Topics India
Beyond Philanthropy
In 2007, Hivos, an international non-governmental organisation inspired by humanist values, formed a partnership with Logica, a global IT company, and the Mamidipudi Venkatarangaiua Foundation (MVF), an Indian organisation working to abolish child labour. This NGO–business partnership, lasting four years, engaged highly skilled Logica consultants from the Netherlands and India to work with MVF to develop a management information system (MIS) and child monitoring system (CMS). This partnership...
Making a difference, online and offline
A new collection examines how technology and issues of connectivity are shaping the lives of ‘digital natives’—and how the Net can influence social change. The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, and The Hague, Netherlands-based Hivos Knowledge Programme recently launched a four- book collection, Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?, edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen. Jansen is the knowledge officer for the Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Programme at Hivos. In the book, resear...
Pluralism, Civil Society and Subaltern Counterpublics
This new Pluralism Working Paper reflects on the concerns of pluralism in India, from the vantage point of the ‘new’ subaltern counterpublics. It presents a case for civil society organizations (CSOs) that might facilitate a reconsideration of their conceptual frames and strategies for intervention in the light of recent developments.
Stretching a Human Rights Approach in Search of Social Justice
Rights based strategies for obtaining social justice tend to focus on claiming legal rights at the level of the nation state. Drawing on findings from the Hivos knowledge programme in India, South Africa and Uganda, we argue that such a ‘purist’ rights based approach may overlook the potential of ´culture´ as a complementary source of inspiration for civic action.
Contingent social security schemes for unorganised workers in India
As per the estimates provided by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), the unorganised workers constitute 92.37 percent of the Indian workforce – out of which, 86.01 percent eke out their living by performing various activities related to the unorganised sector whereas 6.36 percent work as unorganised workers in the organised segment. Exposure to various vulnerabilities is the common plight of these workers.
Afluence, vulnerability and the provision of social security
09/05/2011 This paper by Varinder Jain is a study in assessing a sub-national state’s concern for the working poor in India. The state that he has selected is the prosperous state of Punjab in North West India. Despite Punjab’s relative prosperity both in rural and urban areas, what Jain finds is the pervasiveness of vulnerable livelihoods among large segments of the working persons and their households. While there are a few state-funded social security schemes in Punjab they hardly address the widespr...
The challenge of universal coverage for the working poor in India
The paper by K.P. Kannan deals with the challenge of universal coverage for the working poor in India. He draws attention to the fact that both basic social security and contingent social security are important from the point of view of the working poor. The fact that social security entitlements as part of one’s employment is confined only to less than 10 percent of India’s work force points to the enormity of the problem of coverage and the long road that lie ahead. While welcoming the two...
The political economy of unfree labour in South Asia
This paper by Jan Breman discusses the political economy of unfree labour in the context of South Asia by focusing on the issue of the debt bondage. He discusses the narrow definition used in India to describe the prevalence of bonded labour and provides a critique of the same. According to him the prevalence of bonded labour due to debt bondage could be not less than 10% of the working population that would work out to nearly 40 million people as of 2005. While his paper focused mainly on th...
Health and Equity
04/04/2011 Human history is replete with examples of the struggle between the two contradictory traits of human nature which differentiate us from all other species. At one extreme is greed which demands instant gratification regardless of the long-term consequence to self or others. And yet all prophets and wise men have preached the suppression of this unfortunate trait which leads to unhappiness and which now poses a threat even to the long term survival of our own and other species. Health in its w...Activism: Unraveling the Term
After discussing Blank Noise’s politics and ways of organizing, the current post explores whether activism is still a relevant concept to capture the involvement of people within the collective. I explore the questions from the vantage point of the youth actors, through conversations about how they relate with the very term of activism.
Engaging the Faithful - debating the demolition of a mosque in Delhi
Faith based activism should not be seen as the antithesis of secularism, but as complimentary to it. The Patna Collective’s raison d’être is to initiate a dialogue between secular, democratic politics and ‘libratory’ religion both at the level of discourse but also at the level of practice. February 11-12 a debate took place that brought together the different stakeholders around the demolition of a mosque in Nizamuddin/Delhi and the Right to Education Act. Some information on the background...
