Empowering Grassroots for Poor
Grassroots Development: And Empowerment of poor
Working with the mothers’ clubs I learned how important we women are, and how important it was for us to get organized. Then all of a sudden the church pulled the rug out from under us. They wanted us to give food out to malnourished mothers and children, but they didn’t want us to question why we were malnourished to begin with. They wanted us to grow vegetables on the tiny plots around our houses, but they didn’t want us to question why we didn’t have enough land to feed ourselves. We started talking about the need for social change and then the very same that organized us, the same that opened our eyes, suddenly began to criticize us, calling us communists and Marxists. It was at this point that the locals abandoned us.
This statement by a woman might be transposed to a hundred different contexts in the Third World. When the poor begin to question the underlying reasons for their poverty they often encounter resistance at the local, national and international levels.
A neighborhood committee in the slums of India, a farmers' cooperative in a union of domestic workers in South India - each has experienced a loss of support, and even violence, for stepping beyond the accepted realm of development activities.
This pattern of conflict raises a central question about the development process. How much is development process. How much is development a technical problem, to be resolved with better techniques and advisors, and how much is it a structural problem, rooted in economic and political realities?
The experiences of hundreds of grassroots organizers throughout the world have shown that solutions to under development necessarily focus on the later. Improved techniques, machines and infrastructure mean little without a corresponding improvement in the political status of the poor. In fact, without increased political power of the poor, technical solutions often aggravate existing inequalities.
Two decades of development dictated from above has proven that top-down strategies are unlikely to improve the lives of the poor. In the 1970s "popular participation" emerged as the answer to the inefficiency and inequities of development. Seeing the need for greater control by the poor over the processes that affect their lives, some development organizations begin to incorporate local input into the planning and implementation of projects.
While participation is now widely accepted as a necessary component of development, its interpretation and level of integration varies amongst development agencies. In its most restricted form, participation applies only to the implementation of a development project or program. As one development planner explained, "After the detailed programmers have been well planned, we tell the people exactly what to do so they will understand their responsibility to participate." Participation is often distorted in this way to take control away from those directly affected. But others stress that participation in development must involve full local control in the planning, implementation, management and evaluation of a project. Defined in this way, participation implies control.
Understanding participation in terms of economic and political empowerment makes the task of development seem immense. Where do we begin if the process demands a restructuring of power relationships to give greater control to the poor? Obviously, the process is multifaceted, with many levels of necessary action. The grassroots organization is one essential actor in this process.
Grassroots organizations serve as primary vehicles for popular participation in social and economic development. In societies where citizen’s involvement in local or national policies is limited, such organizations may serve as the only means for participation, where even the most benign organizing is seen as subversive, women in the slums of Not only do these kitchens help to feed the people of the neighborhood, but they create the auspices under which the community can meet to discuss problems.
Either through building alternative structures or through pressuring for change in existing structures, grassroots organizations presents a challenge to the status quo. In typologies of grassroots organizations, theorists point to two general forms of grassroots action: self-help and confrontation. Some groups take on both these forms of action, as they see confrontation as the only way to bring government attention to their demands. In many cases the line between self-help and confrontation cannot be fixed, and may depend in shifts in external pressure or support.
Despite these obstacles, grassroots organizations play an important social and political role. They serve as a burr in the side of political elites. Grassroots organizations will use whatever leeway they perceive to bring their problems into the public forum and to mobilize others to work for change. Even though their immediate impact may be small, they are essential actor in shaping the national political climate.
An important impact of grassroots organizing is on the individuals who participate. Individuals are in an uneven match with government and private power holders. But their power is multiplied through group action. "My life has changed in many ways," explained a member of the Working Women's Forum in India. "I was one person alone. Now I have 10 others to make me strong." The experience of working with others gives individual confidence and power that lives beyond their immediate action. This too may be a step in setting the groundwork for greater participation.
Popular participation and authentic development will not occur without attention to the structural inequalities that create poverty. After 10 years of case analyses, the United Nation's Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) Popular Participation Project echoes this assertion in its conclusion that national processes and policies set the basic framework within which participation, even at the local level, takes place, acquires meaning and can succeed or fail." It further emphasizes that national policies of redistribution are not enough to assure participatory development. Grassroots organizations are necessary to assure just implementation of these policies and the effective delivery of services.
Our priority is to conserve the soil, retain water, avoid further erosion, and reconstitute the ecosystem - in short, to make the land feed the people. We make loans to village projects, and organize training sessions on everything from raising rabbits to maintaining village mills and pumps.
Our organizations revolve around reviving the will of the Indian people. For people die twice in their lives; they die when their enthusiasm dies, and when their body dies. The danger for many Indians is that the erosion of our own ways by foreign ways, our own values by foreign values, will destroy our sense of responsibility for solving our community's problems.
That is why the villages we work with have to organize and work for two, three, sometimes up to 10 years before they receive any outside aid at all. Because the aid is only useful if the will is there.
A group has to be well formed to be able to use outside money efficiently. When aid arrives before the organization is consolidated, it can do more harm than good. We have seen poorly managed groups which are unable to absorb the aid and collapse.
Our philosophy is to start with the peasants, what they know, how they live, what they know how to do, what they want. It implies going slowly, with great patience.
But foreign groups often do not understand this. They give some money, and tow or three months later want a report on how it was spent, where it was spent and what it went for. But our work takes time. It is not magic formula where you just add a bit of money and voila!
Let me give you a scenario: A village group approaches us and says they want to build a retention dam. We try to get a donor to help fund the project. The donors naturally want a project proposal, so we make a proposal and the donor says it is poorly designed. We rework it and come back again. "No," the donor says, "we'll send you an expert to design it for you." The expert comes, designs the project and goes home. Only then will the donor agree to finance the project.
Once the project begins, the donor wants to send another expert to work on it. But this poses a problem for us: if we don't need outside help, we don't want it pushed on us.
There have been cases when donors would only give us money if we agreed to work with their exerts, and we have refused and lost the money. We don't want help that comes with strings attached.
Our philosophy is very simple: If an outsider is willing to come and help us by grabbing the bull's tail, that's great. But we're the ones who have to grab the bull by the horns, "If the load you have to carry is too heavy to lift onto your head, then it is right to be glad of the hand that helps you. But a Massey must always use two hands of his own."