Column by Shobha Raghuram - Valuing Development Knowledges

Column by Shobha Raghuram - Valuing Development Knowledges

The imagination of social change for social action

Tags: Knowledge Platform
Additional tags: Social action, Knowledge, Language

Knowledges about development present to the publics unique multidimensional theories and narratives about the struggles of people world over to attain social justice, to set right the inequalities, and, resolve the contradictions that beset our lives. These knowledges underscore the inseparability of precepts and practices. Paul Hoebink and Alan Fowler raise foundational issues about development work, development aid and the politics of being faithful to one’s mission. I continue here the dialogue with some existential impressions. Is it knowledge that is the compass or is it action that is the guiding compass? It is both, and both inextricably need to be woven as one compass... Do we want to sound politically correct or do we want to build on the real with the imagination of that future? How can we make this workable, for who and why? These are the questions we want to ask ourselves as development workers. Shedding the myths, developing the uncompromising ability and the will to see and speak the truth, nurturing the political instinct to know what will be the challenges both at the grassroots and in the macro-context, sharpening the sense of strategising to get to where we need to be, as soon as we can, and, as accountably as we can...for me all this and more is at the heart of development.

Resisting Reductionism, Building development futures

I recently read in the American Press an editorial, “How not to help the Poor”, regarding the role of the state in social protection, and the measures to be adopted. I read the 100 odd comments which appeared as responses. Many of them were vicious attacks on the welfare system, on the ‘desire of the poor to stay on welfare roles’ etc. It was basically an outright ideological war between the conservatives and the liberals. I am distressed by these comments because they reveal the extreme ‘politicisation’ of issues that need on the contrary our responsible attention and a collective ownership of the social problems that mark all societies as we begin the 21st century. Such attacks also obliterate the work of millions of people who have contributed to social development. The debates run along the common lines of “aid/state assistance is ineffective because the inequalities do not change; dispensing with it may not be a bad idea.” What gets ignored entirely in this reductionist reasoning is that if not for development as an ‘imagination’, development as a right, development as a civilisational mission, and development as implementing a mission set out in globally ratified international conventions and national government commitments, our world today would be so much the poorer in terms of its record for bettering the human condition.

It is disturbing to see political groups, and parties draw their ideological lines of conflict using development support, the NGO sector and cooperation as a whipping boy. The more the world speaks of the need for a socially ‘inclusive’ society and inclusive growth the more governments and political parties speak the diametrically opposite language within their countries. Development and aid is also about human relationships across borders, it is also about experimental attempts at recasting human settlements for a better future for the dwellers. E.g., Every time we use human development indicators we cannot but remember Mahbub Al Haq’s great work in measuring human development. This would not have happened without his imagination as an economist to weld the best of science and political principles for the service of humanity at large. Since then, the UNDP Human Development Reports have been produced at country levels where e.g., years ago so many governments were reluctant to even trust the gender development ranking because of the poor ranking their governance received. The comparative scaling forced governments to better perform and improve their rankings. The reports have brought together from inception, production and dissemination the best of academia, donors and civil society actors. The search for social justice was the normative that guided his work in economics. Without faith and support in development action we run the risk of foreclosing the possibilities of future commitments to sustainable development.

Knowledge Commons- public action for social justice

The United Nations Millennium Campaign (26th June,2009) released an analysis showing that since the inception of aid (overseas development assistance) almost 50 years ago, donor countries have given some $2 trillion in aid. And yet over just the past year, $18 trillion has been found globally to bail out banks and other less than accountable financial institutions. The amount of total aid over the past 49 years represents just eleven percent of the money found for financial institutions in one year. Civil society organisations come constantly under attack and critics are completely oblivious to or ignorant of the field performances and monitoring at a micro level that is becoming standard practice in most non-government organisations. That grossly culpable financial institutions have run aground thousands of investors while also bailing out the CEOs with golden parachutes provides today the unfortunate duplicitous ‘bad faith’ nature of public governance standards. The response to the economic recession should be not to further reduce state performance in social development but to invest in the sector that has safe guarded social values and prevented further fragmentation within the global and local social fabric. The response that is indeed needed is to acknowledge the value of development assistance and increased assistance internally to cso’s as against investments in militarisation, further privatisation of public goods etc and to recognise the achievements of cso’s through active involvement and support.

Human action in social justice work which moves between precept and practice is a constant struggle to set right a world that is sharply divided and tragic in the lack of sufficient solutions and implementation. Development cooperation gives us the unique opportunities to interrogate several worlds simultaneously and successfully to coalesce the two worlds of theory and action. Sound field practices find the best possible ways to reconcile the impossible with the possible. Institutions need to self-invent constantly to better serve and to better challenge social dilemmas. The best of development knowledges are highly praxiological... to know, to act to change, to determine the course of that change, to define the goal, to present to the outside world the substance of that work, to suffer oneself the changes that one tries to bring about...these processes require time, human and fiscal resources, and most importantly, conviction in the long haul.

