(Note: There were three sets of discussions at the plenary level. One after the presentations, the next after the small group discussions, and third after the theme-wise group discussions. In this section we have threaded the discussion on all the three days according to theme, in order to make easy reading. The attribution to discussants is given in brackets, wherever possible. - Ed)

On Policy
We are driven into certain policies without much rationality. (MVS).  Policy is not about what is the most appropriate. Policy is not about what is technically the best thing in a situation. It will claim to be any or all of these things. But fundamentally, at its heart it is a reflection of the current power structure and power relations in society. And that’s why policy is deeply political. (MB)

In an elementary way, policy is defined as whatever governments choose to do, or not to do. Academically speaking, Policy Development, a sub area of public policy, involves studies of implementation of policy, such that the effect of policy is seen, measured and understood, so that mid-term and regular corrections can be made in policy implementation. Is there a role for civil society in this and how would they intervene? How do you influence a process where finally it is at the central level, the cabinet level and at two or three other places? Ultimately the entire policy is decided by the 78 top policy makers, often ignoring studies, and local realities. Even universities are marginalised in the policy context. (Ramabrahmam-RB)

Madhulika: There is no point looking at policy in the formal or academic frameworks of what it is supposed to do.  There is no question of looking at policy from the old framework of the constitution or what it is supposed to be in the liberal framework. . Those of us who have studied policy find that there is no point studying policy other than in the framework of how policy is actually made. Concepts like "policy is made for society, by society" etc are very abstract concepts. We have to look at what actually happens. All the experiences narrated here have shown  who policy attacks, who does it work for, and who gets left out. Understanding policy within the framework of power is the only useful framework in which one can study policy. There can be no other definitional framework. If we start from understanding power structures and power relations everything in fact falls into place.

Unfortunately, academic frameworks continue to be out of place. Those of us within the discipline who are offering alternatives. find it hard to be accepted within the academic discipline as well. We need to change the frame of reference. (MB)


Up until 1991, government chose not to associate civil society groups, whereas after that they they do. (R.brahmam). 

Civil Society is no doubt asked to help in policy formulation, but this is not because their experience is necessarily regarded highly by policy formulators. It is more  because there are various pressures which have to be accommodated. The pressures are from several national and international sources. If Civil Society is "consulted", it is because of funding pressure, which again is because of intense civil society campaigns and action. There has to be at least an impression that civil society views are being taken into account. The consultation is pure tokenism. If you are really interested in consulting civil society, it is necessary to change the time-frame,  as any serious and meaningful consultation with civil society needs a more time. Not making room for this in the policy formulation process  reflects the low value that is given to the  consultative process.

Any meaningful consultation requires that suggestions be taken seriously, and acted upon.  For example in the Working Group on civil supplies of the Planning Commision for the 10th five year plan (CVWG), the civil society suggestion to include coarse grain in the Public Distribution System (PDS), in order to promote traditional ( coarse grain) crops in fallow lands, was met with appreciative nods. However while writing the draft, the suggestion was brushed aside as an issue for state governments to consider. (MV)

If there is any change in policy in what we consider desirable direction, it is because agencies external to the system force such a change. (MV). Success in the case of the Mathura Rape campaign and the subsequent enactment of the rape laws, came about because there were eminent people who could look at the law and clearly state - what were the changes that were wanted. And that was supplemented by with hundreds and thousands of women’s voices across the country through small groups. (RR)

The next aspect is implementation. Even if there is a policy or when legislation is in place, as in the domestic violence issue, implementation is lacking. Here again the onus seems to be placed on civil society to follow up on each of the reforms like domestic violence, or environmental protection, or even rights of displaced people.

Sagar Dhara: Why we are talking only of influencing the state policy. Why are we not talking about talking to the local people and get them involved? For example, I was sitting with some local tribal people who had traveled some distance to the district headquarters. They had all paid to travel there. I asked them why? If so, shouldn't  they be charging the fresh water and air that they provide to urban people. I explained this by talking about the rough leaf area and gave a rough calculation of CO2-exygen exchange for a small unit, and then explained how much oxygen is supplied in every square kilometer occupied by them. This made sense to them. In the Cogentrix issue, the local people could fight the policies of the State, because of such efforts.

Now we that the whole issue of SEZs.  Here the people know that they don't want the SEZs. Here our task is to help them articulate what it is they want in its place.  Most of the time we would be involved in some committees or the other to look at the issue. In the past ten years whatever committees I have been on in Delhi or the state level trying to influence policy from our point of view, have been a waste of time. Now, I certainly would be very interested in talking about those kind of experiences which start from what it is that people want. .

