A seed was sown by a photograph: I was born on February 10, 1960 in a society where an individual is known by the family of origin. To know the identity of a person he or she would at the very first instance be asked ‘what is your father’s name?’ I am from a family of ten members including my father, mother, elder brother and his wife and sons, my younger brother, my wife and my son and I. I work in the Philippines. My wife and my son live with me. For reasons of work or other reason I may move from place to place, but the permanent address is called Bap Dadar Vita[1]. I am also a member of the Baishmya[2] caste as institutionalized in the ancient caste system of Hinduism. I am a Bangladeshi national by birth and state and by ethnicity, I am a Bangali. My first name ‘Shayamal’ means the colour of nature – a mix of deep green and yellow.
My childhood was pleasant and we children, used to play in the courtyard enjoying the earth, water, trees and flowers. Every night before I fell asleep I loved to listen to my mother tell metaphorical stories, stories of personalities, and children’s poems by Rabindra Nath Tagore. Before I began school, my mother told me that I have to respect my teachers. She often taught me that ‘Swarswathi[3] never grants education to a person who does not respect and obey his/her teachers’.
Nineteen sixty-six was the first year of my schooling. After some years, when I was promoted to class six, the head master took me to his office and showed me a photograph hanging on the wall and asked ‘do you know who this is?’ The photograph was that of my grandfather who graduated from Calcutta (now named Kolkata, capital of State of West Bengal in India) University in the year 1912 – a time when very few people even completed high school. My grandfather came back to the village, founded a school, and served as the volunteer head master for a period of 40 years. His photograph is kept in the school and every year a day is observed in his memory. I could feel that my teachers and class-mates gave me extra love and care because I was a grandson of the founder of the school. I started to feel proud of my grandfather. The positive image of my grandfather expressed through my teachers and villagers implanted in me the seeds of altruism that one should always do good work for others in the village.
First inspiration to be a change worker: The year 1971 is historic for every Bangladeshi. It was the year that Bangladesh emerged as a newly independent nation following a nine-month war of liberation against Pakistan. After the war, the new country faced a severe famine. After completing my Secondary School Certificate examination in 1975, I had two months of vacation whilst waiting for the result. Some dilapidated classrooms of the old building of our village school were in danger of collapse. The school management committee tried its best to get government assistance but other priorities of post-war rehabilitation meant that it was unsuccessful. The head master convened a student’s-guardians meeting and appealed for help to repair the school building. In a separate meeting with students who had recently completed the secondary school certificate (SSC) , our former head master told us ‘all of you have two months of vacation now. You studied at this school. I ask you to go from door to door and collect paddy, jute, whatever people can donate.’ Even today I recall the face and eyes of my head master, Mr. Monotos Kumar Maytra; the way he looked at me and said ‘Shayamal you must go to every house, older people still remember your grandfather and will donate.’
I was 16; jolly but yet shy, I was willing to go but at the same time was worried. It took me two days to allay my fears and to strengthen my resolve. Finally, my student friends and I started going from door to door collecting agricultural produce. At first it was a small group, however the group became larger and larger and finally about 40 friends continued the collection drive for 20 days. We got unbelievable responses from our own and neighbouring villages. The drive eventually turned into a big mobilization. We sold the collected produce worth Taka 33,000[4].
School teachers, traditional social workers and village leaders were all praises for my friends and me. The campaign did not stop at successful crop collection. It inspired local community leaders, ex-students of our school (who by then had become business persons, university teachers, and government officers) to come together and to generate further thoughts and actions. School teachers, local community leaders, ex-students, and youths thought of using the proceeds from the sale of crops for generating additional money. We organized a village fair in the school grounds and folk theatre-Jatra[5] for seven days. The collection from the shops at the fair and sale of tickets for the folk theatre amounted to Taka 300,000. Since 1975 the fair has become a regular event, a virtual festival, and a source of income for our school. This success was accomplished because of the active cooperation and participation of the people. This was a great inspiration and learning for my friends and I. We learnt that even in a famine, if people cooperate with each other for a common cause, problems can be solved without being dependent on outsider help.
