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A consultancy organization providing a range of support services to NGOs, CBOs, NGO networks and social development agencies. |
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A consultancy organization providing a range of support services to NGOs, CBOs, NGO networks and social development agencies. |
This section focusses on the capacities of the individuals to understand their socio-cultural, economic and ecological environments, to identify their strengths and weaknesses in coping with challenges confronting their lives, and, to manage such environments to improve the quality of their lives and of those around them. In this sense, HRD is much more than education and training. Capacities of individuals contribute to processes inherent in organization building at village, block, district. state, national and global levels. This section covers processes in and methodologies of HRD (e.g., social animation, social mobilization, etc.), and, interaction among individuals and organizations (communication).
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The present report argues that the poor have accessed development more on their own through self-help at the initial stage, rather than through the governmental efforts at planned development. It is partly so on account of widespread lack of organization among the poor at the level of the community in the village, tribal pocket, or the urban slum. The governmental preference for centralized planning and the accessibility of development opportunities to organized pressure groups further contribute to the widespread neglect of the poor and the disadvantaged. Human resource development of the poor would be more meaningful if initiated through the social animation methodology, rather than the social mobilization methodology.
The first attempts at organized behaviour among the poor have usually been initiated by voluntary organizations, not the government. Such efforts at the village level are characterized as social animation. The governmental efforts at planned development have alternately been labelled as social mobilization around a pre-determined plan. It has further been argued that social animation is part of the larger process of capacity building at the level of the individual poor and the community.
The first interface of the poor with the government and its planned development process is at the village and block levels. The planned process of development is packaged through the process of Five Year Plans, which are an aggregate of planned aspirations of the various states and union territories in India.
| "The Eighth Plan recognized the need to involve people in the process of development, and reduce their total dependence on government through strengthening of participatory institutions. With the revitalization of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) consequent on the enactment of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, the process of democratic decentralization has been ushered in. Panchayats will have to be given increasingly larger role in the planning and implementation of poverty targeted and area development programmes." |
The Ninth Five Year Plan perspective on the role of civil society institutions raises both hopes and fears. It raises hopes insofar the governmental role in development is sought to be decentralized with people's involvement and participation therein as the key strategy. The political system is sought to be grassrooted through the establishment and growth of Panchayati Raj Institutions in rural and tribal areas and Municipalities in urban areas as local self-government institutions.
The strategies adopted to encourage people's participation have turned out to be command operations, known by the phrase mobilization, which tend to rely on the well- resourced, affluent and power elites at the village and block levels. The poor and the disadvantaged, often living on the fringe of the rural areas, are not easily accessible to the government functionaries on account of the dominant role of such vested interests.
The first meaning of development of the poor is thus seen largely in the efforts of the poor themselves, often triggered through processes of social animation by voluntary agencies and organizations at their level. Action studies undertaken in various South Asian societies indicate that the centerpiece of policy framework for poverty alleviation has invariably viewed capacity building as social animation among the poor which enables them to participate directly and effectively in the decision-making process that affects their lives.
The states in South Asia have traditionally viewed capacity building in the limited semantic framework of social mobilization of diverse and distant groups of people and communities around a command operation, a kind of development command operation, planned and operationalized by the statecraft. Be it external aggression or an internal emergency, armies and people have been mobilized to meet the challenge.
Despite acceptance of democracy as a cherished value and right to equal participation as a prescribed norm, the mental orientations of political elites and socio-economic planners (to think on behalf of the poor without often knowing their diverse forms of poverty) have not undergone any significant change. Participation is often found irksome, time-consuming and a threat to the presiding intellectual elites even in democratically constituted planning and management mechanisms.