When we try to influence policy the big gap is the lack of data to make policy. For example we have this problem with  rural electrification, but most of the consumer surveys are of high-end consumers. There is hardly any data on what are the demands, the requirements of poor consumers. So the policy gets made on assumptions, on intuitions or a few pilots.  If grass roots groups who have a long term (say fifty year ) perspective, contribute information it will help a lot.  (SK)

Expertise 
(SK) Instead of talking of policy changes, can we speak about impacts of policy which people can understand. For example It is very difficult to tell someone that Enron does not make sense. But, if we say that with Enron the tariff will come to this much, then everyone comes to your side. So we need the expert to speak is terms of impacts which people can relate to. On the other hand, people who support Enron , talk in terms of power shortages and how Enron will solve that problem.  This means that they too speak in terms of impact.

We also need the expert is to understand what is not said, because we get pre-occupied with countering what is said. But often the things are pushed by not saying something ( or avoiding talking about something ). This needs an expert with a public interest perspective. So in our own sectors we can cultivate such experts as can raise questions, as well as understand what is not said and highlight what is not said as well as convert the contents of policy documents into what it means in terms of "impact" on the bigger constituencies.

We need to work on developing our own body of public interest experts in our own sectors, at least in terms of the capacity to ask questions. Actually suggesting alternative models may need resources that we may not be able to command. (SK).

Hari Babu:  This notion of experts: It is high time that we talked about experts of the state institutions, experts of the markets and experts of civil society. We can raise questions. We can also produce knowledge. We should not use the term experts in quotes, we should use it liberally -- in the sense that civil society organisations also have expertise. They are specialist.

Further,  civil society experts can interact with the experts in the state system who are sympathetic and ready to look at the problems of the people.(SK)

(?)It is through research that we discover and create knowledge. The problem is who is setting the agenda for the research.  Research on water. for example, is in the domain of engineers, whose research methods are mainly based on a bit of modelling, and that too which is related to dams and large scale systems.  There is little fundamental theoretical research on drought and floods, on how floods occur, on predicting drought, rainfall etc. Today the best brains are engaged in physical research in particle physics, space and such other attractive spheres. Today even the scientists have taken water for granted. They have stopped doing theoretical research on water.

Madhulika: I come from a completely academic background, but I was fortunate that one of the teachers in our department, felt that political science is sterile in our country.  It’s a  poor discipline because it does not have its ear to the ground. He felt that we need to listen to people on the ground, to people who are in movements, who are in NGOs. He understood that the work of the academic is to understand what they are saying and perhaps systematise and  put all of it in some kind of framework, in terms of larger ideologies. There is also the need of co-relating different ideas to each other and initiate some kind of dialogue between different actors who are now not talking to each other.

Most importantly , academics need to learn that any political science that they can learn,  would need to be culled from and in response to what is actually going on the ground.
 
Sanghi: External technology has been driving policy change to a large extent, particularly in agriculture. We now know that indigenous knowledge should have have occupied the front seat. One of the reasons why the external knowledge was able to applied widely, even though it is wrought with disaster, was its uniformity, sameness which could be spread everywhere. On the other hand, the technology based on indigenous knowledge, is not the same everywhere. In that sense it is not replicable. The process and principles are similar. Since we choose to opt for technology which is based on indigenous knowledge,  we have to develop expertise which is not focused on any particular technique or technology, but on the process of nurturing and developing knowledge, which is situation specific. Thus our intervention is more process related.  However as  Ramanjenelu pointed out, this process approach also could degenerate into a reductionist approach. Perhaps, we should develop our expertise around a cluster of processes, rather than a particular process.(NKS)

HB:On the paradigm of so called peoples knowledge, traditional knowledge, peoples’ wisdom etc: It is true that there is a great deal of romanticisation of what it represents. However what must be recognised is that there has been systematic emasculation of such knowledge at the ground level. That is why we constantly face this problem of having to teach experts without being experts or researchers.

When we talk about traditional knowledge, we are saying is that there are different communities, different regions, and different people who are at different levels. We are saying that we have to relate with people as they are and give their understanding the respect it deserves. It does not mean that whatever happens there or what they say is true. It means that there is a dialogue that happens with us as the mediators between the people and the expert domain. True the experts have been bought out by the system because they get their salaries from there. That is the reality that we are grappling with. Shreedar is doing it in the power sector. It is something new to people as consumers or as citizens. We need to consider how the local people can deal with the issue, how we can  relate at different levels and different times in this process of change. (WM)
 
Towards the Lowest Common denominator?
Shiv:  There is a politics of summarizing. Summaries tend to reduce diverse experiences and discussions into clichés, into neat packages, text book type hypotheses. They tend to subvert our subversiveness.  On the one hand we have a wide variety of experiences, and wisdom, which is uncommon, which we are trying to learn more about. And on the other we are summarizing these experiences into some kind of common wisdom, which is self defeating, which subverts the nature of the whole discussion. We tend to reduce such things to acceptable packages (frameworks?) rather like saying "please be good social scientist" or "how to deal with the state, work towards some institutional framework" etc.

