Dr Rajesh Tandon
President
Participatory Research In Asia - PRIA

PIONEERING PARTICIPATION

PRIA begins from Knowledge is Power. How do you define knowledge?
People usually differentiate between professional knowledge and expert knowledge ( Knowledge is acquired by local people through ground practices.)

Many a times practical knowledge is not viewed as knowledge. It is dubbed as experience & is rarely given the status of knowledge.

About 30 years ago, when the idea of participatory research first began, we counter posed popular knowledge to mere expertise or theoretical knowledge. There were not many takers for this approach.

It was only in late 80s & early 90s when issues related to environment & health came about and people realised the power of practical knowledge of society on issues like types of tree species, methods of water harvesting, choice of cropping pattern which were not accepted earlier by experts of those disciplines.

In health care, even hard-core medical professionals acknowledged efficacy of hitherto grandmother recipes. Major pharmaceutical companies started patenting them.

Knowledge therefore is a combination of information & practical actionable approaches.

We believe one of the reasons ordinary people are disempowered is that experts have gained an upper hand by proclaiming superior knowledge.

In fact, even language of knowledge both in terms of discourse & in printed form is in English.

But lots of knowledge, historically has been in oral tradition. It has been a part of many cultures, and not just in India. This knowledge was not systematised or recorded and was transferred orally by one generation to another. For instance, if you look for substantial books on Indian music or dance forms, you will not find them. You may get photographic representations but theoretically sound books may not be available. But if you visit Gharanas ( centers of learning), you will find sound theories & principles being practiced unlike western music tradition where enough literature is available.

Today even a poor villager runs to get tablet or any injection miles away from his abode because appropriate cure, preventive health care, maintenance of healthy body which were practiced earlier are now being replaced by a curative medical profession. These kinds of tendencies in process of development & modernisation over last century have disempowered people. You can find exceptionally knowledgeable people who are illiterate & exceptionally ignorant folks who are PhDs.

We try to highlight it through our work. It doesn’t mean we promote illiteracy. We believe literacy skills are functional but they don’t make a person knowledgeable. Experience & application of skill in real life constitutes knowledge. We believe that in today’s world power & control is exercised more by manipulating knowledge, thinking & controlling people’s mind than by brute force. Brute force is applied only when you can’t convince people about your point of view. If rulers can convince common man that some are more capable to be rulers, a system of inequality & discrimination by controlling minds of people is easily perpetuated. It has been done with groups like caste categories & women. We have convinced women that there place is at home. Even if she has a PhD & goes out to teach, she comes back & cooks, cleans utensils & washes clothes. Though the reality is very different in India itself. In North East, labor put in by women for survival of family is far more than men.

PRIA enables people to value their own knowledge. Once you value your knowledge, you can speak out. When people speak out, any change in relation of power is possible.

Does this emphasis on local knowledge bring you in conflict with expert knowledge? How do you resolve it?
There are two kinds of conflicts. First is related to perspective. Experts tend to believe that they are objective, which is never so particularly in relation to ground realities. You always have a framework through which you gather data & analyze reality. Here perspective of professional researchers & local people may be very different.

Our first study on occupational hazards was at slate mining at Mansore, Madhya Pradesh. While experts, health professionals, labor researchers believed workers were ignorant, to our surprise most of the workers knew that they would die at age of 35-40 of some diseases. Experts argued if they knew it to be hazardous, they wouldn’t work. For workers, survival was the issue. They knew their parents, relatives died at young age because of mining activity. However, they had no option. They were relatively powerless to change that situation. Health professionals & labor inspectors recommend workers to be given extra milk to drink, which had no bearing on source of trouble. You can have five liters of milk daily but it doesn’t minimize risk of working in such conditions. However, experts were not ready to examine production process itself, which by its very nature could be hazardous.

Second conflict arises out of different data sets. A planner justifies any large project through cost benefit analysis. Cost is assessed in terms of displacement, compensation & actual project construction. During a dam construction at Northern Karnataka, we took same framework recommended by Planning Commission. However, we took people’s data. Data used by experts was available formally in records of forest department, revenue officials. While forest department data showed so many hectares of forest, human abode was not shown there. In reality thousands of families lived there. At another official record, compensation of an agricultural land was derived by multiplying a hectare with prescribed amount. But, on the land there were water resources, ponds, wells, and trees as well which were never accounted for, by officials. We plugged this data with formal one. It completely changed the cost benefit ratio.

