One of the projects I’ve been working on here is an initiative to teach representatives of local village governments to use online tools and social networking for improved governance and advocacy. Sound a little crazy? Well, it kind of is.
I suppose there’s an important context behind this that might help in painting a more detailed picture, and would help in understanding what the NGO I work for actually does. So, we’ll start fom there.
The Indian government adopted a system, which promotes the election and governance of Panchayati Raj Institutions. These are small, locally and democratically elected governments at the village level - each governing about 500 people – combining villages or hamlets when they are too small, in order to form a substantial reach of governance. These governments are called Gram Panchayats. There are Gram Panchayats at 3 levels – the village level, the block level, and the district level. (Above the district level is the state level, but the state level government is then a part federal elections).
It’s a really amazing system and if run properly, can really ensure that all government programs, sanctioned at the national and state level actually reach those who most need it. In developing countries, poor governments and corruption are the greatest impediment to delivery of services such as health care, food, water, sanitation, etc.
In Gujarat, however, the state in which I live, the state level government, run by Chief Minister Navendra Modi (see the NYT front page article on him HERE) and the conservative, Hindu nationalist party the BJP, is committed to creating a state that is wide open to business – connecting the rest of the world to India via the state’s many ports and Special Economic Zones. So, because Mr. Modi is determined to keep corporate interest in the state high – there is great incentive to keep all governance centralized, under the control of the State government. In this way, they can ignore all those pesky villagers whose claims to traditional livelihood activities, connection to land, and demand for public services simply get in the way of turning the state into one giant, ugly polluting factory.
So, what the organization I work for is trying to do, is empower these local grass-roots governments to reclaim their right to govern, and reclaim their right to demand services and follow-through on government programs. They do this by strengthening associations of village governments, getting them to meet and interact, learn from each other and stand united against the threat of intruding companies, foreign corporate tax-breaks, and environmental destruction.
One of the ways we’ve begun to organize these Panchayat groups is by teaching them online skills. First, we train a group of “enablers,” who are essentially the teachers who teach the elected representatives of the village government. Then, they are responsible for teaching and assessing the skills of those elected reps. In this way, the whole system is quite grassroots – the enablers themselves gain confidence when they teach others and this encourages them to continue being involved and engaged. (can you tell I’ve been doing a lot of promotional writing?)
First, we taught them all Facebook, which resulted in a very interesting list of characters requesting to be my friends on Facebook. We taught them skype, to enable better and less expensive connectivity, and now we are teaching them blogging. In fact, I am blogging in the blogging training as I write.
This session has by far been the most interesting in terms of issues that have come up with the ‘enablers,’ and also the most exciting. In the spirit of all the has happened in Egypt, and a new generation of revolution that exists because of the internet – I can’t help but feel like sitting in this room, I am a part of something innovative, exciting, cutting-edge and in its own little-way, revolutionary. (Or, perhaps I just try to convince myself of this because it’s more appealing than admitting that in reality, I am sitting in a room with 20 people and we are all starring into our computers for the entire day)
But what is exciting – is seeing people, for the first time, learn to value their work and themselves. These “enablers” are really at the forefront of grassroots change. Every day they engage with people – educating them about their rights, connecting them with resources to make change in their communities. But they’ve never had the opportunity to connect outside of such localized development. Because they are so engrossed at the grassroots, they have difficulty seeing that they fit somewhere in a greater picture.
And even more difficulty understanding that this picture they are somewhere within is so important, that it’s the most effective and appropriate way to arrive at development, that journalists, professors and students study the kind of work that they do – that people like me travel all the way from the US to come and learn from them.
For them, it’s just what they do. They are getting by with a salary of approximately $100 / month, and this is just their every day reality.
But to create a blog, to post your background, your work, your motivations – is, in essence, to express oneself to the world. What is the story of your work and why is it important – these are extremely powerful questions to answer. And answering them is empowering. All of a sudden, these little committees that have other people write reports about them are themselves writing to the world about what they do. This is huge.
Visit the committees themselves at:
more to come.
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