There is a politics to presentation, to notions in the language we use. When we say Power drives politics, we are actually saying that there are various metaphors of power that drives politics in different ways. There are several statements being made in what seems to be a single notion. The ironies, the ambiguities and the paradoxes which many of you communicated have got totally got lost. But by reducing it to the lowest common denominator, we are actually not going forward. We are regressing. But that is the fate of democracies quite often. It was like a reader on "How to do easy politics and not feel sad about it".

Ananthapadmanaban: I think the cliches work. The other side seems to be transforming the world using simple cliches. It is our inability to use clichés effectively and our own disgust at them and  own moral repulsion that prevents us from seeing them for what they are and how they work. So I don’t see any harm in reiterating things like "power drives policy". Why escape it? Power seems to be driving policy and changing the world.

Shiv: Let’s take the politics of cliches head on – To say that power drives politics is not good enough for this room. It has to say what kind of power drives what kind of politics. It is that level where we are working.  I heard some tremendous examples of this level of dicsourse. I want that captured. What I am saying is, we were not faithful to the quality of our discussion. It needs some re-working. And I wouldn’t settle for cliches.  Bollywood also settles for cliches,  but it varies the cliches occasionally. Allow for that.

Anathapadmanabhan: Going beyond the cliches of power, we recognise the reality of money power. This came through very repeatedly and strongly. But we also recognise the power of the rhetoric of democracy and common good, which the state is also enslaved to. There isn’t a politician in this country who can say he is acting not in common good. He has to at least supply the rhetoric of common good and very often we are exploiting that space that such a rhetoric provides. It is not that we actually believe that the State is the mediator for common good. We know that when we talk in those terms and make a strong case for it, the state will have to listen. Maybe that is the kind of insight we need about the state, the people and so on and so forth. It is not the theoretical entity that we need but an understanding of what drives it and an understanding of what spaces exist for us to influence it.

Harish: I just want to provocatively say that the state does not exist. Nor is there something called civil society, the People, the market or the expert. When I say the state does not exist it is in the sense of the famous remark THE woman does not exist with the emphasis on the definitive article. In that sense is no such thing as THE state or THE people. When we talk about going back to THE people, there is an element of nostalgia here as if people are a repository of all kinds of things. It is as if the people are some kind of unchanged entity not open to the same kind of state, market that all of us are subjected to. All these have been constructed as monoliths which are not subjected to the same kind of forces that these same terms are subjected to.

We have not been faithful to the actual quality of dialogue and every now and then we slip into this mode and not clarify what each of these terms mean.

MB: What Shiv is saying is when we have people from different positions with diverse understandings talking each other, one of the most important things is the outcome of the negotiations. When trying to negotiate or summarise, the first step is to gravitate towards the lowest common denominator which Shiv dislikes so much. He is right to point it out because all of us recognise that the lowest common denominator is where we begin but we don’t have to stop there.

Annapurna: While I do agree that we are loosing something in the way we summarise it, in the groups there was a lot of negotiation on what constitutes a policy process.

Kavita: I did not think that we were coming to a forced set of conclusions or even bringing it even to the lowest common denominator. I thought that the presenters were being very faithful in reporting back the variety of positions taken in the group so that the larger group had to benefit from what went on there. But the richness of what happened inside the group would remain with the group members. A lot of new kinds of concepts, terms , new ways of looking at things did come up in the group.
Annapurna: As a group, or at least me personally, are definitely working towards change, which is an impossible task. And while we are doing it, we have to forget that it is impossible, otherwise we would not attempt it.. So, we frequently forget that power is what actually drives policy. At some level we think that people would like to change and perhaps that is not true. And therefore we tend to gravitate to the lowest common denominator, which is cliches like Power drives policy. The search for the intangible, drives away the tangible sometimes.

Language
Ram : Just want to point out the language we use often. I think there is some limitation in our expression, of activist. The nuances of some of the experiences do not come through perhaps because we are using a language that is supplied. Many of the activist groups that are articulating themselves and even the cliches being used, are often, in a language that comes closest to articulating their experiences. I don’t know to what extent using a language which are not used in presenting themselves, contributes in not capturing all the nuances that will reflect all the experiences. That needs to be factored in. I see a lot of people here who are engaged, when they are in a much smaller group they tend to clip into a different sort of language. It is not just the language but also the presentation of thoughts and experiences --. The categories that are applied and the words that are applied. Even there there is a lot of misfit, that they have to borrow certain words to apply to their experiences.

