Balaji Sampath's talk at Penn State (AID State
College/ University Park)
Monday, June 19, 2000
Note: The following was transcribed from a tape recording. Unclear words are left out. Other than that, the transcript has been edited only for clarity, grammar and sometimes conciseness. The meaning and general structure remain unaltered. Sub-headings and words in bold type or square brackets [ ] have been inserted to stand in for Balaji's use of the blackboard, where the basic sequence of ideas was elucidated. For the convenience of all readers, dollar equivalents and translations of a few words are provided in parentheses- Uma Asher
The philosophical and historical roots of people's science movement goes back to the freedom struggle. People were fighting for the British to leave India, but there was also the question of what India's future should be. There were different visions: Gandhian, Nehruvian, and so on. All grappled with the problem of how science and technology could make our country modern. Groups of scientists across the country were working at the time to popularize science. They believed that since the Renaissance, science and rationality had been the forces behind progress in Europe, that they had been a stand against control by the Church. These scientists went around villages, talking against superstition. Science societies were formed in Assam, Bengal, Kerala. Their main activity was to write science in the local language so people could understand.
Then, in Kerala, there was the Silent Valley agitation, against a big dam project. The KSSP (Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad) organized a study group, there was widespread agitation, and eventually the project was scrapped. This helped KSSP network across Kerala. Instead of writing scientific articles, people were now discussing whether science always fosters progress or not. Reviewing science policy became an important issue. The movement caught on in Tamil Nadu. Scientists gravitated from giving "popular science" lectures on quantum mechanics, to taking telescopes to villages and showing people the stars. It brought them in contact with a lot of people. Villagers - even those who were hungry - were interested.
At the same time, in Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere, an organization called Ekalavya started out with science education. This was a small number of people across the country, maybe 10-15 thousand. Then school teachers got involved - about 20-25 thousand in Tamil Nadu alone. What was their motivation? For a first-generation educated person, there is a very strong pride in having "made it", the belief that one's life is better because one is educated. How science popularization was useful to villagers, I don't know. But it was happening.
The Science Movements got a big break when they initiated the mass literacy campaigns. Initially in Kerala, then Pondicherry and Tamilnadu and then the rest of the country - the literacy campaigns put us in touch with lakhs of village volunteers and completely changed the scale and quality of work the science movement was doing. The new thing the literacy campaigns introduced was mobilizing ordinary people to voluntarily teach others. The earlier government adult education programmes were classsroom based. The new slogan was Literacy as a people's movement. In many places, the government was not very enthusiastic in the beginning. For example in Tamilnadu, the TNSF started the campaign and then started lobbying with the government for support. Due to a number of alliances at the national and state levels, this support did come. In the first 8 districts it was clearly stated that TNSF and the government formed an equal partnership for the programme. As each district formed a zilla saaksharta samiti (district literacy committee), this understanding was clearly put on paper. The government provided the funds and infrastructure, and TNSF did the mobilization and gave direction.
This combination worked very well. For example, in Pudukottai, immediately after the literacy drive, we had a cycling rally. Twenty thousand women participated. For them, it was not just about learning to cycle, but also a form of protest : women can learn cycling, too. But gradually, district collectors started declaring their district 100% literate even if it wasn't, because it looked good on their resume. Other problems cropped up. In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, literacy was combined with anti-arrack agitation. The women fought with the government, the police, with the arrack lobby. The government concluded that literacy campaigns cause too many problems. Women employed in quarries also opposed contractors successfully, thus raising their income levels. The contractors got upset, the collector got transferred, and things returned to their old state. But the women continued fighting and recently won. Then the government withdrew support, demanding control over the literacy program, with only a little help from the TNSF. So we resigned. There are programs still, but neither as intensive nor on the same scale as before.
But what of the 200,000 volunteers? We started forming small savings groups, started working on education, on health, on starting small scale enterprises, etc. We decided to work with the government only so long as our survival did not depend on it. So savings groups now lend from a pool of members' money. The interest covers administrative costs. On our experiences in literacy, savings, health care, we are trying to base a larger program: the Hundred Block Plan (HBP). Before going on to that, we should discuss what we mean by poverty, what kind of change we want, what the HBP should do.
What causes poverty? Inequality. Lack of education. Lack of resources. Economic growth can occur in two ways. One is when all sections of society experience progress. The other is when some sections gain at the expense of others. A rise in per capita income may hide a decline in the real value of poor people's income.
