Open Forum
New Delhi, 8 July
2020
Economic Plugging
PANDEMIC EXPOSES FAULTLINES
By Moin Qazi
A
leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his
aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. – Lao Tzu
The COVID-19 pandemic
has inflicted the greatest pain on those who are already the most vulnerable.
It has spurred great hardship and growing unease among low income families and
micro businesses. The government’s initial response was a cash transfer in the
accounts of 400 million households.
With conditions
easing and economic activities resuming the government launched a massive rural
public works scheme ‘Garib Kalyan Rojgar
Abhiyaan’ to empower and provide livelihood opportunities to the returnee
migrant workers and rural citizens. The campaign of 125 days across 116
districts in 6 states aims to work in mission mode to help migrant workers. It
will involve intensified and focused implementation of 25 different types of works
to provide jobs and create infrastructure in rural regions with a resource
envelope of Rs 50,000 crore.
While efforts are
laudable we need to remember learning of the past while implementing such
programmes. We need plans, systems, and mutual accountability. But before we
have all of it -- economic plumbing--we must concretely understand what such a
strategy means to people, who know best their own problems and have relevant
and sustainable solutions.
Local leadership is
critical to driving ownership of social programmes. Successful programmes
empower a community by valuing its voice and respecting its choices. This approach
provides a guiding answer to oft-asked question: “What does development mean?”
The answer to modern
development issues of people lies in nurturing local change agents. By building
leaders within communities, we are ensuring our programmes can eventually be
handed back to them, and run independent of original drivers. We need to design
collective processes to develop an understanding of communities’ needs and then
provide the tools, technical support, and guidance they need to build
leadership skills.
It is critical to
create a space where people can voice opinions, disagree with each other, and
even criticise you. As an outsider, you are navigating years of patriarchy. We
need to envision a new value-creating opportunity; one that builds a team of
teams, creates synaptic architecture adaptive to such work, and then helps
every person/group improve the vision/team/team architecture.
We need to hire
individuals with entrepreneurialism and drive to create change on the
ground. You can’t solve problems of the
“last mile” from headquarters. It takes local entrepreneurs to succeed -- guided
by local wisdom, a deep appreciation of ground reality.
Each development
agent will have to use her own creativity to ensure interventions deliver best
value to stakeholders -- the State, donor agencies and recipients. You don't
give a medical diagnosis on a page without seeing the patient, because there’s no
one remedy that fits all. Good economic doctoring is similar: know the general
principles and specifics. This is the only way to ensure that inequality and
exclusion do not remain India's enduring heritage.
Another very popular
quote by Tzu says, “To lead people, walk behind them.” Leaders can truly lead
when they fully understand their team members and what inspires them. This
knowledge comes with time and observation. Tzu’s words underline the importance
of leading from a position of understanding. Real leadership is when everyone
else feels in charge.
In development, as in
public-policy areas, the question of values must be dealt with straight forwardly.
In a programme, there may be as many goals as there are institutional or
individual actors. The most crucial issues are not openly discussed at any
level among stakeholders: not between collaborating agencies, not between donor
and host governments, and certainly not between donor agencies and client
communities.
Thus, ambiguities and
inconsistencies remain unacknowledged and unaddressed and conflicts of the
assembly rooms and boardrooms are pushed out into the field. The goals are left
to be deciphered and outcome determined by the dynamics of the process.
There is a need for
more inclusive policies that bring poor, rural populations into the economic
mainstream to ensure rural development is socially, economically and
environmentally sustainable. It can be promoted through people-centered
development in which beneficiaries become agents of their own development,
participating in designing, decision-making and execution of processes.
Moreover, strategies for inclusive transformation have to be context-specific
so these build on local solutions that can best address local challenges.
We know there is a
geographical dimension to poverty— its concentration in certain parts. Hence
solutions have to be context-specific, cannot be derived from generic ‘best
practices’ and may require adaptation over time. People won’t actively and
emotionally participate in an intervention unless it has relevance to their
lives and strengths. When communities take charge of projects, they too contribute
through their labour/commitment, and engage actively with the system to ensure completion
on time. This ownership also helps in ensuring assets thus created are
maintained properly by the community. Professionals are only needed as
facilitators, and this works very well for funders because they can get better
outcomes at lower costs.
Most development
academics and professionals are researchers, with little real-world experience.
The underdeveloped and marginalised communities are highly stratified, with each
different from the other, and need development experts who understand the subtle
nuances of dynamics at play. Intellectual sophistry cannot become a substitute
for local-level social engineering.
Global developmental
and economic planning models have reduced India’s underprivileged to a set of
abstract data. They have followed developmental agendas that fail to reflect
the real, micro-level needs of communities and led to increased marginalisation
and inequality for the rural poor.
Local leadership is
critical to the success of any bottom-up effort. But local leaders may not immediately
be apparent and we need to invest in developing them, who are typically
under-acknowledged and under-supported so to be able to effectively engage with
popular movements, community-based organisations, and grassroots activist
groups. These efforts will also foster better citizenship and promote awareness
of rights and obligations. This type of enlightened and engaged citizenry
fosters a working democracy and ensures transparency and accountability.
For building an
innovatively agile society we need to create workable and cost-effective
solutions and scale these quickly. Through their individual and collective
efforts, local entrepreneurs can lead significant change by building
self-reliance in their geographies. They have potential to become local
change-makers given their tremendous drive– but they often lack opportunities
for training, education and are unable to access networks and finance. They are an essential part of society and
often don’t receive credit they deserve as policy drivers and implementers in
India’s challenging developmental space.
There are many
lessons to be brought to table from field experience. We need to understand the
existing human conditions rather than hastily proposing templates that serve
the interests of elites. Experts need to combines their knowledge with
grassroots action and a wider community of practice. The incredibly evolving
and complicated ecosystem requires better collaboration and partnerships for
understanding, analysing, designing solutions, and undertaking impact studies
to contribute to the wider knowledge pool within the sector.
This can give a
better understanding of the key contemporary issues that are located at the
interface between ‘finance’, ‘livelihoods’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘development’
several complex issues interlock an
entire web of cross-cutting issues and challenges.
There is need for
integration of an entire gamut of resources, ranging from financial and human
to markets and entitlements. When we address these issues empathetically, we
can move ahead with a more self-assured, robust and proactive engagement
towards inclusive growth and livelihoods development. What we essentially need
is a community based, business-like approach, spanning grassroots action to
policy advocacy.---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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