Shreekumar: Because this is a workshop with a not very clear agenda or a common statement, I am looking at it as an opportunity to capture and take advantage of the different starting points of the practitioners and academicians , so that we can get into it. And make the common denominations at a later point in time.
 
.Shiv: : I am working with a group of tribals who came to me with a very simple question. Can you translate policy into our language and our language into policy. We have to do it in such ways that we enter a system- we enter a different kind of discourse. He said how you produce a policy document based on our categories, our data and he said what you is to look at our notions of the body, talk to our folk healers, our shamans and use that as a data for creating such policy. I think when you start doing it you enter a different domain. You don’t get talked about objectivity of spaces, you link life, lifestyle, livelihood and life cycle, life chances into a different domain of theory. It is a different kind of embeddedness where I think the keyword is like an oxymoron and the idea is of translation, which allows for incommensurability. Paradise is a homogenous space where we all meet equally together. I think that is the danger. It is the silences of these groups, which are horrifying. One we are mimicking rationality. Two we actually believe in homogenous style three we are not a part of sequential evolution. We have not eliminated the tribe and the peasant. They are contemporaries, the way we produce a new notion of cognitive justice is very different from the western mode.  We actually try to reinvent democracy and for that we have to re-invent the notion of science.We have to reinvent technology . We have given science such a hammering we have forgotten that scarcity is a very late invention in history. Scarcity and were invented at the same time.
 
State and Civil Society
Civil society has grown in India, a bit chaotically. There have been the emergence of a wide variety of civil society organizations—trade unions, NAPM, religious organizations, Gandhians, Maoists, SHGs, Bahujan Samaj organizations, NGOs, Al Qaeda etc(SD)
Civil Society is a social community, which capable of organising itself independently of the specific direction of state power. The State may consider that the policy they want must move in a particular direction. It is the civil society which is outside of the political society which actually has the capacity to generate different kinds of ideas and organisations which takes it away in directions different from that of State. That’s why it is so powerful and important to understand. That is why it has the capacity to influence the State. (MB)
 
What is the role of civil society in policy making ? Civil society consists of different groups, each of the groups play varying roles. Therefore when we use the terms "civil society", we perhaps need to be conscious of which groups we represent. For example we are mostly NGOs and academics in thi forum. Many of us tend to take multiple or all the roles in the process of dialoguing with the state? So, we end up taking up too much, too many functions. – sometimes outside our constituency. In the bargain our energies are dissipated. So the issue is how do we focus our energies on what should be our role to get the proper policy changes.(kala)
The direct interventions of civil society are basically,

Besides this there are specific roles for civil society, outside the official framework.

 
Historically speaking the role of Civil Society in India emanates from the Gandhian Tradition. During the freedom movement, the Gandhian suggested a constructive programme aimed at "wiping very tear from every eye". This also involved an alternative development approach as symbolised in the Charkha. Post 1947, the socialist rhetoric was adopted, with the command economy concept. The Gandhian constructive programme was reduced to tokenism through programmes like KVIC, Social welfare board etc. Attempts like Bhoodan, (and possibly even the JP movement-Ed ) were perhaps expressions of that original constructive programme. Civil Society in India can be traced to efforts to revitalise that original programme – (MV)

 Kavita:Civil Society has made gains in some programmes, legislation and administrative functioning. It has learnt how to influence things like lobbying with ten MPs to introduce a bill and somehow getting a law through. These are small toe-holds in the whole process like the camel in the tent. What we need to worry about is policy regarding the larger direction of development, with a vision of hundreds of years. In this larger, long-term perspective we are loosing.

Say what is happening with NPMs and scaling it up. There are gains.. I think civil society groups have learned the game of entering into those smaller components. From all the experience here that is the Prayas’s experience, CSA’s experience and Wasans’s experience and so on. There is always a struggle, even after you get in. But the space is available now.

Shreekumar:I agree with Kavita that we have become smart. It is quite likely that we are better managed. And they would also like us to take some of their work. For example in the power sector, they have agreed to encourage Panchayat Raj Institutions to manage power distribution. So what happens? The State withdraws, and the local institutions are supposed to manage the system, But the PR institutions have no say in the policy as such. So while I agree with Kavita that we have become smart. I think we have to become smarter, not to limit ourselves to that, because that is the space that they are ready to give to you. They are just given a role in ensuring better management of their interests that is ensure people pay or no power loss etc.