Industry that could have invested in Kerala preferred neighboring Tamil Nadu instead, because there is greater poverty in the latter state, and therefore people are willing to work for less. If wages are low, profits are higher. People in Kerala are still better off than the rest of the country where economic growth has been higher.
The common argument is: if I have one child I can give it more food, clothes and education than if I had 10 children. In a middle-class family, this makes sense. They respond to their situation smartly. Now, does this apply to Bill Gates? If he has two children, will they be better off than if he had 15 children? No. So the argument that holds true for the middle class does not apply to the upper class.
Let's see if it applies to the poor, or to landless labor. Their logic is: "If I have one child, I'm not going to be able to provide much anyway. If I'm spending Rs. 0 on this kid, then having 10 children means spending 10 X 0 = 0." And children start helping their parents by age eight or nine; girls start even earlier. Economically, it makes sense for a poor family to have more children. So the middle-class logic doesn't apply to this class either.
We did a survey. We asked 15-20 thousand women how many children they would like to have. Most women, including very poor ones, said two or three. So why do they have more? One, for the landless, an extra child is an extra resource. Two, in areas where there are child-labor-intensive industries, parents don't get a job as easily as the children. Three, children are the only security poor parents have for the future: if they can barely earn enough for today, they need children to take care of them when they grow old. And they must ensure at least one child survives. Survival of children is a greater worry for the poor than it is for the middle class. Four, people want male children. So having two male children means having two female children. It makes the birth rate four, which is pretty much the birth rate in India.
It is very interesting. Recently, I found out that the person who introduced the idea that population is the major problem was [pioneering industrialist] Jamshedji Tata. It may not be directly relevant, but it is interesting to see how one views lack of resources and population growth as problems.
Let's say there are 1,000 hectares of land, and there are 100 people living there. Each person has about 10 hectares. On that much, one can manage reasonably well. And I am not talking hypothetically - if you take the total area of India, and divide it by the population, you get around 20 acres, which is about that much. True, all land is not cultivable, but it is possible to do other things to increase one's income. Now, suppose one guy comes along and takes up 990 hectares. The other 99 are pushed into 10 hectares, which is not enough. The question is going to arise: why are these people poor? One answer is that one individual took most of the land. Another answer is, there are too many people living in those 10 hectares : overpopulation.
Given that you don't want to change the situation of uneven distribution, overpopulation becomes the problem. So we tell those 99 people they are too many, they must reduce their numbers. If they say, "But you have 990 hectares",, we say, "Don't ask such questions. Just reduce your population." Why shouldn't they ask those questions? Because the questions affect me! So this is one of the issues of poverty.
Those 99 people's income comes from working on the 990 hectares they don't own. The bigger their families, the greater their household income. So their numbers grow from 99 to 200 or 300. They are responding smartly to their situation, but more often than not, people assume they produce more children because they are ignorant, or dumb. The important question to ask is: are poor people really stupid? If they are as smart as us middle-class people, why can't they improve their position? Something is preventing them. If you believe they are unintelligent, then the problem is basically theirs; you can help them cope with their problem. But if you believe they optimize like anyone else, then the problem is outside - maybe society is preventing them from doing better. Then we need to change conditions so they can realize their potential. I strongly believe the second idea. I would always say, find out why they respond the way they do. Then there is another problem. When you work on someone else's land, you don't work too hard. For example, the maids who work in our homes pretend to be dumb, although they are not. They think, "This family has so much more than I have. I earn so little, and they earn so much more. Their children eat chocolate, and my children do not. If I break a glass, what does it matter?" So there is some anger.
Poor people optimize well, and population is not the basic problem. I used to think these were problems. Now I'm convinced inequality is the basic problem - not one of the problems, but the basic one. Other factors are add-ons. Some people own much property more than others, some people have control over others. For example, two thirds of the world's work is done by women. One tenth of the world's income is earned by them. One hundredth of the property is owned by them. This is blatant inequality.
Why does it persist? It is easiest to understand this in the context of women. Many of us have not interacted with the poor, and we make wrong statements about them here, no? Nobody is going to come back and say, "Hey, that is not true about me!" Because there are no poor people here. But if you make wrong statements about women, there are enough women in this room to oppose them. Understanding poverty in terms of gender helps us understand poverty in other areas of life. We believe the persistence of inequality has three causes: force, patriarchy, and technology.
