Understanding Power dynamics should be must for development workers
As per my understanding and experience I find from Govt administration to Panchayat system there have been a growing culture of bureaucracy. Every where the leaders or officers are after getting sanctioned rights or funds. People have to understand that there has been lot of things does not require administrative interference. Only people's force can change the future pace of development and bring prosperity. People have inherent fear towards loosing land, money, dignity and facing poverty and related difficulties. Even in one who lives in poverty, having nothing to loose also fears to face loosing dignity and face physical harassments. Ignorance and fear are the major reasons of poverty. When I say ignorance I do not mean lack of education or presence of literacy.
Today's education is only information. It is not knowledge based. Therefore I do never emphasize on those so called education or increasing of literacy. Ignorance towards the people's nature, understanding selfishness of self and others, capacity of resource organization-managing and effectively harvesting those etc are the major areas which talks about knowledge. Knowledge is the power that expels fear. Knowledge about resources, rights over resources, responsibility of individual and group in managing that etc, has not reached people. Therefore many greedy selfish people are holding those in illegal manner. For example, I find many people neither know nor have the access to funeral ground and grazing land. At times it shocks when we understand the reasons of poverty that the poor landless could have utilized those lands for grazing of small domestic animals like, goats etc, that is grabbed by some one/two very powerful and/or families who is/ are lending money/seeds/machines to poor families and thereby exploiting continuously in ways for years. The powerful person is dictating the targets of development. He/she is influencing democratic process towards autocratic practices. I find people fear the powerful person for his/her access to local administration those who have great command over police and judicial system where people suffer a lot. Those are the places where people have very reasons to fear. Those are really he places where people face death and uncertainty at each moment. I find these people also act as slow poisons in the development process. They understand and have the information base about the resources and power they wish to play. For years our leaders in many form and many appearances exploited common man’s dream. There sick mind restrict common mans peace to get established. Therefore not only people should have the information about their entitlements, but also they should be aware of leaders (elected and opinion) , their capabilities, responsibilities, knowledge, skill etc.
Knowing of resources, there use, patterns of development , use of science and technology etc will not work until people make a way to UNDERSTAND, MANAGE and CHALLENGE these human bottlenecks whom they consider as big men. Therefore there is a need for development workers and philosophers to make an appraisal of existing power dynamics which influence the entire development objectives or national agenda. This appraisal can be done by analyzing data from wealth ranking, looking at list of existing influential people in the society or community, ability and attitude of each influential person or family, their living style, income source etc. Their network or access or reach to local administration influence on local politics and district or state politics can also be studied by discussing with people of that area. Efficient system should be developed to find who (individual/family/group/community) has got maximum stake over land, forest, water sources, common property and natural resources, administration, local governance system, police and judicial. All those should be documented and properly understood by the professionals so that they can be able to derive right kind of strategies, methods or approaches or all together to carry forward their activity to achieve a greater stage of happiness and fulfillment. Of course it appears complex but by collecting data on cases, anecdotes or observing village/community events for some time (say for 6 months to one year) these power dynamics will be very much clear before us. Accordingly sam, dand Niti and Bhed can be applied as per the requirement. Therefore the appraisal will have following operational components such as
• wealth ranking,
• collection of anecdotes where individuals or groups influenced the development process or decisions of village (positive and negative)
• Collection of data on factor conditions influenced by individuals or groups or communities through informal interviews, discussions and observations etc
• Transect walk within the village
• Analysing livelihood portfolio of village, community and individual households
I impress here very strongly that there should be clear and strong component in all the studies or appraisals that gives data based support to development workers in analyzing the power dynamics in the process designs or decision making processes for development, which intend peace and prosperity.
