Ladybug's field notes

There are buzz words of every period. Some of these are recognized by people from all walks of life. You recognize them or worse, you get affected by them whether you are an accountant or a simple vegetable seller. Nationalism and patriotism are two words that have assumed this proportion in our time, in India. This week the buzz will be even more. To be fair it is not India alone that is feeling this overt, often misplaced sense of nationalism. However, in my blog, I will talk about India as my knowledge is very limited about other countries and of course, my patriotism and nationalism are not tested for any other country.   Like most of you who have grown up as first or second generation of citizens in independent India, I also grew up with a fair dose of nationalism. My "dedicated trade-union member" father often told me that for a communist, his country comes very high in priority. I am not sure whether he got that in some book on communism or from his grand-father ...

All through the past 14 years of work in the sector, I saw Fellowship Programs (FP) very closely. I remained a staunch supporter of Fellowship Programs both as an insider that is when I worked in an organisation that provided fellowship as well as an outsider that is as part of a donor organisation. I would not go into the details of why we need FPs as there are umpteen discussions around it. If any of my readers want to pick my brain on the subject, I am game! But here in this piece, I would rather focus on fellowships to develop people's organisations. Now here I am taking the proverbial big leap of faith (if you would like) and actually saying that  people's organisations are important to sustain empowerment. And yes I am saying that people's collectives are the long term answers to the "white elephants in their old age" called NGOs. Let me not get carried away here. Lets talk about Fellowship Programs. In this write up I will focus on sangathans (people...