In terms of gender inequality, it is very clear what force is. Beating is the obvious form. Do men oppress women only through force? Not really. Most of the time women are oppressed because they believe this is how they should be. They look after their husband and children and do so many things their husbands are not doing. The young girl learns by watching women around her. Sometimes she is told explicitly how she should be. Why are women more shy than men? Are they really? I don't know, but they are taught to be more shy. If you?re not, you?re not considered a good woman. Culture says how you should behave, and what you should believe.
But culture can't always sustain this. For example, often out of concern, women are told not to go out alone in the night, unless a man escorts them. If women went out at night and nothing happened, this statement would have no relevance. So something should happen when they go out - rape, violence. So the belief is sustained because there is force. If rapes did not happen in society, this belief would not exist. Because most women don?t go out, if a few defy it, force will ensure the belief is sustained. If a lot of women decide to go out, they can even beat up any man who comes in their way. Culture ensures that a lot of women don't go out.
Similarly, a woman stays at home, cooks, cleans, and looks after the children. Sometimes it irritates her. But if she asks her husband to look after the children and he agrees, the next day she will ask him to cook also, no? He has to say no; only then can this continue. So culture can't continue without force. Culture manages to keep society at a particular level. There are some ups and downs. But when things shift in women's favor, men have to ensure they push them back to the earlier level.
Another example: in the upper-caste part of the village, there are good drinking water facilities. But Dalits [untouchables] have to go three kilometers away to fetch water. If a Dalit child goes to the upper-caste facility, the parents pull him back. The child learns not to go there. A brave youth decides to break the taboo and see what will happen. If nothing happens, this guy says, "Hey, I went there, and nothing happened!" So something should happen. Upper-caste people should beat up this boy to ensure that other people don't do the same thing. If all the Dalits decide to go there, the system would break down. So anywhere you see inequality, unless force and culture go together, it won?t sustain for too long.
The British convinced people their rule was good for India. That is why, in the 1880s, people like Dadabhai Naoroji were writing about how the British were exploiting India. The British attacked Indian religion and culture - it was bad and superstitious. During the Quit India Movement of 1942, Mahatma Gandhi made the statement that Indians' bad rule was better than the British good rule. He was responding to the notion that it was a good rule. That is culture, no ? you teach people that this is a good rule. That does not mean everybody is convinced. A few people occasionally rise up. Then you use your force : police, army.
We work with women's groups. The idea is not to save and give some loans. That is important, but the idea is to work for women's equality. After the literacy campaigns, we started an organization called Samata (equality). You start a women's group, you say, "Is wife-beating a problem?" Often they say: "It's OK, that guy can beat me. I talked too much, that is why he beat me. It's fair enough." OK, wife-beating is not a problem, but excessive wife-beating they see as a problem: "I wasn't even talking, and still he beat me." They think that is unjust. So you say, "OK, why don't you organize? Whenever you see whatever you call excessive beating, as a women's group, go and stop it."
If a man intervenes in wife-beating, the woman's husband will tell him to get out, that this is a family matter. He may accuse his wife of having a relationship with the man. If a woman intervenes, that is still a problem. But a women's group has a legitimate claim, because the victim is a group member. Sometimes the women's group beats up the man, sometimes it just threatens to beat him. Now that the women's group recognizes that it can address excessive wife-beating, the question of what is excessive comes up. "When I talk, why can't the fellow talk back? Why should he beat me?" Then comes the question of sharing housework. Equality is still far away, but at least sometimes the husband will look after the child. All this has been studied very often, particularly the women's movement.
Whatever we see today is actually the result of struggles through history. The French Revolution may have failed immediately, but it managed to bring about a lot of changes - notions of democracy, fundamental rights. The Russian Revolution failed because they forgot there had been the French Revolution before that. Democracy should have been the basis of the Russian Revolution. But health for all, education for all, that these are state responsibilities. The notion of a welfare state did not come about naturally; it came about after the Russian Revolution.
After Russia decided the state will ensure health for all, the UK decided the same, and the US also, to a large degree. In the US, 44% of a person's health expenditure is borne by the government. In the UK, 90% is spent by the government. In India, 22% of the individual's health cost is borne by the government. So in health care, India is already the most privatized! Today, a lot of these ideas [gender, caste] are changing. A lot still has to change.
Our understanding of culture and force, and how it oppresses, has grown. But the idea of technology as a method of oppression has not been studied much. The science movement's contribution has been to look at technology as a sphere of contention, a point of struggle. How does technology ensure inequality? Many people believe technology is good. Others say it is bad, it is the cause of problems. We say neither. Nor do we say people use technology well or badly depending on how they are. We don't say technology is neutral, either.
