriate development of the society in which the poor live, poor people rarely get the opportunity to develop their own agenda and vision or set terms for the involvement of outsiders. The entire participatory paradigm illustrates that people are participating in plans and programs that we—outsiders—have designed. Not only is there little opportunity for them to articulate their ideas, there is also seldom an institutional space where their ingenuity and creativity in solving their own problems can be recognized, respected and rewarded. The situation of the proverbial cart having been placed before the horse. Any such project requires meticulous planning and careful implementation, involving complete and accurate information on all the important variables to be dealt with: socio-cultural, environmental, and economical aspects.
One of the things that can happen as you go into a community to serve it is a subtle dehumanization of the people there. It’s not intentional, but it happens, especially when you roll into a village with projects already formulated. There is a difference between being invited into town to live and learn where you can help with the endogenous development process already underway, and arriving with ready-made solutions to problems you haven’t yet encountered, but assume (or hope) exist. It’s as if you’ve got a hammer and are looking for nails. This approach shifts the people in your new community from the subject to the object of development. If the inhabitants have not yet given you their trust, and shown you the social topography of the community, the people may even seem like obstacles! You think “If it weren’t for these damn people and their baffling behaviour, I’d have had these women’s projects finished long ago!”
Tackling poverty requires an approach that must start with the people themselves and encourages the initiative, creativity and drive from below. The strategy must be at the core of any transformatory exercise if the results are to be lasting and enduring. I had the privilege of watching the village women acquire a sense of dignity once they were given tools for self-sufficiency. And I learned, maybe most importantly, to listen with my heart and not just my head. Are poor clients last in the long list of our objectives?
Villagers no longer trust the elite. In this, their instincts are right. The gram panchayat (village council) members are also handicapped. On their backs ride the brokers of power and influence, who dispense patronage to convert a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy. They are self-perpetuating cliques who thrive by invoking the slogans of caste and religion and by enmeshing the living body of the panchayat in their net of avarice. For such persons, the masses do not count. The lifestyles of such persons, their thinking—or lack of it—their self-aggrandisement, their corrupt ways, their linkages with the vested interests in society, and their sanctimonious posturing are wholly incompatible with work among the people. They are reducing the panchayat organisation to a shell from which the spirit of service and sacrifice has been drained.
The panchayat leaders and block officials and the local elite show no sensitivity to the poor people’s problems during their visits to villages. They strut through arrogantly, treating others like prajas (subjects), which anyone of consequence of India usually does. It requires a temperament honed in the company of individuals steeped in noble values to endow oneself with charm, grace and ability to mix easily with all ranks. The villagers consistently speak to visitors scathingly of the snobberies of the elite.
That paradoxical nature of India is a cliché, which has worn its usage rather well, due to the truth embedded in it. The paradox is rooted in the attempted imposition of a modern democratic ethos on an entrenched feudal culture, which articulates itself in various ways. The dominance of a feudal mind-set in India has been overlaid by centuries of Brahmanism which privileges birth over all other attainments, thus preventing the maturing of democracy in the country. Political choices are made not on the basis of merit, but rather on family or other primordial ties. The affirmative action programmes are now aggressively realigning the caste calculus. No one wishes to harm powerful interest groups.
The determinants of poverty reduction are policy instruments that benefit the dominant coalition of political power but also benefit poverty reduction. If a set of instruments harms the interests of the dominant coalition, it will not be implemented, even if it is known to be a determinant of poverty reduction. Advocacy for poverty reduction must mean not only advocacy for instruments that we know will lead to this outcome, but also for a realignment of the dominant coalition in a way that will orient it to the interests of the poor. Specifically, this means that we should advocate for empowerment of the poor so that they can indeed challenge the dominant interests, to shift alliances in a way that will make possible policies and interventions for poverty reduction.
Moin Qazi is a well known banker, author and Islamic researcher .He holds doctorates in Economics and English. He was Visiting Fellow at the University of Manchester. He has authored several books on religion, rural finance, culture and handicrafts. He is author of the bestselling book Village Diary of a Development Banker. He is also a recipient of UNESCO World Politics Essay Gold Medal and Rotary International’s Vocational Excellence Award. He is based in Nagpur and can be reached at [email protected]