Indeed the development knowledge commons represent a diverse multi-layered world of knowledges about social change...All these dialogues are recordings of people’s attempts to contribute to humanity at large and to people at the local levels, in cognisable and tangible ways. First, the insider dialogue in the development world is quite self-reflexive and searching for better performance and standards of measures giving rise to a considerable body of work in the late 20th Century. Second, the systems documentation of development aid institutions reveal some creditable work that has been done to arrive at impact measures and achieve high standards of accountability at a micro/macro level and lastly, the critical discourse on development aid and NGO’s by people who care about society as a whole and try to contribute to the moral zone in which the NGO sector is located. This entire lexicon includes a growing number of committed academics, writers, artists, and scientists joining hands with social movements, NGOs, trade unions, development aid organisations and public advocacy bodies.

Development Knowledges -pluralisms and diversities

Field realities demonstrate severe conflicts which often remind us that there is little time for redressal and that ‘left’ and ‘right’ positioning about interventions and fund raising often are of a far lower order than the moral and political challenges that humanity presents to us. Development work teaches us the humility of re-making reality and challenging what is with what ought to be. So diverse and plural is the world of social action that there can be no one vocabulary or language for what constitutes acceptable developmental language. There are some 6000 languages spoken today, and it is predicted that 90% of all spoken languages since 1990 will have died by the end of the 21st century. English with 341 million speakers comes fourth after Chinese,(1.2 billion); Arabic, 422 million). Both Chinese and Arabic remain low participation languages in CSO meetings or at the UN for civil society deliberations. One does not intend to be quantitative but it is a good reminder for us as to how limited is the English speaking world-it also means that much of the diversity of CSO experience is often lost to us.

Aid is not only about financial transfers and yet the very ideas about what constitutes ‘acceptable development’ are often ‘manufactured’ by funds, by power and by influence. Indeed when development knowledges become part of an acceptable ‘industry’ there is a severe danger of not telling the truth about the very injustices and social discords voluntary organisations are supposed to address in civil society action. Committed donors, governments and NGO actors need to be aware of this and avoid at all costs forsaking truth and creating monocultures of development organisations. And it may be noted that those in power who are critical of the development sector may also be in need of some self- review, because the answer does not lie in the instrumental discounting of the contributions of millions of men and women who have politically made development work a serious response of society to the crisis that face humanity at large and at home.

Materialising Values; The view from below

Development knowledge is also about human suffering and how we meet it. Countless stories, tales of resistance, defeat, lack of change, hindrances....most of this remains unrecorded in the language that is needed for the communication of the work. The histories and lives of organisations ....these are immense and yet there is a void about their communications to the world outside of their work. Many times in my work I meet people, visit organisations, see excellent systems in place for governance, experience with the communities the history of struggles and listen to the songs of emancipation. I feel we have not found the languages in development which come close to the wealth and complexity of social change and people’s attempts at accessing justice.

The materialisation of rights is a long ongoing story and the struggle for its acceptance and legitimisation from the powers that be needs the recording that it deserves. I agree with Fowler that the search for the languages that reflect better this process is not easy but must be endeavoured. It is not that this process must go to the marketplace for support; the market must come to it if it must want to participate in ‘knowing’ the existential truths of survival. Governments demand ‘participation’ as a necessary condition for support and engaging with communities but refuse in reality the multiple forms of that participation...the typologies are set and the form of engagement is pre-determined before even the engagement can develop its own language.

Development practices and knowledges demand that we learn to speak the language of the ‘other’ to build a genuine democratic communication. How do we create a connectedness? This can be done, not with our prejudices of what that reality must be, but by setting the baseline first as it is, as the affected perceive it to be and mutually tracking the progress. What is knowledge today has already been revised by human activity and questioning tomorrow. Political activism needs global and local support because it is inseparable from the political imagination of social change for building socially and economically inclusive societies.

Shobha Raghuram is an independent researcher. She serves on a number of public interest bodies. She is on the Editorial Board of the Development Journal (Macmillan), on the policy advisory board of NWO (WOTRO), Netherlands, is in the Core Committee of the South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE), and is a senior associate of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. Between 2002-2007 she was Director of the Hivos India Regional office, Bangalore. She has been temporary advisor to WHO, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Population and Development Studies, Harvard University and Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. Her core research interests include civil society action, institution building at the grassroots, ethics, and development aid.