Engagement with such activities became something of an addiction. Success fired my friends and I to undertake more activities of similar nature. We collected bamboo for construction of a bamboo bridge over a small canal; arranged subscription to buy a television for our sporting club; collected donation to help a poor father pay dowry for his daughter’s marriage and many other activities. The more the success, more the laurels and further we wanted to go. Since then, for me there was no turning back. I want to continue being involved in working for the common good.
Joining with party political activities: I spend the period of 1977- 1984 studying first at college and then at the university. I remained actively involved in traditional social work in our village. During the vacations I stayed in my village and worked with friends. Staying in my own village has a kind of attraction and affection for me. In my village I felt cared for and was loved by everyone. When I was a university student, people from my village often visited me, particularly when they accompanied the very sick to the hospitals in the city. They sought my help in getting hospital admission and for arranging accommodation. Whilst helping poor people from my village it was common to see government officers and medical doctors, instead of cooperating and supporting people, abusing their power and authority especially when people are vulnerable. Such injustice was common in every corner of our society. It made me wonder whether there is any country in the world where human beings have honour and justice.
In the year 1978 as a freshman at the university, I came in contact with the members of the ‘communist party of Bangladesh’ and listened to them talking on establishing socialism. I was inspired to join the communist party, wishing to change the unjust social structure and establish socialism. Besides working with the student branch of the communist party in the university, I also worked with the landless agricultural labourers in our own district. The party wanted to mobilize the landless agricultural labourers against the landed gentry. I thought this was a noble work to bring justice to poor. In the year 1979 I was able to mobilize the landless agricultural labourers in my locality to a movement for the ‘payment of minimum wage rate’ (as per government law) equivalent to 3 kilograms of rice per day. The achievement of this movement was short lived. It lasted only for a month because the supply of the landless agricultural labourer outstripped the demand by three to one. My political views and activities made me a friend of the landless but also an enemy of the rural landed gentry who saw me as a trouble-maker.
The failure of the minimum wage movement did not deter me. Geographically my village, together with many others, is located in the Padma[6] river belt. Due to its geographical location, land erosion and land formation due to siltation is a common phenomenon. Government land-laws mandate that newly emergent land be distributed among the landless poor but this rarely happens. The landless poor seldom, if ever, get access to these lands or chars as they are locally called. The rural landed gentry, in connivance with government officers, occupy and control the land using the names of supposed landless relations as applicants and owners. In 1979 a huge piece of alluvial land surfaced in the river-bed of Padma. I, and other party colleagues, decided to organize a landless labourers’ movement to occupy this land and use it for the wellbeing of the landless. The failure of the wage movement, we thought, was the result of an imbalance between the demand and supply of labour. But this time - since the land would go to the landless families - it was destined to succeed. We started to organize the movement.
It took us about a year and a half to mobilize the landless people around the issue. In the middle of 1981 thousands of landless agricultural labourers got that land and declared ‘from now on this land belongs to us’. Following government rules and procedures, about 1500 landless households filed applications with the land office. Government officers from the district land office, however, did not cooperate with the applicants. To deal with the non-cooperation of the government officers, we organized a convention of landless people and invited the district commissioner to listen to their voices. About 20,000 landless people got together and demanded of the district commissioner legal ownership for the applicants.
Emergence of thinking about how to eliminate greed: The ‘land movement’ enjoyed a certain level of success. However, by 1982 financial constraints forced most of the land recipients to give up cultivation. Around 100 leaders of the landless movement started to grab land for their own, personal benefit. Eventually the one time leaders of the landless movement grabbed the land – creating a new elite within the landless. I was flabbergasted – how could the one-time leaders subsequently turn into exploiters. I wondered why it is that people change, I wondered about ways of building and sustaining leaders who will not seek personal benefit but rather, who will serve the interests of people in need.