In our experience, usually the second source of conflict is more readily resolved. When we confronted experts with people’s data, they didn’t have any answer & agreed with us.

However, the first conflict is not so easily resolvable because it arises from one’s worldview, which enables designing development schemes, policies & programmes.

India was the first country to introduce Family Planning in mid 50s. Even after fifty years, it has not produced desired results. The entire approach of family planning, at least during the first 20-30 years was based on experts’ dictum - birth rate is much higher than death rate. While death rate declines due to improved medical facilities, birth rate remains same. Preaching ignorant people to produce fewer kids was considered the only solution. However, no one analysed the reason why people produced kids. It could be desire of a boy, multiple hands doing multiple jobs or simply disinclination towards using condoms.

What has been PRIA’s approach towards such conflicts?
We encourage community leaders & organisers to access expert knowledge. Because of form and language of professional knowledge, accessing sometimes requires intermediation & PRIA plays that role.

At times, we bring experts face to face with local people. We also make available documents to local people in a form, which they can utilise.

In 1980's, we had worked on Displacement due to Development. It was not limited to just dams but issues like factories, mines urbanisation. We prepared very simplified version of Land Acquisition Act for displaced & encouraged them to use these legal provisions & debate with the government. At another instance, we also distributed a number of copies of ILO encyclopedia of occupational diseases to workers. They felt empowered & challenged the management.

However, there are various instances where such interfaces failed. Right now, we are struggling over question of urban planning & urban governance reforms. Professional experts have become sensitised for issues like rural development, health care, child development over the last twenty years. However, urban planners still have no interest in talking to people. They genuinely believe that they alone can plan the town. Four years ago, after Gujrat earthquake, some of the towns were flattened. Talk of inclusion of informal settlement began as reconstruction of towns started. Planners & architects were imported from around the world, as there was huge international funding. We bought satellite pictures of devastated towns & presented them to expert planners. These pictures clearly showed details of all houses, lanes, by lanes & emphasized on an inclusive planning. Instead of accepting our role, those planners dubbed our pictures as illegal.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has constituted Knowledge Commission last year. What suggestions would you like to give to the commission?
I once had an occasion to meet Mr Sam Pitroda much before he became the Chairman of Knowledge Commission. I made a suggestion, which I would repeat even today - that in our country with four thousand to five thousand years of human history, there is no aspect of human endevaour where we don’t have knowledge. However, we have not valued what we know, we blindly ape what others know. We have not systematised our knowledge. This knowledge should be properly documented.

Second, outside formal institution of knowledge like universities & colleges, there is lot of documented knowledge available with NGOs and the Private sector that should be brought into concept of knowledge society.

Third, we need to prepare road map of linking knowledge to concept of life long learning. It's very easy to proclaim that we want to become knowledge society. Knowledge society doesn't mean that 40% of GDP comes out of information related services. It indicates a society, which believes in learning throughout life. I once visited University for Elderly in China where one could join only after 65 years of age. All students were non elites, mostly the working class people & learnt superior arts & crafts. In China, painting & calligraphy tradition is similar to Brahminical tradition in India. Like Sanskrit was limited to Brahmins, knowledge of painting is confined to upper class. Here was an example, where working class people learnt an art after retirement, which they were prohibited during their life. This is a wonderful example of lifelong learning. It has immense economic value as well.

PRIA is amongst very few organisations to promote LSG (Local Self Government) in urban areas. How do you compare LSG in urban & rural areas?
There are few basic differences. Rural society has still by & large stable socio economic relationships. Urban societies are characterised by lack of relations, migrant population & atomised individuals while in rural areas there has been a longer tradition of doing things collectively, joint handling of fields, wells etc. Largely, urban areas are marked by commercial relationships; mutual help & collectively looking at common areas is absent here. There are very few development oriented NGOs in urban areas. They may have offices in urban areas but they primarily work in rural areas. Development work in urban areas is largely charity oriented like running Orphanages, Care Homes, Langar Society. Modern, contemporary developmental work aiming at mobilising community is rarely seen in urban areas.