What we're saying is, we should question how technology is developed. For examples, in Mandi district, Madhya Pradesh, the demand for agricultural implements grew during the green revolution. The local blacksmiths would cut out a spade from a block of iron. That takes a lot of work. You can make one per day, maybe one in two days. You can't meet market demand, and you can't charge a low price. Tata made the process mechanical, and was able to meet demand and sell cheaper. They also got a government subsidy. If a blacksmith says, "I need a subsidy",, I understand. Why Tata needs a subsidy, I don't understand.
Anyway, the blacksmiths were reduced from making agricultural implements to sharpening them, and their incomes dropped. What could we do? Senthil Babu and others from our Delhi Science Forum asked this question and founded a blacksmiths' cooperative. The goal was to relieve the drudgery of their work, but not at the cost of their livelihood. They worked with the National Metallurgical Lab and a couple of other people and developed a mechanical hammer. It would beat the iron roughly into the desired shape. What took 10 hours to make would now take two hours. You could make five implements in a day. The steel was processed in the backyard - not cost-effective for a huge industry, but certainly cost-effective for a small-scale operation. The blacksmiths started meeting demand, and cutting the price. In fact, they could customize a plow to the size of the bull - something you can't do in a factory.
Technology has to develop. When Tata does this, it won't do it this way. The blacksmiths' problem is Tata's opportunity to make money; Tata will not develop technology from which blacksmiths will benefit. The problem is, the blacksmiths can't develop this technology either. They don't have money for research. The state should develop technology. Often the government supports the rich for developing technology that is to their benefit, and claims it is technology for all.
There is a fundamental difference between Tata's and our technology. Our technology helps the poor to overcome market constraints. Tata's technology puts them out of a job. The way technology is developed itself has a bias. Only some technologies get developed. A lot of technologies which are good never get a chance, because they are politically unviable, and not because they are technologically unviable.
Another example is Narmada. We won't discuss dams and rehabilitation here. But the question is that we need power. If we speak of alternatives to a 300 MW project, we should come up with good alternatives that generate at least 200 MW. We work in the Kaveri basin. There, and in every river basin, you find this plant that grows like a weed, and fills the river basin. Every year the government cuts down the plants, because they block the river. But they grow back. We can cut a large part of it, dry it in the sun, and generate electricity from it. I.I.Sc. (Bangalore) and Development Alternatives developed a technology to do this. A couple of these generators are up and running.
The question is, how much can you generate? When you cut the weed, it has to grow back to ensure sustainable power generation. So the rate of cutting will determine how far you must go before it starts growing back. If you cut very fast, you can have a larger generator. For 300 MW, you need to cut for 500 km. But transport costs increase. What is viable is 500 KW or 1 MW plants. Transport costs would be low. You can actually have 300 1-MW plants. 300 MW is one tenth of Tamil Nadu's power generation. You?ve got your power, but in a different way.
Now, who wants 300 MW of power? How was this 300 MW arrived at? Why is one way of generating power preferred over the other? An aluminium factory wants 150 MW of power, a sugar factory wants 50 MW, and the dam contractor wants to build a dam. They get together and say, "Let's have this dam." They make a profit of Rs. 100-200 crore ($45 million). Further, you want 150 MW at one point. If you have 1 MW plants, transmission losses are big. If you have a 150 MW generator, you want to use all the power at one point to cut transmission losses. The interested groups lobby and the dam gets built. They have the resources and the interest to push it through.
What can we do with 300 1-MW plants? Aluminium and sugar factories become unviable. Lathes, and small-scale steel processing become viable when power is decentralized. Electricity in villages becomes viable. Small-scale enterprise is viable. People who are cutting the icomium have employment throughout the year. You have your 300 MW, you have all this. The problem is, certain things become unviable. Is a big centralized factory more profitable than numerous small-scale ones? It depends on the conditions. Think of it like this: if Bill Gates has to make a patent law through the WTO, patents are viable. If he has to make an agreement with every country as to whether piracy is OK or not OK, the notion of patent becomes unviable. When something is unviable, it is always in a context.
If you say the world is such that a few people get to be at the top and most people at the bottom, the only thing you can question is who gets to be at the top, and who at the bottom. Only very limited change is possible. But as long as your view of society is that way, there will be poor people. The question is, why should the structure of society be this way? Why should technology be centralized? As long as that is the case, some people will become richer, while most become poorer. How technology leads to inequality is an important thing to remember.