So I feel that in our sectors we are trying to play a political role. We are trying to create a new political process in our own sector. Because the previous system of bureacracy which was supposed to get this feedback, keep the interest of the people in mind etc has crumbled. We know that they are all loosing legitimacy. So in our own sectors, we are trying to create our own parallel system which have legitimacy, which have a feel of the grassroots, which have a fifty year perspective. And that is what gives an end to end perspective - from policy to programmes to projects to impacts and long term effects. It is not going to be easy. It is not going to be done in even one sector. It will take time, and that is where we have to go.
 
UPSCALING
Upscaling even as a metaphor in its design, seems to suggest reductionism, a loss of nuances, oversimplification and perhaps even violence. To take an example – the railways work everywhere in the world simply because they have laid the tracks and they have acquired the land if necessary by displacing people.
 
So when we talk about upscaling, we are not suggesting that something gets upscaled by repeating the same thing elsewhere or by extending one programme over larger areas. We are also clear that it is not necessary that the same things works everywhere.

We are perhaps talking of certain elements which go into a programme, which we are trying to apply in other places, without loosing the nuances and particularities of the new area, as well as taking into account realities like land, livelihoods, and ensuring that we do not take along the accompanied baggage.

Thus while speaking about upscaling, we need to be clear whether we want to upscale the process or principles or we want to upscale a particular technology or a particular way of doing it or a particular output. Are we saying that a particular technology or practice is universally applicable, or whether the process is something we want to duplicate?

Another model of achieving scale is aggregation of small diffused initiaves, rather than extending of one model to other places. If one small initiative works, can we work on starting other small initiaves, rather than replicating something, and can this style we mainstreamed.

Another method of achieving scale would be through the use of organic structures, be they that of self help groups, be they that of caste, be they that of certain religious affiliation. There are many structures in society, which are functioning, which are organic in some sense. And which can then be used to further the point that we want to make, in order to upscale or have much larger impact.

The reason why we have so many diverse views about upscaling and the nuances that get lost during upscaling, is that every attempts is trying to answer a different question. We set out to do different things and we do them in practice and we talk about the practice, without talking about the question that we sought to address in the first place.

Lets say my aim is halve the use of pesticide in Andhra Pradesh. I set out to do a certain number of things. But if in the process I find that if I don’t convert peoples thinking about the the larger questions of organic agriculture, I should not be surprised because I never set out to do that. But if we want people to ultimate change their thinking about agriculture, while we do work primarily on the issue of use of pesticides, there is need to talk about as well as do some practice on the larger issues as well. Upscaling therefore is also broadening the engagement. It is like using the particular as a means to reach an end of the wider systemic change that we want in that sector, at least. (group discussion)

There is also the concept of scalling out. Here the effort is not by an outside agency like an NGO acting, but by the spreading of a practice by example,by the farmers and the community themselves.
 
Chitra: In the group discussion, we essentially concluded that upscaling does not necessarily mean getting bigger with the same thing. The space is for many small things to be reworked at another, or broaden the effort to tackle larger systemic issues at the local level is also an effective upscalling of our programme efforts.
 
The term Upscaling always indicates a vertical integration. Horizontal integration of small efforts is what many of us seem to be talking about. We can call it side scaling.

This kind of effort is also important as they tend to be more decentralised and independent of State, and thereby reducing the dependence on the State and reducing State hold on development, which takes it in a particular centralised direction.
 
Annapurna: I am contesting growth. There has not been sufficient theorising on paradigms of doing policy. Whenever we are talking of policy changes, we are making an effort to increase scale via growth of that model. And by growth, I do not only means economic growth.

Facilitator: There seems to be an assumption that the growth or scaling up model is desirable. That is -- You set up an example, you build it up a bit then scale it up, bring it to such a scale and then you inter-link.

Annapurna: and then (we want) the state till then take it up.
 
 
Hari: The whole discourse on the policy formulation hinges on the fact that there exists a state. Without state, in whatever form, where is the question of policy! Also the critiques of the policies can be in terms of the philosophy of the policy itself. Or in terms of implementation. And the state, we all know, is the face of the neoliberalism, of globalisation, driven by neo-liberal politics. We also know that State is whithering away in the social sectors.

Hari: If we can have the status of an expert for somebody working with the state and other institutions, why cant we grant the same status to the NGO?
Hairsh: : If we see how "expertise" is constituted, the entire discourse altogether.

Supposing the experts of civil society or the people whatever it is, speak in the language of the oracles. Will they be able to have a conversation with the experts of the state?