Urbanisation in India is a recent phenomenon. There has been no serious policy on urbanisation. Most planners considered rural migration to urban areas as an aberration. They still carry wishful thinking, one day rural migrants would return to their lands. Instead of considering urban centers as legitimate part of society, bulk of thinking so far has been how to prevent migration.

Even development schemes like SJRY for rural areas are merely extended to urban areas. It is ignored that urban centers require different planning.

What changes are required then ?
Big part of rethink must begin. We must stop comparing rural & urban areas. Urban centers should not only be treated as places of growth but also as places where people live their lives.

Most of us, when we first shift to cities tend to have a feeling that one day they would return to their villages & towns. Urban centers should be treated as permanent ones as opposed to temporary places where one migrates for livelihood & goes back after earning money.

Our metropolitan centers are growing much faster than medium towns precisely because of better planning.

Latin American countries and East Asian countries (like Thailand, Malaysia) have very strong urban policy for decades. Like China & Brazil we should have certain urban centers for determined rural population so that instead of arriving in Delhi, a migrant from East Champaran has option to move towards three urban catchments areas in between Bihar & Delhi.

You once observed opaqueness of FCRA, where in a global world of integrating economies development NGOs are unnecessarily targeted by such legislations. IndianNGOs.com earlier spoke to Joint Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs over the issue & he pointed at how some NGOs are misusing foreign contributions. What accounts for this conflict between NGOs & government?
Well, both positions are tenable. I would also say there are thousands of unaccountable NGOs. What is opaque about it is that the system of registration of NGOs & system of reporting is 100 years old. It needs to be modernized like companies. 10 years ago, one needed to sign 22 MoUs for registering a company. It was then posted to only one office in Delhi and after 3 to 6 months, the government gave first letter of clearance. It encouraged corruption. Planning Commission, FICCI & CII collaborated to modernise Company registration system & registration was made on line.

Same system can be followed for NGOs. Some NGOs are registered at district level, some at state and some at Delhi. There is no comparability. Under FCRA, at least one third would be dead & non-existent NGOs. However, government needs to weed them out. Today government has no clue about non existent NGOs & then it talks about fake NGOs. Of course, if someone died long ago, he is bound to be fake. But, in reality it’s not fake, it’s dead & finished.

Secondly, FEMA model should be followed for NGOs. Under FERA, a person was considered guilty till proved innocent. This anomaly is removed through FEMA where one is considered innocent unless proven otherwise.

Unlike India, all major countries have modern ways for classifying non-profit organizations. You can't put Batra or an Apollo Hospital in same category with a small primary health center run by an NGO in village merely because both are registered as non profit organisations. Doon School can't be equated with a small literacy center for women in rural Orissa. If a school or college charges Rs 1 lakh fee, it need not be given tax rebate merely because it is registered as an NGO. Today, small SHGs, Ramlila Societies, Pooja Committees, Sri Sri Ravishankar & PRIA all are under same group. Largest recipient of foreign contributions are religious societies. Different NGOs should be classified differently to ensure distinct treatment.

If industries can be classified as small scale, medium & big then why can’t NGOs be classified according to size.

What is the PRIA model of governance ? What sets apart PRIA from other NGOs ?
PRIA's model comprises of one basic principle of promoting participation & professionalism in democratising governance, be it PRIA's or a panchayat's governance. Unfortunately, participation in many quarters is seen as soft, incompetent participation without knowledge & expertise. Participation is wrongly conceived as governance with chaos. We believe both participation & competence can go hand in hand. Promoting participation is meaningless if you can't deliver. Fifty people may participate in a Gram Sabha meeting but if Panchayat Secretary or Sarpanch are not competent to deliver, then the participation withers away.

However, we need to raise the level of existing competence in many of our institutions not just NGOs. We created some of the pioneering institutions but owing to mismanagement we have become a financial graveyard.