These three things [force, culture, technology] lead to poverty and inequality. They work together. If you want to address the question of inequality, you have to address it at all three levels. We start at the level of culture most of the time, organizing people, like the women's group against wife-beating. This is a form of cultural action. We are trying to tell people, "Question your situation. Break this understanding of culture. You don't have to cook all the time. You don't have to get beaten."
But when you organize against existing culture, to move towards a more equal culture, often there is force to assist it. If the rich get richer, it's not possible that the poor won't get poorer. They will get poorer. Sometimes society is a bargain, a negotiation. Different people are at different levels. They negotiate what is OK. For example, men tell women: you cook, you clean, you look after the children, and you sometimes go out and work. That's all OK, that's the culture, that's how life is. But if a man decides he wants his wife to kiss his feet everyday before cooking, she will resist. She won't resist having to cook, but she'll resist if you try to oppress her even further. Likewise, if she tries to tilt the balance in her favor by telling her husband to cook, he'll resist. So in some sense there is a consensus of two groups. But it is not OK, because it is unequal. We must organize women, because as they become more and more powerful, the consensus becomes more equal. It is never going to move beyond that; women won't begin to oppress men. When women organize, men also organize. The struggle for freedom is stronger than the struggle to oppress.
The same way, in Ramanathapuram, the Dalits and Thevars [a low caste] are organizing. Whenever a clash occurs, the Dalits are only saying, "We will not bend before you." The Thevars are saying, "If you don't bend before us, we'll kill you." Most of the time there is no violence, just these statements going around. The fact that the Dalits are organizing automatically gives them some power. When violence occurs, Dalits suffer more. The Thevars have the support of the police. But for the Dalits, this is better than the previous state of inequality, because now at least they are not ashamed that they do not resist. The Dalit thinks, "I'm proud I resisted and you beat me with force." He gains moral superiority, which gives him a lot of strength.
Sometimes a fight is not physical; it is only a clash of ideas, writing, and so on. But it is a fight, because there is still resistance. You can't sit across a table and solve everything. For instance, when women mobilize, men lose privilege. When the landless mobilize, the landed can't pay low wages. You continue to struggle, and you make the consensus more and more equal. When you mobilize people around culture, force automatically comes in. You have to mobilize people by organizing them in such a way that they feel empowered. You can have a health program, you can tell people they are dirty, they have bad habits. You can tell people they are unhealthy because they cook too close to the Coovum (a dirty river in Madras), and give them medicine to cure their symptoms. Or, you can tell them, "You have health problems not because of a wrong attitude but because you are poor, because people are exploiting you, because poverty is linked to patriarchy." When you help people cope with their immediate problems, recognize that is only a coping strategy.
What we are doing is also linked to technology, with the question of knowledge being centralized. Take malnutrition: it is a very big problem. In Rajasthan, Bihar, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, everywhere you find mothers give their children Cerelac [baby formula brand of Nestlé]. They are influenced by advertisements featuring "smart" mothers who feed their children Cerelac. The poor mother wants her child to be chubby like the one in the commercial. Other mothers in her neighborhood feed their children Cerelac, and if she feeds her child only ragi (a highly nutritious grain easily available throughout most of India), people may feel she is unconcerned about her baby. Whatever she thinks of ragi, she feeds her child Cerelac, "just in case" - sort of like studying for an exam, but also praying to God, "just in case". She spends Rs. 80 (about $1.82) on half a kilo of Cerelac, which has to be fed in a week. In India, if you have something expensive, you make it last. If a car or TV is spoilt, you fix it, and make it last. So you have one Cerelac dabba, and you make it last for two months, instead of one week. The child gets one spoon of Cerelac everyday - obviously not enough. Now, you might say, "The mother could have fed the baby ragi and other things." True. Cerelac contains ragi, wheat, sugar, malt, all of which you can get in the village for less. For Rs. 5 (11 cents) or Rs. 10, she could have one kilo, and she can afford to feed it to the child in a week.
So there are alternatives. You can't blame the poor mother, saying she is not optimizing. Look at my mother: she feeds me Cerelac. The information says Cerelac is good. My mother is responding the same way the poor mother is responding. The reason I grow up fat and that child does not is not that my mother is more aware, but that she has more money. The problem is not awareness but money.