| The decision to nationalize banks in
India created, for example, some additional space for the
poor and the organizations of the poor through the
provision of an earmarked fund available to the poor at a
Differential Rate of Interest (DRI) - at one time 4
percent and later 4.5 percent. There was a well-drafted
plan with a laid down set of procedures backed by
resources - all that the poor had to do was to play the
game according to the rules to have access to these
resources for their own development. Some organizations seized the opportunity and undertook mediation roles to mobilize the poor for a meaningful interface with the commercial banks. Quite a few of them benefitted from this interface through access to credit against an identifiable and value-sensitive collateral. It added to the capacity of the poor when they found access to credit from institutional resources. The organizations of the poor added their bit to the process of capacity building by working out or facilitating backward and forward linkages with the market forces and with the preferred behavioural patterns of the consumers. However, most such NGOs which had undertaken the mediation effort between the banks and the poor found that it was far more meaningful to set up Credit and Thrift Groups by the people and managed by the people themselves with more humane procedures and conditions. The micro-credit movement saw its beginnings often in such disenchantment with the rigid and often insensitive rules and procedures in operation in the banking system. |
Most such social mobilization efforts worked well in the urban areas or in rural areas which had effective linkages with the urban areas. Villages in the western and southern parts of India are well-linked by roads and other infrastructure to the urban areas as compared to the northern and eastern parts of India.
It is not being argued that the social mobilization perspective has not helped the poor and the disadvantaged; neither is one arguing that the organizations of the poor have in any erred in utilizing the social mobilization strategy in the process of reaching development to the poor and the disadvantaged. In being part of the state's delivery mechanisms, the organizations of the poor enabled the poor to access their legitimate share of the planned development resources. In a society where development resources are either monopolized or grabbed by those who are already resource plus, the organizations of the poor have been doing a highly commendable job of facilitating equity and justice in terms of people's access to resources.
The social mobilization perspective enabled the organizations of the poor to embark on a learning path. The interface with the commercial banks enabled them, for example, to identify their limitations in responding to the diverse needs of the poor for access to credit. The insistence on value-laden collateral, credit only for productive purposes, and diverse instruments of written culture (bonds, deeds, agreements, etc.) led them to collectively introspect towards creating an alternate savings and credit mechanism.
The numerous Thrift and Credit Groups/Associations - currently running into lakhs - being set up and managed by community-based Mahila Mandals have relied on an altogether different perspective - the social animation perspective - to capacity building.
The social animation perspective to capacity building found expression in the late Eighties; it is in the process of maturing towards comprehensive growth in the Nineties. The various organizations of the poor are at varying stages of growth in the understanding and practice of the social animation perspective. Social animation is essentially an organized or a collective participatory process of interaction among members of a social group/community/area (sharing a certain degree of homogeneity of interests and concerns) which facilitates both charging and release of the creative energies of the poor towards understanding and solution of obstacles to their own development.
Action studies undertaken in various South Asian societies indicate that the centerpiece of policy framework for poverty alleviation has to be social animation of the poor in order to enable them to participate directly and effectively in the decision-making process that affects their lives. The diverse experiences indicate that these are most successful when rooted among the very poor, when concentrated on organization of the poor into groups, associations, committees and organizations, and when backed by poverty alleviation activities.
Social Animation vis-a-vis Social Mobilization
It should, however, be pointed out at this stage that some social activists have viewed social mobilization as the preferred perspective to capacity building of and among the poor; these social activists have found certain deficiencies in the social animation perspective.
Wignaraja and Sirivardana (1995) contend, for example, that "animation is the outcome of a specific mode of interaction between the outsiders and the poor" resulting in conscientization. They further argue that the "participatory approach seeks to achieve an interaction between the two knowledge systems (the knowledge base of the poor rooted in experience and knowledge derived from formal education) creating a mutual learning process".
The inherent limitation in such a semantic framework is the reliance on initial dichotomy and distance between them and us and the posited hope of converting the dichotomy and distance into a relationship between equals. That is what the state/government has been hoping to achieve and has rarely moved to such a relationship with the poor. The urban NGO workers have often realized that they need to unlearn a great deal of what formal education loaded them with in order to work and learn with the poor. It is not so much a case of interaction between the two knowledge systems; it is more an empathy-oriented understanding and internalization of the knowledge and value systems of the poor and the disadvantaged by the development animators, if they are from outside.
The Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal, the pioneers of the Chipko Movement (Hug the Trees) in Uttarakhand in northern India is a case in point. The local forest department was keen to mobilize the hill people to let the contractors cut trees for sustained timber supplies for development needs of the people in the plains. However, the hill people, through indigenous processes/technologies of social animation, persuaded their own folk to hug the trees like mothers do to their children to save the trees from being cut.
Social animation comprises of
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It takes a considerably long time to move from awareness creation to group formation. The organizations of the poor have pointed out that the process could take anywhere from six months to three years to form one community-based organization based on values such as democracy, equity and transparency. Almost each member of the group or community-based organization looks at the group activity from self-interest, self-esteem and personal security. It is only when these instincts have been honoured or fulfilled by the group that the perception of self begins to gradually expand to group solidarity for collective benefit sharing.
The local revolving development fund created by the village or the collected savings of the local thrift and credit group or people's culvert/bund/checkdam or health cooperative or a preprimary school are probably the first expressions of group solidarity backed by members' resources. Such expressions of group solidarity represent elementary stages of self-reliance of the community. These steps are taken in specific socio-cultural contexts wherein planned development mechanisms of the state/government have not made their presence felt. People-led governance appears to make its best impact in situations which are characterized by absence of government. People seem to own development initiatives when the governmental presence is missing or almost negligible.
It represents a community's collective strength and resolve; such collective strength and resolve has the potential of upsetting/dislodging the existing group of political and bureaucratic elites. Such groups become local power blocks which are frequently absorbed into the local political dynamics and obtain access to development resources depending upon their alignments.
Social animation processes gain, at a second stage, from intergroup communication, networking and advocacy based on common mutual interests. The second stage processes have often operated among CBOs associated with an NGO or a Consortium of NGOs located in a given geographic cluster depending on the degree of inter-CBO communication and sharing of resources. The CBOs have rarely networked beyond this point, leaving the third stage involving communication, networking and advocacy to large sized NGOs or NGO networks or NGO coalitions.
Social animation thus tends to
operate in the following three stages:
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At all the three stages, social animation relies on planned participatory interaction facilitating both charging (through human resource development in general and training in particular) and releasing (through technical and financial assistance for community development programmes) towards mainstreaming the poor into a society's pro-poor development processes (through communication, networking and advocacy). The social animation processes rely essentially on the collective wisdom, strength and resources of the community, of the NGO partners, and of its own networks and advocacy groups. Social animation thus brings together groups representing shared values and interests.
Interaction of the Social Animation Groups with the Development System
Some of these groups representing shared values and interests have attracted the larger development system; the alternate institutional mechanisms for credit instituted through social animation processes have, for example, attracted the government's attention to an extent that the latter has co-opted their programme as its own, e.g., Rashtriya Mahila Kosh and the Indira Mahila Yojana.
Unfortunately, such co-option is frequently at the level of form, not substance. The government adopts a good idea emanating from the grassroot level organizations; it then begins to put in motion its social mobilization mechanisms laced with various kinds of dependency-inducing carrots as incentives. In the process, it strikes at the very root of what social animation processes were able to achieve with considerable participatory interaction at the community level.
Several NGOs have time and again articulated their strong criticism against widespread corruption in the implementation of governmental programmes and exclusion of the real poor in such programmes. However, governments have yet to reach a stage where they agree to devolve powers, resources and functions to the people's organizations to enable them to implement their innovative ideas in the diverse poverty situations. Even the institutions of local self-governance (the Panchayat Raj Institutions) have been revived at a level barely above the starvation point.
The sharpest difference between social animation and social mobilization could be seen in terms of its ground level leadership. Such ground level leadership is identified through consensus by the community in the first case and appointed by the government in the second case. The privileges in the first case are selfless service and in the second case pecuniary gains in the form of salary and other perks.
The social animator, facilitator, change agent or catalyst is accountable on a day-to-day basis to the highly visible and articulate community, the civil servant works with or under a faceless system. The social animator is sensitized through innovative techniques, the civil servant is often forced to approximate to the ground conditions in which the state's authority operates.