Rukmini
Whenever you are struggling for change, the issue of legitimacy is always brought up. Those (from the establishment) who question your legitimacy, are also showing their power. For example, when thousands of women were demanding rights for maintenance of Muslim women, the Muslim men and mullahs questioned the legitimacy saying that we were not entitled for speak for muslims, even when musilm women were part of the movement. Only the mullahs and Muslim male leaders were the community.
 
Rukmini: In Wassan’s case also, our legitimacy is questioned as we are a small group, and a self appointed group. Even if it is a large movement, as in the case of say NBA, your legitimacy will be questioned. And all civil society groups are self appointed in some sense or the other. There maybe large things like the women’s movement. But even if they are small efforts, one should not feel diffident. If we consider ourselves as part of society, then each one of us have a right to struggle for change, and we don’t need to be appointed by someone. The poor people are always struggling for change, and demanding for their right and we must see ourselves as a part of that process.

I also don’t subscribe to the logic that we must be involved like members of a team which includes the state bodies. This is because people are always fighting for their rights against each of these so called teams members. Therefore on each issue we will have to decide our role, based on the situation.

It is all a matter of power. This is clear for example in the health sector, where the multinational companies have created a policy space for their interests. In the power sector which Sreekumar was talking about, Capital, money power decides policy. As civil Society activists, we have to fight to enter that arena, which means that we have to curb somebody else’s power to get policy which is more pro poor and pro people..

Annapurna
There is a general feeling of powerlessness that I hear when people have been talking of effective policy process. When we talk about our experiences, we do talk about success and failures, but there does tend to be the undertone of not having enough power to actually change policy. So if you want to affect policy you actually have to acquire power.

Chairperson: I think it is more nuaced than that. What is probably being said is that when it comes to the paradigmatic shifts, we are not have either the persistence or the power or whatever it takes, but to affect components or certain elements, we seems to be having some kind of success.

Madhulika
I hope I have not given the impression that by talking about power, I am highlighting the sense of powerlessness. That is not my intention at all. I am trying to say that we must understand which power is creating space for certain kinds of issues and pushing out the others. And this defines a role of civil society, whose locus of power is different, which is to ensure that the other so called powerless view is taken on board by those that are making policy or strongly influencing policy.
These interests in my case the multinationals or for that matter the Indian Drug Companies, tend to define certain issues as being of utmost importance . Civil Society sometimes needs to recover and reposition the issues themselves, as the real issue for people may be entirely different. So I am not taking of a sense of powerlessness, but the tussle for power.    
 
When we talk of the State, we talk about it sometimes in the Marxist sense-- State is the enemy, yet we have to capture State Power. We gave that up sometime ago, yet we keep coming back to it, by demanding of the all powerful State to take care of development. We ask the State to regulate the market. There is an ambivalence in what we do. Perhaps we have to adjust to reality – namely deal with both State and Market.

Whatever it is, when we talk about policy we must recognise that we are not talking about any grand idea of being able to change the State by lobbying and advocacy and achieve Swaraj or whatever ones utopia is. We must recognise them for what they are – tactical victories, that win us more and more space, where in fact it is getting less and less. 
 
 
Institutions
Dr Sanghvi: The Group is creative and innovative, and represents a wide variety of interests. There is also synergy. But are we coming close to each other? Though we have some of the best and well meaning people, there is something holding us back (Sanghvi).

We all agree that the direction of the new paradigm is community based development. This paradigm is only three decades in the making. We realise that the current institutions like the SHG groups have been truly creative, particularly in the initial period. But hardly any of them have been able to sustain themselves over a long period. There is no point dismantling these institutions, as instead of working on new institutions, it would be more prudent to build on the existing institutions. We need to develop these institutions to take up the new agenda, after creating the right atmosphere and right environment.

We therefore need to analyse the current institutions, before building on them of setting up new institutions. exisitng institutions which are sustainable and giving them the new agenda after creating the right atmosphere and right environment. (54.00)

For this purpose it is the prerequisite is to strongly analyse before new institutional are set up, existing institutionssteps are taken with a thorough understanding of what is existing which of these institutions are in what kind of health. Then the discussion went on to realize that some of the earlier institutions are existing but they are with a limited purpose and some of them perform social functions, religious functions so on and so forth. So many of those institutions are not necessarily sensitive from the gender point of view. One or two may be sensitive but they are existing. But there are upcoming institutions, which last for two or three decades they are gender sensitive they are also equity sensitive and they also have credit worthiness. The other institution that is existing are credit co-operative societies which are dealing with credit and supposedly very good but sensitivity to gender and equity is very limited but this might be a generalisation. Then it was recognised that there are

Two kinds of external agenda. Some of the external agenda is such that it is concerned with every member of the committee and some of the external agenda is such that it is concerned with only limited members.like drinking water is the concern of everyone, health is the concern of everyone and likewise electricity would be the concern of everyone. But when it comes to some other things like fisheries it is not the concern of everyone. The boat and the machinery, so many other livelihood concerns would be the concern of limited people so therefore it was recognised that thematic groups are also required to be formed for such needs that are thematic in nature. General needs where everyone is concerned can be taken care of by general body of the institutions are some of the principles that emerged.

