Network Past Issues

Voluntarism or voluntary action is most evident at the community level, where men and women engage in a range of activities aimed at the common good without expectation of commensurate individual gain. Village-level volunteers form part of village management committees, demonstrating high levels of initiative in mobilising the community and ensuring the implementation and progress of projects and tasks. They take on management roles at the village level, often involving the maintenance of complex records and accounts and liaising with banks, government departments, and other external agencies. They also play an important role in resolving inter- and intra-village conflicts.

Most of these activities are not compensated in monetary terms, though norms vary across communities and organisations. There are instances where volunteers are compensated for their work as social mobilisers, para workers, etc. In addition to monetary compensation, there are specific capacity-building measures directed at them. It is observed that over a period of time such village volunteers identify themselves more as the staff of the organisation than as representatives of the communities. Many of them are formally inducted as the staff of the organisation. At this point, questions are often asked about how strongly they represent community interests or concerns, since they are no longer volunteers in the true sense.

For the large numbers of volunteers who work for no remuneration or for token amounts, the impetus comes from the position or standing that they gain both within their community and vis-à-vis outsiders, as they are the perceived leaders. They derive a great sense of dignity from the positions they hold. Dignity, izzat, is a very strong motivating factor. Several of these volunteers go on to participate actively in political processes in local governments (panchayats) or other government-supported positions at the village level (health workers, teachers, etc). How long can such voluntarism be sustained? What are its limits and boundaries?

Who is ‘empowered’?

Empowerment is a common term used in most non-governmental action. This is interpreted variously, ranging from affirmative action by the ‘marginalised/ oppressed/poor/weak’ challenging social structures at the village level to movements of political assertion. The measures for empowerment are more often set and decided by the facilitating agency (NGO) than by the community. So access to water and fuel (reduced drudgery for women) becomes a measure of empowerment, as does participation of women in public fora. Often community perception of empowerment is widely different. In fact, the community is rarely consulted about what it would construe as empowerment, though it must also be said that these views may overlap. Who decides if and when a community is empowered?How can this empowerment be measured? There is a need to examine the contours of ‘empowerment’ from the perspective of the facilitating agency versus that of the community.

Whose participation, and how?

Facilitating agencies of most nongovernmental action promote a range of forms of ‘community participation’ and collectives in an effort to nurture democratic processes at the local level. Several of these draw on existing leadership and collective management systems existing in the village. In several instances, they evolve over a period of time, demonstrating characteristics that are valued by the promoting agency. These include participation or representation of women in decision-making bodies, representation across different caste categories, and democratic decision-making systems. The robustness of such evolved forms of participation varies from community to community and is often reflected in the nature of the responsibilities vested in or appropriated by these collectives and their acceptance within the framework of the community.

In a large number of cases, however, there is a tendency to standardise the composition of community collectives based on formulae set by the facilitating agency. In such instances, the collectives are more perfunctory than real, having little role, responsibility, or relevance in long-term development processes. These are most evident where facilitating agencies implement governmentsponsored schemes, often resulting in multiple decision-making bodies at the village level, having little correlation or synergy with each other. Forms of people’s organizations and institutions that evolve at the local level (rather than those based on external prescriptions) develop deeper roots in community decision-making processes and often thrive or survive beyond the period supported by the external agency. They also develop greater affinity for and play a proactive role in political processes and platforms such as panchayats. There is a need for greater understanding of institutional forms at the community level, that is, evolved versus prescribed institutions. More importantly, we need to study how these forms of village institutions relate to legitimate forms of governance as embodied in the panchayat.

The poor are not passive takers. They have their cards, and they play them.

Working with communities requires negotiation of tricky spaces. In most instances, people are looking for ways to maximise their benefits (individual or collective) and play their cards in such a manner as to extract maximum benefits from facilitating agencies. It is a fallacious assumption that homogeneous village communities are egalitarian and work towards sharing benefits. The existence of information asymmetry and isolation of rural communities is another common argument made by facilitating agencies to defend their usurpation of decision-making spaces. This is often based on a gross underestimation of the knowledge and information available at local levels. People and communities often go along with, and demonstrate allegiance to, those agencies that they see or perceive as granting greater benefits at any point in time.

Community-level dynamics are either not understood or their significance is missed by facilitating agencies not familiar with local situations, often because not enough time has been spent in understanding socio-economic and political contexts and idiomatic processes. The responses of facilitating agencies are tailored to meet set ‘global’ practices and hence have little space for contextualizing local conditions. Often even agencies with long-term association or local presence fail to anticipate or detect these calculated responses by communities.

Questions are being asked about the role and relevance of interventions by NGOs, especially in the context of the widening spaces of civil society as well as enlarging the identities and domains of panchayati raj institutions. NGOs are being called upon to be accountable and answerable to the communities they purport to serve and to establish their legitimacy for continuing their interventions. Some honest introspection and search for answers would be useful.

Jayapadma and Liby have worked with grass-roots development NGOs in Bihar, Jharkhand, and Orissa for over a decade. In 2006, they travelled across the country with a fellowship from the National Foundation for India, New Delhi to study different development contexts and responses. The Ayanam essays (www.ayanam. blogspot.com) were written during this period. Jayapadma is currently a Visiting Fellow at IRMA, Anand. Liby currently works with SIFFS, an NGO in Trivandrum.