Skip to main content

Don't waste your time!

My friend from a land rights movement support group was aghast! She could not believe her ears. A fellow country-man landed in Delhi to 'support' the march of the tribes for land rights and seemed visibly disturbed on not finding a welcome committee with garlands, cars to take him to the venue 180 km away. He was also worried about being cheated by Indians and warned my friend against the same too! "They are basically cheats, you see!" My friend lost her cool, "Why did you come to India to stand by Indians in the first place? and you say you are a supporter!"

But, this was a Frenchman! I thought of my experience during the trips with the Indians (not bharat ke log...but Indians), mainly from donor agencies and at times national capital based NGOs, to various parts of the country. I found a similar echoing in the sentiment. They couldn't think who to blame other than the rural women for remaining unlettered and not sending their children to school! "Don't you think its shameful on your part that you still put a thumb impression?", one of them tried to be helpful to the gathered women in a Dalit village. The speech was to encourage women to study! Shameful? Yes. I bowed my head in shame and did not know where to look. 



Remember Robert Chambers' "Putting the Last First"? Wherein he talks about "development tourism" when people choose the season to travel, either autumn or spring and visit only the areas where motorcars can go? Long journeys are avoided too. Another string of story starts when they come back from these guided tours. They would like to believe that they have visited the most impoverished regions (oh yeah!) and you, on the other hand, would have to make sure you don't contradict these beliefs of important people, when they don't want to be contradicted. Gauge the mood. Can't you even do that? When you travel with them, be prepared to be told that you do not know how to deal with villagers when you don't let villagers garland the particular dignitary. Don't stop the villagers and say, "You should not felicitate us, we are just doing our work. Just like you are doing yours."! What a horrible thing to do! Not letting a big person getting garlanded and not letting people sing songs that pitch them at the same platform where reside poor villagers' 3.3 billion gods! No wonder you need to learn how to work with villagers. I had a good laugh at this special route to learning. 

The more I face these issues, the more I realize, we, all the time need to remind us what we are doing is what we should do, normally. Its nothing extraordinary. Just because most of the people don't act normal, normal does not acquire a tag of 'extraordinary'..it still remains only that...normal! Period! I often tell the NGO heads that the statement that they are in the development sector because they want liberation of other (they are fine) poor people is as true as the statement that I work in a donor agency to liberate the NGOs from the worry of funding! But now it seems you need to reward people for keep acting normal.  


I would use another reference that is often use in the popular education workshops that I facilitate. In a workshop in a rural area, after suffering for half a day a woman stood up and said, "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time.But if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us start working together." I would like to ask, do we see our liberation bound with the liberation of the people we work with? Or, do you really think we can be liberated while half of the humanity keep lacking in food, shelter and education and face violence everyday? 



When people express that they can progress despite fellow human beings remaining in poverty, they amaze me! And I really hope this narrow vision never stops amazing me, in the same way that the 'waking up' of the people never fails to inspire me. I find nothing more inspiring than the fact that people realise that in a democracy, they have to keep pushing the system. Their realisation of their role helps me to hope for a morning for myself. This juggernaut of life, only works on people's push...they are the real drivers. And when they push it and agrees to take me along, things move for me too. What's more..I get ready to roll again!

Comments

  1. দারূন.... প্রায় দুই দশক আগের কথা... আশুতোষ কলেজ থেকে পাস করে, দিল্লী University থেকে অ্যাডমিশন এর call letter পেয়ে আমি বেশ গর্বিত বোধ করছিলাম॥ ভেবেছিলাম... this is the key to liberate me. খুশি মনে আমার প্রিয় বন্ধু বৃষ্টি কে জানতে গেলাম about my 'achievement'... she was happy for me ... but ... ওর বাবা আমায় বললেন... ভাল পথেই চলতে যাবার training নিতে যাচ্ছ... গরীব মানুষের মাথায় হাত বুলিয়ে নিজের pocket ভরবে ... তাই না? His comment had hit me hard....and keeps hitting me more, now....

    I like your flow of thoughts in your blogs...gravitating 'within' yet not letting go the 'without'....keep up bondhu!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well said, I too have a huge problem with the hiring of developmental experts or supporters from Western societies. More than often I heard comments like, these Paki rats, these barbaric Arabs ( hello- Pakistan is an Asian Muslim country last time we checked), they will make away with the funds, cheating lot. My question is: why don't they stay in their own countries, but than they would not get obscenely paid as they do in developing countries.
    I love this workshop participant of your's! Awesome!! Keep up the good work!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being a Mother and Not Going By the Conventional Wisdom!

It all started with a picture I posted with a glass of beer in front of me in Facebook. A childhood friend (male) felt inspired to call me up and give me some "good advice" on how I can delete the picture in order to be a good mother to my son. He added, "You anyway hold a full-time job and travel. Is  that not bad enough for your son that you feel like posting these kind of pictures?! Always remember, now you are a mother first!" with extra emphasis on NOW!  I think my son, Gogol (Agneebh) was about 11 years old then. We had a good laugh talking about that incident and the advice on hiding the fact that I drank occasionally, as he cleaned the fridge and I cleaned and deveined prawns while sharing space in the kitchen today. As we discussed more such examples and giggled some more, the late-teen boy felt I must write a blog-post around my tryst with such advices. So here you go!  I became  a mother as a 25 year old and was comfortable wearing my skirts and t-shirts....

Lockdown Relationships

When my 18-year-old came back home from Bangalore within 7 days of going back to his hostel after a mid-semester break, neither him nor I expected it to go beyond 3 months. I, the development sector worker in charge of 96 people working in various parts of the rural India was more worried than him of course but, going by his reactions later, I guess he expected it to last even less than that. He thought he could finally spend his birthday with his friends as his semester dates changed. His birthday always coincides with summer holidays and when I said, “I want to come and spend time with you that weekend!” he had been in two minds about how to politely turn it down.  The mid-semester break in the first week of March in Delhi with me was spent well. The teenager avoided talking too much with me but we also visited a few restaurants together and went to a jazz performance that we targeted from long ago. We talked a bit about dating. His and mine. I was intrigued by his reflection tha...

Are we really learning?

I spent close to two decades in the development sector and about a decade and a half of which was spent as a donor's worker. It feels like a good time to reflect on the learning :) One of the things that has really intrigued me is the "want" for swift results as a donor. I probably came into the sector at a time when the discourse was shifting from "issues of poverty and disenfranchisement take a long time to address" to "we need to see the change in our period in the organisation that we are working for" or in other words "we are impatient optimists". I also got the dominant thought of that time as follows: "What can make me Mohammad Yunus of health or education or livelihood?" Probably a lot of business leaders were asking this.  Dr. Yunus broke new grounds by showing the banks (a profit making business) that poorer segments of the society can be their customers too and he introduced the non-profit sector to the idea that ...