Third thing is that I would like to share my experience with these thematic bodies in sustainable have to form sustainable institutions like SHGs. Their chance for survival is longer and security is longer and they know the discipline involved.

Annapurna: I think there are other alternative processes. What I am saying is can there be a way of theorising it. I think of theorising is a skill. All of us, we do practice. May be some of us are actually putting it into a theoretical framework. 

Only a many splendorued civil society organised under the outlook of from "gain maximization for a few" to "risk minimization for all species"(SD)

Civil Society seems to say that state can no longer to trust to bring about pro-people stances or policies. But by and large Civil Society, though "beautiful" has been ineffectual. (MV)

Kavita: I think we need to discuss what we mean by civil society. Which section or sections of civil society are we talking about spaces for them in policy? There were issues of political process, the question of knowledge, the question of de-emphasising the centrality of State? The question of distancing ourselves from State.
 
Walter
In the first session we went from cynicism to pessimism. We also saw notes of optimism and realism. We therefor have a range of perception and things that is available in our effort and all of them are quite valid -- When we talk about the alternative models, we have said that there is not much success. Kavita has said that in dealing with the bureaucrats or experts we are having successes – whereas in dealing with the larger political or alternative paradigm we are not having success.
We are also saying that civil society is powerless but that doesn’t mean that we are helpless because such is the process of creating the alternative paradigm. What will be the sources of the alternative paradigm, where do we see it going to, and what form will it take on its way. These are important things which should inform our involvement in long term policy issues. Again this involvement in policy generally means engaging with the state. But the state is a conservative body. It represents conservative elements, elitist elements and we are not really going to influence them. . Therefore this our engagement with the State is necessarily incremental and tactical in nature. Whereas strategic levels of policy, I think is in another paradigm of change. And we have to address that question at some time.

Paradigms
Whenever we look at policy, we see that there is a domination and circulation of a certain sets of ideas and information. This domination shapes the normative and foundational understanding of those who deal with policy, who are also not in touch with grassroots work. The educational system also nurtures normative ideas within the same paradigm and the network of policy makers and policy interveners get schooled in those very ideas and proposals.

Except for very few people who are accessible to Shastri Bhavan and the Parliament house, there is no real engagement in policy formulation with academic and civil society groups across the country.

The media, which is supposed to be the "resource space" in a polity, also generates and disseminates information within the same paradigm. (Prof Sanjay)

State and other agencies believe that information is something that ought to be consumed. While lobbying for community radio, many of us had argued that information can be produced at the local level. Knowledge is not the prerogative of a particular set of institutions. It can be generated and can be experiential. It can also be based on a layered understanding of local problems and solutions. Media has a significant role to play in bringing out local information and linking it to macro-knowledge. (Prof Sanjay)

Those working for change, depending on their standpoint, draw the parameters of their alternative to the dominant paradigm, based on what they consider to be the core differences of their approach from the mainstream.

c ) back to back policies of handling waste-namely resource recovery from waste through the four Rs - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair or Reconstruct.
It also goes one step ahead by holding the producers of consumer products liable for their post-consumer waste. This also leads to the replacement of unviable or unsustainable material with economic and ecological material.(shibu). The process of moving toward this approach necessarily involves improving the capacity of the community to address these issues, increasing their sense of ownership, by involving the community in the planning and implementation of the process.. (shibu)
 

 

   
On the question of upscaling effort horizontally that is side-scaling, or spreading of decentralised systems, the core issue is capital and money. When the mainstream talks about sustainability, it generally means that there is at least fourteen percent of money that can be taken out of the system, to get out from the local system into the international ( or national) finance system, which in turn finances something else, and sucks out another fourteen percent from the local economy. This is precisely problem with the SHG model, at least the way it has been replicated and reproduced all over the country. Sometimes the money taken out is more than 24 percent. I am making a case for decentralising money, or at least that part of the money required for local operations like agriculture, food, clothing, local services. Thus the effort is to delink the local operations from the reserve bank, which is linked itself to the international finance market. The more you use the local money, the more you ensure that wealth is re-used within the local economy, the more you are delinking from the money of the reserve bank, the more you are delinked from the globalised market at least for local operations. ( in fact during the current market crisis(2008), there has been much talk about de-coupling from the US market following the sub-prime crisis – Ed)).