The Many Faces Within
Blank Noise, as many other digital native collectives, may seem to be complete horizontal at first glance. But, a closer look reveals the many different possibilities for involvement and a unique way the collective organize itself. One day, during an afternoon stroll to the M.C. Escher museum in The Hague, I stumbled upon a painting called ‘Fish and Scales’. On the first glance, I saw two big black-and-white fishes and some smaller ones, but on a closer look I found hundreds of fishes, headin...
The Digital Tipping Point
Is Web 2.0 really the only reason why youth digital activism is so successful in mobilizing public engagement? A look into the transformation of Blank Noise’s blog from a one-way communication medium into a site of public dialogue and collaboration reveals the crucial factors behind the success.
Taking It to the Streets
The previous posts in the Beyond the Digital series have discussed the distinct ways in which young people today are thinking about their activism. The fourth post elaborates further on how this is translated into practice by sharing the experience of a Blank Noise street intervention: Y ARE U LOOKING AT ME?
Talking Back without "Talking Back"
The activism of digital natives is often considered different from previous generations because of the methods and tools they use. However, reflecting on my conversations with The Blank Noise Project and my experience in the ‘Digital Natives Talking Back’ workshop in Taipei, the difference goes beyond the method and can be spotted at the analytical level – how young people today are thinking about their activism.
Interview with Nishant Shah
Bio: Nishant Shah is the Research Director at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), Bangalore. Prior to CIS Nishant worked as an information architect with Yahoo, Partecs and Khoj Studios, was a Research Analyst for Comat Technologies and designed and taught several courses and workshops on the aesthetics and Politics of New Digital Media, for undergraduate and graduate level students in different universities around the world.Nishant has done his Ph.D. doctoral work from the Cen...
Beyond the Digital: Understanding Digital Natives with a Cause
Digital natives with a cause: the future of activism or slacktivism? Maesy Angelina argues that the debate is premature given the obscured understanding on youth digital activism and contends that an effort to understand this from the contextualized perspectives of the digital natives themselves is a crucial first step to make. This is the first out of a series of posts on her journey to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism through a research with The Blank Noise Project...
Study of Girls’ Madrasa Education in India
This study is an attempt to look at the nuances of identity formation among Indian Muslim women; notions of identity and selfhood are a result of the intersections of caste, class, religion and gender, among other factors. This paper tries to understand the process of construction of identity of Muslim women through a study of girls’ madrasas. It also attempts to examine binaries such as modernity and tradition, the secular and the religious and, nationhood and religious minority, which deba...
New project on Social Security in India
The Long Road to Social Security: Assessing and Monitoring the Implementation of Social Security for the Working Poor in India's Informal Economy is a knowledge project on social security provisions for workers in the informal sector of the economy in India. This project is a cooperation between the Amsterdam School for Social science Research, the Centre for Development Studies in Trivandrum, India, and Hivos. The project focuses on monitoring the implementation of minimal welfare provisions...
Challenging the Anti Sodomy Law in India - Arvind Narrain
The queer (1) struggle in India has had a complicated relationship with the law. Nothing exemplifies this complexity better than the vexed relationship with the anti-sodomy law in India, Sec 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Section 377 of the IPC came into force in 1860 as part of the criminal code which governs India even sixty years after independence. Sec 377 reads: ‘Unnatural offenses: Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal...KP “Smallholders Agency” goes Asia
After having visited Latin America and East Africa, the initiating team of “Smallholders Agency” (from Hivos, IIED and Mainumby) went to India from 1-7 February to focus on the Asian continent. The objectives were to identify Asian members for the KP’s Learning Network, to find out how the knowledge program may become embedded in India and to initiate the multi-stakeholder exploration of key topics for the knowledge programme.
State must be secular so that society can be religious
In many parts of the world religion is on an upsurge. Religious revivalism and emergent forms of fundamentalisms challenge the capacity of the state to deal with religious diversity. The Hivos-Kosmopolis conference 'Rethinking secularism' (25-26 May, Utrecht, NL) brought together academics, activists, legal experts and policy makers from various parts of the world to debate the future of secularism. Among them: Sudanese thinker and activist Abdullahi An-Na'im and Justice Aftab Alam, sitting j...