Sagar posed a question - shouldn't we
just go back to the people? Why should we be engaging with the state at all?
Yes, there is no alternative but to go back to people. But these are not
mutually exclusive. We should engage with the state as much as we should go back
to people. In this context, there seems to be
variability in terms of reception levels of the state across sectors. For
example in the health sector, they seem to be considering alternatives more
seriously compared to farming/agriculture. Or for that matter in the area of
atomic energy, civil society was never able to make a dent ever. Given this variability, we cannot say
that the state is not listening to us. Just because we don't seem to be making
too many gains in the overall development directions of the state, should we
just give up? No. We should understand what variability is across sectors and
where it is coming from and why is it that they are more receptive in certain
areas. We
can at least talk about "science for people" if we are not able to do
something about "science of people" and "science by people". Some
people felt that government does listen to people when it comes to
survival and life and death issues and that probably explains why the
health sector has more openings. So we can still talk of (or lobby in
the name of) public good in certain sectors. Some felt that besides civil society by
whatever definition, be it NGOs, peoples' movements, CBOs, or Unions, engagement
with policy should also include political parties in the opposition. Most of us
today are not in a position to "go back to the people". Some of us can only
reach a small pocket of people, which means that we will be leaving out a large
chunk of people. Also,
many of civil society actors are actually part of the system one way or
the other, in which case what do we mean by going back to the system.
How many groups and institutions can actually say "we will not bother
about the state, we will go back to the people". The third thing is that policy changes
at the larger level are taking place at a pace faster than what we can take up
at the ground level with people. Therefore ground work becomes redundant to that
issue, for example the issues of GM crops or Climate Change. You could go back
to people, but changes will out-pace your work.
So that was the conclusion: You have to
go back to people you have to engage with the state. They are not mutually
exclusive. You have to do both. This brought us to the question. What is
our Kurukshetra for this battle? Where this battle should ideally be fought?
Should it not be with the people? While the more sustainable way of
fighting or the long term location is the people, in terms of campaigns, you
could even have the kurukshetra in the media. What are the drivers of policy according
to us?
Sometimes it is the crisis situation,
which makes the drivers, the state listen to civil society. In times of crises
related to agrarian distress, large scale farmer suicides, droughts, natural
calamities and so on the state might be willing to listen to civil society.
Sometimes they listen in order to subdue
resistance. If some group/agency is too much of a nuisance, they might pretend
that they are listening and throw a few crumbs but the larger direction is still
the same. Sometimes they give in to people's pressure when they need votes, or
when there is pressure through media. When there is evidence we try and
convince the state using evidence based studies. Direct action is also helpful
sometimes. International commitments made by the
State affect the process of policy formulation. Some progressive legislation
that has been introduced in relation to human rights or bio diversity is a
recent example. There was also this view that most often
we are doing reactive politics. There are many shortcomings with the way civil
society is functioning and then we say that the state is not listening to us. We
are also very fragmented and sectoral in our approach, for instance in civil
society we have never been able to put people's plans on paper completely, to
counter what the government proposes in say, its approach paper or the
development plan. Within drivers of policy, on the
negative side we can assume:
Wherever there is a possibility of
making big money, (not corruption), corporate powers will step in, and then they
drive the policy.
What kind of knowledge goes into policy
making? All the kinds of knowledge that allows
for maximization of gains for a few and which tries to convince the rest of the
society that this is good for you and promotes the message to the larger public.
What possibilities are there of the
community being involved in policy making. If they are united and show strength
there is a sure possibility. Direct actions lead to the community being listened
to. Establishing alternatives convincingly is one way the community can
influence policy. We talked about processes like citizen's
jury – for example in the UK a national debate was called on GM, and a series of
citizens juries were organised to feed into policy making.
When legislation is being drafted,
creating legal spaces for peoples' participation in decision making is crucial.
These are some of the possibilities. In terms of strategies, we said all
those ways by which a consumer can be made into a citizen – will work.
The other thing that we talked about as
a big strategy is de-legitimisation of the state. Find a variety of ways by
which you can take away the credibility of the state in that particular policy
making arena. And that is one way in which you can push alternatives. For
example the Tehelka exposure is nothing but de-legitimising the state. The idea
is to seek evidence and prove the falsehood of the state.