Let me help the poor mother cope with her situation by giving her extra information, beyond her existing information that Cerelac is good. That is still coping, and not to be confused with solving the problem. A solution would be something like a statutory warning: "Cerelac is dangerous for poor people's children", or a ban on Cerelac advertisements. When you can't do that, you at least help cope. But don't confuse this with the solution. The problem is that this mother is rich and that one is poor.
When we do a health program, we tell them, "We are helping you cope. But without addressing issues of patriarchy and poverty, your health won't improve much. There are more fundamental problems creating this problem." We have to talk with the women about what the problem is and what the coping strategy is; that would be an empowering way of doing it. Confusing it is a disempowering way of addressing the issue. For instance, we ought to tell them, "Don't be ashamed that you?re producing more children. You're doing it because of these factors [poverty and patriarchy]. The reason you should have children is not because you'll be better off, but because it is better for your health. It is a woman's right to have less children", that is the way to address it.
Poverty is created because of inequality, not because of producing more children. Some women feel ashamed that they are being unpatriotic by having more children. We have to break this cultural idea, and reinforce more equal cultural ideas, and that is one of the paths of organization.
The second path is to look at technology and knowledge. Why is health centralized through a doctor? Why, when knowledge increases all the time, do doctors say, "You can't do anything, you should see me for everything?" Why can't they ask, "What are the things you can do, and when should you come to the doctor?" If I go to the doctor with a fever, he is going to give me a tablet. Why can't I do that myself? Why can't I go to the doctor and say, "I took paracetamol for two days, but the fever hasn't gone down. Now can you help me?" Why can't simple health needs be satisfied within the community? Because doctors profit when knowledge is centralized.
We aren't saying no doctors. We're saying people should become more aware of how to improve their health, and also recognizing the limits of the community's ability to look after its needs. The doctor or civil engineer should come to the village as a guide, a teacher. You cannot go to them for every small need ? that makes you too dependent on them. Nor are we saying no doctors. Both extremes are a problem.
For instance, we can't all generate power, but nor can we switch off the lights and live in darkness; we can't just say, "Let's live a tribal life" - even tribals don?t want to live a tribal life. But that does not mean we exploit tribals so others can lead a better life.
Having a fridge is not a problem, but when this fridge comes at the cost of other people's food, it is a problem. You have to restructure technology and you have to think of alternatives. So, for instance, if you're a civil engineer, think about how civil engineering is useful to society and how it can exploit, and which side you choose. In every part of our life, there are progressive and oppressive elements. Either you're fighting for what exists, or you're fighting for change. You have no choice: you can't be neutral.
What we are doing right now is organizing what we call the Hundred Block Plan. Earlier we had done experiments in education, health and so on. Now we are looking at the local community - the village. In the villages we already have 200,000 volunteers in each state, about 20 lakh (two million) volunteers across the country. So in each village you have about 10 volunteers. People volunteer freely in villages.
We want these 10 people to actually plan for their own community. Now, when we brainstorm, we come up with what we already know; new knowledge comes from reading and experience, not in a planning session. So, these 10 villagers ask what the health problem in their village is. The doctor not being available is the problem. So they call the doctor, have a health camp. It never addresses malnutrition, anemia, low birth-rate, patriarchy; the doctor comes, gives medicine and goes. They don't feel they can intervene in malnutrition. We have to develop the volunteers' skills. Only then can they effectively plan.
When you want to plan education, you have to know what the problem is. If you believe child labor is causing problems, or parents are not interested, you can't proceed. If you talk to parents, many will say, "I want my child to be educated." They make the connection between education and wealth. But the child, when sent to school, does not do well, and drops out. Dropout is common between ages 6-9, and child labor, 10-14. Except in child-labor intensive areas, children drop out and then go to work. Going to work is the result of dropping out, and not the other way round. Children drop out for various reasons: boredom, no one to ensure child stays in school, no useful learning in school. The volunteers designate one person who drags the child to school, talks to the teacher to keep track of absenteeism. They serve a function that a middle-class family would serve.
The next question is: why is school so boring? The answer is to improve education. So by doing such programs, our volunteers develop the skills to understand the problem, to ask the right questions, and to address them. For instance, the maximum number of dropouts happen in the harvest season. Why can't school be closed during the harvest season? Why are the holidays three months later? This is something you can't address in the village. But you learn what you can and can't address in the village. That is what helps you plan.
We expect education, health and other volunteer programs to lead to local-level planning, to a point where people can start integrating planning with programs. The volunteers feel it is their work. None of them are paid. If you go there and say, "I want you to do this", they will expect payment. But we tell them, "It is your village. If you're not concerned about it, why should I be? If I'm coming to your village to train you, you should be paying me - be thankful I'm not asking you for money." This way it works differently, it becomes their program.
Often they may disagree with you, but that is what you want. So in the village there is a group of people with some degree of skills, planning what to do. But there are some things - like school during the harvest season - that you can't address in your village. You therefore have to have a larger skilled circle to change policy at the state level. Not just this, but larger things : for example, the government has Rs. 200 crore ($45 million) to build drinking water facilities. One minister decides how to build them. Rs. 25 crore ($5.6 million) they can take as profit, and declare 75% success at the end of the 10,000-facility project. That means in 2,500 villages nothing was constructed. They didn't even know there was a project. Out of the 7,500 villages where a facility was actually constructed, you'll have more than half - say 5,000 villages - where the facility is there, but there is no water. So only a very small fraction actually gets done. And those villages may not have needed it.
Instead of such centralized planning, a village can demand: "You are going to spend Rs.15 lakh ($34,000) for our village; we already do a lot of planning for our community, so just give the money to us. If we want drinking water, we'll spend it on that." Corruption won't necessarily decrease much, but it will definitely go down. Out of Rs.15 lakh, the panchayat leader may pocket Rs. 3,000 ($68). If you actually build your drinking water facility, you can't pocket too much: you can't have 75% success. You have to build a facility, and it has to bring out water.
Kerala Science Forum has been pushing this, and the Kerala state government has done this - 40% of the state budget is allocated to panchayats. Initially, the panchayats didn't know what to do with Rs.15 lakh, but in the second and third years they have improved greatly. You saw a lot of newspaper reports saying all this decentralization was no use. But now it's working, nobody writes about it.
Now, ministers don't want to lose their income, so they find excuses against decentralization. They say villages are not uniform - there are upper and lower castes. So money will just go to the dominant sections, and the oppressor-oppressed equation will get worse. That is why when we organize groups at the village level, we start with Dalits, we start with women, we start with the landless. The richer community will join, but these people will not be left behind. When money is given to a woman, her husband will get a share of it. But when money is given to the husband, the wife does not necessarily get a share. So the Dalits and poor start the planning process. For larger demands, villages must join together. The same goes for organizing against women's oppression: the women of one village alone can't fight, they must join with women in other villages. Women's equality doesn't happen in one village and then spread, it happens everywhere. Many such changes happen everywhere : Dalit movements, for example.
So we must work across villages, across blocks, across the country, even internationally for some causes. So the Hundred Blocks Plan is an attempt to do this. A block is about 150 villages, and there are 5,000 blocks in the country. We start with 50 villages each, in 100 blocks. So the scale is actually rather small - 100 out of 5,000 blocks. What we're asking for is large: to change the governing structure, change the politics of the country, change how the state spends money. If you do it in one village, people say, "Anna Hazare was there in that village, so it worked, but he is not there in other villages." Or, "Rishi Valley can be a model school because they have the best teachers and a lot of funds, but our school doesn't have so much money." Or, "Kerala is a different situation, it is not like the rest of the country."
If we can do it in 100 blocks across the country, it is a model people can take seriously; all these excuses break down. We're demonstrating that decentralized planning can work, if we begin with the weaker sections of society.
When decentralization will actually happen, we can't say. For two years we will work in the health program, two years in education: it will take about seven years for a reasonable degree of planning to take off. Remember, often the richer sections in a village are also poor. In very backward areas, every little helps. And we will always begin with the poorer sections of the village. Every two years, we would stop funding for that phase of the program.
What is the kind of funding are we looking at for the training part? For each block of 50 villages, something like Rs. 3 lakh ($6,800), or Rs. 5,000 ($114) per village per year, which is not much. But for 6,000 villages, it adds up to Rs. 3 crore ($680,000). Right now, we have an ongoing program in 50,000 villages: some 1,000 NGOs have come together for the People's Health Assembly campaign. A volunteer base exists. We plan to work with 10 volunteers in each village - those volunteers are already there. Right now, they are organizing quiz competitions and children's mela, because that's all they can do. We will train them in health, education, all aspects, gradually.
Transcribed by Uma Asher.
Converted to HTML by Vamsi Veeramachaneni