Patricia Mukhim
From my own understanding, the biggest critics of the Integrated Basin Development and Livelihoods Programme (IBDLP) envisioned by the Chief Minister sometime in 2010 are those in the Government. The reason is simple. The IBDLP commonly known as the Basin Development Programme assesses the holistic needs of communities. What do rural communities need apart from a livelihood? Their lives are an integrated whole and comprises the need for clean drinking water (Water Resources Dept) an ecology that sustains their agricultural practices (Forest &Environment Dept), more innovative ways of creating organic manure so they can wean themselves from the chemical fertiliser and pesticides- driven agriculture they had practised for decades. They also need to know the current health of the soil in their farmlands and how not to lose their healthy topsoil due to heavy rains (Agriculture, Horticulture & Soil Conservation Department). Some who wish to take up Fisheries also need the same kind of support system and not just the Fisheries Department to help them. They need to remain healthy and well nourished so they can pursue their livelihoods (Health & Community and Rural Department for rural sanitation etc).
Communities also require constant training and mentoring to understand marketing challenges. They need to know that individual efforts pay short term dividends but when they become a strong farmer’s federation they stand to gain more from the ability to decide market prices without being exploited by middle men who end up making the most profit. There are NGOs that specialise in such training/mentoring and the Basin programme itself has created the Meghalaya Institute of Governance that is intended to build the capacities of communities. Hence the people in the MIG have to have the passion and dedication of social workers and spend more time in the field than in the offices with computers.
In that respect one must commend the efforts of the North East Slow Food and Agro-Biodiversity Society (NESFAS) whose field operatives are people-friendly and have been able to work in tandem with communities and learn from them instead of pushing their urban-bred attitudes on rural folks. This is because the NESFAS staff (though they are very few in number) are themselves constantly mentored and trained by those who know what community work actually entails. NESFAS’s ability to convince schools to start kitchen gardens to meet their midday meal needs is an effort that should be replicated in all schools and not just those in rural areas. This also connects students to the soil and to nature – an activity that is so far removed from the curriculum of schools today. The best field operatives of NESFAS are those with a Social Work background but who also belong to a rural community themselves and have not forgotten their roots. Often one finds that an urban bred kid is most inadequate to work with rural communities because they first have to unlearn so much of the urban biases they carry.
Tthe education system today is taking our children away from real life challenges. Children don’t even recognise the vegetables, leaves and herbs that kept their ancestors healthy. They don’t know the medicinal herbs that their parents and grand-parents can readily identify to stop bleeding and the wounds from going septic in case of a cut or a fall. They will step on medicinal herbs that heal dysentery and diarrhoea without knowing how precious these are. This is the fast food generation which carries the scars of that junk food culture. Our education system is imperiling the lives of this generation because it is taking the kids further and further away from the grim realities of life.
Today’s generation particularly the urban youth will grow up becoming part of the problem. This is a challenge for governments in this country and in our State. But does the government here have the capacity to tackle these multifarious challenges? Perhaps Chief Minister, Mukul Sangma thought of this integrated approach to development when he conceived of the IBDLP but neither his colleagues nor the bureaucracy, (barring a few), have the capacity to translate that vision into action.
The IBDLP is a bold initiative which imagined that the Departments would CONVERGE in order to provide the best services to the people. But that was not to be because each Department exercises its own clout and wants to play around with the funds allocated to it the way its sees best. Hence efforts are so fragmented that they fail to address the needs of communities because of the simple reason that the community needs all the Departments to work in tandem and not separately or independently. Departments need to collaborate rather than insulate themselves into little kingdoms. But this is easier said than done. The Indian bureaucracy is a monolith where the inmates work harder to protect their own interests. They are hardly bothered about the interests of the people they are expected to serve. And how can anyone going around with the security paraphernalia that distinguishes him/her from the common person ever work with those persons right there at the grass roots. It is a defective, dysfunctional system and the ‘intelligent’ Chief Minister of Meghalaya did not just stumble into the idea of the IBDLP but it must have been a concept he envisaged after several visits to rural Meghalaya and listening to the plight of people there. The IBDLP is meant to be a model where a comprehensive form of assistance (an entire value chain) would actually reach the rural stakeholders (not beneficiaries). Dr Mukul Sangma did not imagine that he would meet so much resistance from his own Government – a Government that has a standard answer to every demand for funds – No Funds.
It is very evident that the model of governance in this country which is a legacy of the British Raj is not designed to serve the needs of our rural communities. The civil services lack one important criterion. The officers do not know how to engage in a conversation with ordinary people. They carry a body language that seeks compliance from all and an impatience to listen to others because they think they know it all; have been there; done that. With this attitude how can they ever succeed in implementing pro-people, pro- poor interventions?
It is to circumvent the inertia of a static bureaucracy that the IBDLP allows lateral entry for people with the expertise, commitment and a background in social work and social mobilization processes. Alas! In the absence of a driving force with the same passion and commitment, these young people have developed a ‘sarkari’ mindset more at home with their laptops and desktops but not so comfortable in the rural outback. Studies have shown that excessive engagement with the internet embodies today’s individualistic and diffused society. This group of young workforce engaged (not employed) by the MBDA should be spending more time with the communities and helping them understand the wealth of resources that are still available and planning with them how those resources can be employed for community good as opposed to the pursuit of individual good which is rapidly becoming the rule in most villages. When villagers plan a development model with a holistic perspective they will also realize that not all the community resources they thought belonged to them actually do so. They will realize that large chunks of the land, forest and water sources do not belong to them anymore. Then they might start asking the right questions and get the right answers. That is part of the empowerment process – a process where people will then begin to assert their rights!
For far too long our rural folks have allowed others to do the thinking and speaking for them. And those who claim to speak on their behalf are all urbanites who hardly know the indignities of poverty. Development of the human mind and ability to question the system is the greatest empowerment and if the IBDLP succeeds in this significant mission then it would have achieved its noble mission. For far too long, Governments have pushed in subsidies and people have unquestioningly accepted those. The IBDLP through its several verticals has the capacity to transform people into stakeholders who can actually take on the system! Is the CM going to allow the IBDLP to be the Change We All Want To See?
The IBDLP is not short on critics outside the Government too. I would suggest that those critics point out specific contentious points where they find the programme not working and why. Just being generic or mimicking what someone else is saying amounts to gossip. And gossip is not the same as criticism.