Social animation is like a circle wherein everyone finds a place to call one's own; social mobilization is like a hierarchical queue where the poor are often at the end or are left out.
What is of critical significance to the social animation process is the growing recognition of Capacity Building as a strategy to enhance the capacities of the poor at one level and of their organizations at another level. Such capacity building is more meaningful when seen /located in a given human development context. The human development context comprises of socio-cultural, economic and political circumstances in which the poor find themselves or wherein the organizations of the poor attempt to find operational space.
Each human development context is unique in itself insofar it exists with a set of functional rules laid down by the prevailing political dynamics. Each country situation is by itself a macro human development situation; each country in South Asia thus has its own unique human development situation. There is, however, a commonly visualized comparative framework by which the human development situation in each society is assessed. The comparative framework only provides a point of reference, an abstract norm; it does not represent the diverse forms of poverty that each society represents at its micro-levels.
The capacity building process affects complex human activities, changing environments and imprecise methods. "It requires an ability to deal with uncertain means and ambiguous ends." It calls for ongoing learning, adjusting, collaborating, consulting, participating, managing, etc. The skills it depends on are relationship building, consultation, facilitation, listening and negotiating. The human change triggered by capacity building process is rooted in cultural, organizational, political and psychological contexts of the participants.
The concept is somewhat of a late entrant in the South Asian development scene since as against the individual, the South Asian societies have charged the ruler, and later the State, with a great deal of responsibility for the welfare (now the development rights) of its subjects (now the citizens). A number of treatises are available in the South Asian societies which define/lay down the vision of an ideal ruler (and later the ideal state) in relation to their subjects/citizens.
Bossuyt (1995) defines capacity building as "a process by which individuals, groups, institutions, organizations and societies enhance their abilities to identify and meet development challenges in a sustainable manner."
Widening the Training Base: Human Resource Development
The human capacity building or the popularly known phrase human resource development has been distinguished from training; the distinction has relied on a broader range of objectives and activities under human resource development and a narrower and more targeted activities under training.
Human resource development centres specifically on the psycho- social processes of individuals; the organized learning process enables individuals to recognize their own strengths in terms of understanding their existing situation, determining the causes of their poverty and helplessness, and identifying ways to remedy the situation through their own actions. The individual diffidence manifest in day-to-day behaviour on account of lack of literacy skills or lack of access to information, or lack of enterprise or the ability to take risks is transformed into a degree of confidence and assurance which enables them to change the course of their own lives.
Training, on the other hand, is utilized in situations where the individual is called upon to learn a new set of skills to execute a task or assimilate a new set of knowledge parameters while understanding or executing an activity.
The organizational capacity building is a necessary consequence of human capacity building insofar individuals begin to recognize that they can do better as a group what they have so far been doing as individuals. The group or organized behaviour gives them a distinct and an additional identity which carries a much more significant recognition in the development process than they had as mere individuals.
The organizational capacity building also enables individuals to recognize the critical significance of certain shared values among the group members. These values include democracy, transparent and accountable governance, respect for human rights, and, the building of civil society. They imbibe such values as part of their group behaviour in the process of addressing their own practical problems as also in influencing the society's power structure. The organizational capacity building has also been called institutional building or organization building / development. It is a long-term process leading to new attitudes, skills and practices.
Focus on Capacities of the Community
The main thrust of the community development projects and programs has been on encouraging and facilitating the interplay of participatory democratic processes within the community towards its development. The formation of village level groups and organizations has been speeded up to promote local level decision-making with the local poor and the disadvantaged participating therein, holding and managing assets for themselves. The NGOs have thus been enabled to expand their own constituency and encourage in the process progress towards program sustainability.
The devolution of transfer of planning and management of community development initiatives to community level leaders and workers has made it possible to formulate and operationalize meaningful responses to threats to conservation and enrichment of local environment.
At the moment, what is known is a set of
pre-conditions for the community's participation in the
development process. Some of these are stated below:
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The indicators of both poverty watch and of community-led poverty eradication efforts have been seen in terms of the following:
