When change happens…
In over a decade-long experience of
being a storyteller for social change, I have felt the power of community lens
or an ant’s viewfinder to discover in matter of hours what connects and moves
people. Each of these visits, some barely a few hours and others lasting weeks,
have ended up creating clarity and connect…giving meaning to a more scholarly
engagement.
I want to indulge a bit before sharing
some reflections from a recent exercise that took us to diverse geography and
issues that Oxfam India partners work in.
No matter how many frequent flyer miles
you have in terms of community visit, you can never reach a stage of saturation.
Moreover, the insights are so organic that you are likely to get addicted to
the narratives that change the way we see and pitch issues.
We all have had these moments of
reflection, like discovering why a rural community would turn toilets into
storage of grains, as that seems to be a pressing need to them than the
sanitation lens. Or discovering that manual scavenging is not about toilets but
servitude and stigma as that allow certain sections to have free labour for
errands and command control. Or that the struggle for entitlements is not just
about getting something, it is about claiming the notion of rights…. The list
is endless and I have, like most here, an entire repository of anecdotes with
visuals.
Now back to the exciting part…
A
narrative beyond incremental claims
We visited areas where our partner
Navrachna works on forest rights and livelihood…
The village was an aberration as some
in the group ended up comparing it with villages in the plains. We were in the
tribal heartland of India in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur district. The state has a
tribal identity that precedes its formation and has been a strong reference
point for discussion on resource rich tribal poor of India.
Surrounded by horseshoe shaped hills,
the community has an integral link with everything that the forest supports,
including stories or legends that mention the place being full of tigers and
hence the name…. (You will have to get in touch to know the name of the village
and conversation J)
As we sat down in the local school
building – yes you are right it is just a room so not to be called a bhawan –
and the meeting started, it was clear that the community was not just on to a
wish list of entitlements but had gone beyond and that reflects the strength of
programming.
The community has on the school wall a
map with legends depicting the resource base, memories, medicines and places of
worship. They have filed individual and community claims under the forest
rights act. That’s not all. They recently carried out GPS mapping of the area
with the help of women and elders who know the forests well.
It is awe inspiring to see the files
and paperwork that the community has put together and is now advocating with
the state departments for formal titles.
But here is the best part…. We often
talk about connecting the dots for creating a larger picture, vision or
framework, and the community is on to it. They have already planned how they
will use the forest area under the claim. They plan to strengthen some of the
medicinal plant distribution as access to health remains a challenge and the
community feels the forest helps them survive to reach hospitals in cases of
emergency. The community also has plans to distribute tiny pieces to families
that are landless and poor.
In
other words, the community is building upon the traditional and legal claims to
rework the larger vision of ‘development’ that is about collective decisions
and choice of what works best for them, the forests and our collective future
where a tribal India is not an antithesis to an urban India.
A
broader worldview
I know we all perhaps do it, but
important to highlight that the community is never a passive participant. So we
must facilitate a question during these visits on why we are there and how our
world’s/work connects.
In this particular visit, the team was
asked about what we do with the visits and how we influence the larger picture.
We responded to it by explaining how we use all that comes through the struggle
on the ground as knowledge and policy inputs to inform the way these schemes
are implemented.
The community change stories are
programme stories as well – and hence Oxfam India’s change narrative. The
subtext can convert into a rich policy implementation vision and innovations
that our partners are making on a daily basis.
Postscript:
We were in a house that has a path running through it. It is a trail that
existed before the house was expanded and the path was not encroached upon as
villagers walk through it as a shorter route. Imagine something like this in
our private property world.
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