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Village Development: VITAL TO TAP LOCAL EXPERTISE, By Moin Qazi, 13 Jan, 2016 Print E-mail

Events & Issues

New Delhi, 13 January 2016

Village Development

VITAL TO TAP LOCAL EXPERTISE

By Moin Qazi

Why have information-driven initiatives not flourished in rural India? Given that seemingly simple knowledge can have a big impact on the farming communities. It is no secret that many women collectives have struggled to save Rs. 20 per month, forget trying to become the catalysts of change in their communities. Indeed, their struggle was not due to lack of ability, but due to a lack of willingness.

 

In fact, one witnessed the construction of a community well and installation of a hand pump by money which was voluntarily contributed by women, without any prompting or external assistance. Whereby, the villagers got together and decided to take up the challenge.

 

This is not all. The villagers went about this job in a very organized manner. They maintained records on how much each family had contributed and worked. One saw how both men and women diligently worked together busy hauling stones up a steep hill. The entire project was completed within a month. Notwithstanding, this was the same village whose collectives could not manage to meet together once a month to save Rs. 20!

 

Alas, if only one could convince them that building the foundations for development, such as constructing water-harvesting structures or investing in thorough bred animals for future dairy profits was of equal importance as that of building a community well, then rapid changes in the peoples’ livelihoods could happen.

 

Undeniably, this 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 building of the village centre.

 

Villagers worked together, stitching banners, painting posters, erecting flagstaffs on roofs and stringing wires across the street to in organizing a reception for Government officials who came on a visit. Pertinently, all marvelled at the local community’s voluntary initiative. For the bureaucrats too, the visit not only opened their eyes but was a lesson in community development.

 

Besides this, one observed villages which saw a dramatic increase in crop yield and incomes after agricultural scientists advised farmers on watershed techniques. Namely, by digging ditches so that soil was not washed away.

 

True, this alone will not solve India’s deep-rooted agriculture problems but better information can significantly boost food production and thereby rural incomes. Although there is much discussion in public forums of involving stakeholders for appropriate development of rural society, poor people rarely get the opportunity to develop their own agenda and vision or set terms for the involvement of outsiders.

 

Notably, the entire participatory paradigm illustrates that rural people are participating in plans and programmes designed by ‘outsiders’ nee those residing in urban areas. Consequently, not only is there little opportunity for villagers to articulate their ideas as also an institutional space wherein their ingenuity and creativity in solving the problems they face can be recognized, respected and rewarded.

 

Shockingly, this is akin to placing the proverbial cart before the horse. Against the backdrop that any community project requires meticulous planning and careful implementation, involving complete and accurate information on all the important variables: socio-cultural, environmental and economical aspects.

 

Importantly, as one delves deep in to a rural community one detects a subtle dehumanization of the people. Undoubtedly, this might not be intentional, but happens, especially when village projects have already been formulated.

 

Remember, there is a difference between being invited to live in a town and learn where one can help with the endogenous development process already underway, and arriving with ready-made solutions to problems one has not yet encountered, but assumed (or hoped) existed.

 

Wherein it is akin to getting a hammer and then looking for nails. This approach shifts the people in your new community from the subject to the object of development.

 

Besides, if the inhabitants have not yet given one their trust and shown the community’s social topography, the rural folks might even seem like obstacles! Resulting in urban planners cursing, “If it weren’t for these damn people and their baffling behaviour, I’d have had these women’s projects finished long ago!”

 

Importantly, one needs to realize that tackling poverty requires an approach which must begin with the people themselves who are encouraged for their initiative, creativity and drive from below.

 

This strategy must be at the core of any transformatory exercise if the results are to be lasting and enduring. One has had the privilege of watching village women acquire a sense of dignity once they were given tools for self-sufficiency. Raising a moot point: Are poor clients last in the long list of our objectives? And should not one listen to the heart and not just my head?

 

Sadly, villagers no longer trust the elite. In this, their instincts are right. Alongside, the gram panchayat members too are handicapped as on their backs ride the power brokers who dispense patronage to convert a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy.

 

These self-perpetuating powerful cliques thrive by invoking caste and religious sloganeering by enmeshing the panchayat in their net of avarice. For them, the masses do not count.

 

Bluntly, their lifestyles and thinking, or lack of it, for self-aggrandizement as also their linkages with vested interests and sanctimonious posturing are wholly incompatible with work among rural people. Wherein they are busy reducing panchayats in to a shell organisation from which the spirit of service and sacrifice has been drained.

 

More shocking, panchayat leaders, block officials and the local elite lack sensitivity towards poor people’s problems during their visits to villages. All busy strutting around arrogantly, treating others like their praja.

 

Already, villagers speak of visitors scathingly due to their snobbery. Our planners seem to forget and realize that community up-liftment requires individuals with a temperament honed in noble values and ability to mix easily with all ranks for all-round community development and peoples’ well being.  ---- INFA

 

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

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