It recently came out that AIFACS had its first audit carried out in twenty years. Till three years ago public sector banks didn’t consider their books of account every year. CAG reports are full of such incidences of incompetent & unprofessional behaviour. It reflects feudal mindset amongst institutions. Very few private companies observe prudential norms. Reliance show of last year exposed irregularities in the richest company of country. They call themselves largest & most credible company of India & yet secretly transfer shares within.

Looking back at 25 eventful years of PRIA, what do you consider as milestones of this journey ?
Incidentally, first of such milestone occurred by sheer coincidence. In Apr - May 1986, a news hushed around about a proposed legislation to classify genuine & non genuine NGOs. I firmly believed about independence of voluntary sector. There may be a mandatory registration, filing of returns but their operation & thinking should be independent. We campaigned against this legislation & I visited 25 odd places in India. Popularly known as battle for Code of Conduct, it was the first incidence when NGOs of entire India assembled in Delhi to discuss their autonomy. VANI evolved later out of this mobilisation.

Second was around 1991 when few persons pointed, while PRIA’s support for NGOs is significant, it should be particularised according to regional needs & regional support branches should be established. Between 1991 & 1994 we entered into a crucial partnership with various NGOs in 7-8 states, which enhanced our support base.

Third, during 1999-2001 when PRIA took cause of governance. We organized a convention in Bhopal in 1999 on Participation, Citizenship & Governance.

Though today PRIA is vastly recognised & has been part of various international committees & forums, yet I consider the above events as milestones. They gave direction to our work & altered course of future.

- Ashutosh Bhardwaj

Rajesh Tandon, President PRIA (Participatory Research In Asia)

To term Participatory Research In Asia a pioneering institution is using a cliché to denote an avant garde. Ahead of the times because PRIA championed cause of Democratic Governance & Civil Society Building much before they gained recognition. Local Self-governance, Electoral reforms, Rural development, environmental & occupational health are amongst few areas it undertook & successfully brought them in dominant discourse. Operating through its vast network spread over 12 states, 26 districts & over 25000 Panchayats PRIA completes 25 years in Feb 2007.

To share PRIA’s experience over its journey, IndianNGOs.com spoke to Dr Rajesh Tandon, President & co-founder PRIA. An extremely affable person, he occasionally refers himself to Kanpuria, perhaps in a lighter mood, repeatedly indicating his Kanpur origin. A postmodern semiotic would link this linguistic sign to his being nostalgic about his roots, a possible longing to return to his pastures. Incidentally, he also passionately advocates urban centers to be considered as permanent dwellings & not mere transit places for migrants in search of job & ‘relevance’.

Search for relevance took him to unchartered territories. After completing Electronic Engineering from Kanpur IIT where he was two years junior to late Anil Agarwal, founder of CSE, Dr Tandon obtained a Gold Medal at IIM Calcutta.

During his IIT days, when he was the General Secretary of Student’s Union, he opposed then US ambassador as a protest against 1971 Indo Pak war. A major event in IIT history as US was & till today is considered to be the most favored destination of IITians.

He went to Cleveland for PhD in Organizational Science, a marked departure from hitherto Physical Science subjects. Commenting on transition from science background to non profit sector, he points at hereditary & circumstantial factors shaping one’s destiny.

During his PhD work in USA, back home, Indira Gandhi declared emergency. Cutting short his programme, he returned to India & moved between various jobs, cities & towns before establishing PRIA at Delhi.

Note from Sanjay Bapat
Founder, IndianNGOs.com
The interview with Dr Rajesh Tandon is the first of a new series of over 100 Interviews IndianNGOs.com plans to take from June 2006 to March 2007 to enhance the credibility of the NGO Sector.

These 100 personalities to us at IndianNGOs.com, would be parallels of the Tata's and Birla's and Infosys's and Wipro's of the Social Sector.

The organisations these people have founded or these people represent are key to India's development.

Please feel free to print this interview in any form, with just a request to give the link, so that even if you do not take the entire interview, your visitors can know Dr Tandon's views and the profile of the organisation he represents.
http://www.indianngos.com/interviews/
rajeshtandon.htm

New Delhi , June 1st, 2006