The more you are de-linked from the globalised market, the less your money will go contributing towards development of centralised technologies which further climate change. ( in fact the current CDM measures, are all aimed at trying to develop a new centralised technology and therefore new centralised economics, under which some technical solutions of reducing Green house gases are found, rather than look for attacking the root cause of the crisis – which is large centralised, power hungry systems).

A closely linked issue is the kind of political structure that will support such a economic structure. I would like to visualise it in terms of a progressive political party, whose constituents are independent and autonomous – even financially. In fact they are the contributors to individual items of the central budget, rather than a consolidated fund.

When one group or a section decides that a particular central policy is not in line with their interest, they can disassociate themselves from that particular policy and work towards building their own alternative, in collaboration with other groups, if they wish. This action is not seen as going against the party, and therefore they are still part of the main party, provided their action adheres to certain basic principles.

Is this kind of a political structure possible? It is an intellectual challenge to political theory and theorist to conceive a hierarchy, which respects difference and opposition at a lower level. And the only way that can be possible is if the whole economy and the activities or various schemes or technologies that we talk of operating at a level which can de-link from this large central committee. Otherwise it is always the central idea which will get predominance over the local .

For example in the power grid, if the major predominant producers of power are small micro hydel projects or other local small scale power generation units, the central grid operates to use the excess power that local systems produce, and develops advanced technology to stabilize power and make sure things don’t trip. In that case when a small local committee decides that they don’t believe in your system, they can ( have the power, literally and politically) de-link. So following from the intellectual challenge is the political challenge of developing networking political systems, and flowing that this political challenge is the technological challenge - namely to develop more advanced small scale friendly technologies. Also the development of Networking technologies as opposed to the Central Command-Control technologies pursued at the moment.

Some of the sources of such system will come from cybernetics, but here too we find large centralising efforts are getting more funding – witness the effort of Microsoft to buy out Yahoo, or the US to control encryption, and firewalling technologies – or closer home the centralising of cable operators under large networks, and now cable access laws.(JD)

Shiv has written about the the rhysomatic structure. It is self-replicating, maybe we can use it as a kind of a metaphor about side-scaling. On the other aspect namely not allowing the money out of the local economy, or delinking local economy from the reserve bank, there are some communities in other parts of the world that don’t belong to the central grid. For example the Armish. They are linked to the mainstream in certain ways and they are de-linked in several ways. They don’t drive in motor cars they use buggies. They have a pass system but it is decentralised not centralised. But they manage because their ways are largely based on religious tenets, and not simple economics. So, is there something that we can learn from them.

Even though we seem to be constantly criticising the world of rationality, we seem to be wanted to occupy the same terrain. We seem to be wanting to supplant this world with a world which is equally rational, whatever the terms means. For example, we still use notion of poverty as a defining what we don’t want. Is there a notion of goodness, magic, way of life etc. When we talk about down-scaling or not using too much energy, we still seem to be using the old economic categories. The entire alternatives don’t seem to begin with ourselves. It may not be easy to talk about these things but is it also possible to introduce them in the discourse. . (SP)
 
Sashtri: Our discussions on Policy matters, we have various issues, namely whether we are mimicking the state in the way in which we are functioning, or de-emphasizing the role of the state as its functions within the current dominant paradigm. We have spoken of alternatives which down-scale or decentralised economy to a human scale. We have spoken of strengthening local systems, such that they the local economy and society I strong enough to negotiate with the larger system on its own terms. The example given ws how local power systems, can contribute power to the national grid, while drawing from it when needed, as well as represents. We also said that such a system requires the development of different technologies, mainly decentralising and networking technologies.
All these various aspects, link up to a few basic questions that we must address:

One is this issue of growth. Economist are hankering after this 9% growth, as the model of development is such that the economy ( or perhaps more correctly the international finance system) will come to a grinding halt if 4% growth is not achieved. On the other hand we have what Sagar has pointed out - the problem of Global Warming and Peak Oil, which while being caused by the mainstream, will impact the marginalised and poor people more adversely. Thus the importance of us emphasising the core issue namely equity.

So in a way ,I think it is absolutely important to wrap all these things into our thinking that equity is more important than growth. So we have to test all of our work, particularly policy intervention work, to this paradigm of equity. Whether it is working towards this new order, not perhaps now, but thirty years down the line. We have to see how all the bits and pieces that have come up here, are part of the collective memory and effort of this small group which we hope becomes a cohesive group in good time.