In the communist party I learned a simplistic construction of relationships – as being between landless and the landed. From this leadership turn around, I realized that relationships are not so simple and singular. People, be they landless, landed gentry or landless leaders, do not fit into a single exclusive class such as 'landless'. Rather, people maintain multiple and different kinds of relationships with different persons at different times in relation to different issues. Further, these multiple relationships are dynamic. This was very different from what I had learned in the Communist party and its talk of capital and labour and simple, fixed relations between the two. In this context, I could not understand how so many landless leaders could switch from what I thought was commitment to the landless and to social change - to personal greed. Indeed, I was left with no explanation.
When I compared the failures of the landless movement with the successes of our village school efforts in 1975 I began to think about what makes one approach to community development better than another. Is it better to approach community development the way we did in the case of our school - where every villager contributed despite imminent starvation - or to engage in conflict in the ways we tried whilst building the landless movement?’ Being involved in both taught me that, in the life of a community, cooperation and conflict are two sides of the same coin and are inseparable. My continuing political activity brought me in contact with really dedicated political workers who sacrificed their time and effort for the wellbeing of the poor. However, the activities of the communist party started to frustrate me. I was not convinced of the value of a conflict strategy that did not involve locals in decision-making or attempt to facilitate their learning.
Getting to know about an NGO, coming back to my village and starting self-help: On March 11, 1982, a violent conflict occurred between the student branch of the Islamic fundamentalist party (Islamic Chatra Shibir) and other student organizations at the University of Rajshshi. I was the vice president of the Student Union. Four supporters of Chatra Shibir were killed in the conflict. On 24th March 1982, the chief of the Bangladesh army, Hussain Md. Ershad, seized state power and declared himself President. He then imposed martial law and issued a warrant for the arrest of fourteen student leaders of – myself included. We went into hiding and, after 11 months, a movement by political parties resulted in a fortunate and an unconditional withdrawal of the arrest warrant. My life in hiding brought me close to an international NGO, the United Towns Organizations – a Dutch NGO working in the Kushtia district of Bangladesh. For my own safety and in order to avoid the police, I took shelter in the NGO offices. During the day I was unable to go out but in the evening I sometimes accompanied NGO field staff to the villages and saw how they conducted meetings of self-help groups. I observed that self-help groups of landless men and women were mobilizing their savings as a collective fund for solving immediate problems. In addition, regular discussion sessions raised villagers’ consciousness about ways of changing their unjust social situation. This way of helping people appealed to me as it allowed people to think in their own way. I decided to leave my political party and to try a different approach to community development in my own village.
In 1984, on completion of my Master’s degree at the University of Rajshahi-Bangladesh, I returned to my village and formed the Voluntary Organization for Rural Development (VORD). I was able to organize some educated youths who were willing to work with me to form an organization of villagers and to facilitate them to undertake self-help development activities. They selected me as the chairman of the executive board of the organization. We opted for a cooperative approach supported by discussions on human values and cooperation instead of one based on class conflict.
VORD started to work with a cluster of 10 villages – including my own. In each we selected one man and one woman as volunteer self-help facilitators. In my own village we took an abandoned house as an office and used an old table and five chairs which someone donated. Our approach was to form a village development committee (VDC) in each village. There were no set rules about who should join a village development committee - membership was open to all who were willing to give time to development activities. In each of the villages we were able to form a village development committee (VDC) of 20 to 30 members who were students, traditional social workers and school teachers. We had no formal or written agenda for development; nor did we work within uniform guidelines. We facilitated each village development committee (VDC) to prepare a yearly action plan and to implement village development activities based on the principle of ‘doing what we can do for the benefit of our village community’. One village thought of organizing poor men and women into savings groups another of establishing a night literacy centre for the illiterate adults, while others thought of planting papaya trees or of health education. Regular meetings (mostly monthly) of the village development committees took the form of simple reviews of development activities. By 1987 this process enlarged the circle of community participation in each of the villages.
Our self-help activity was making good progress when we began to face problems. The demands on the village facilitators’ began to mount but guardians were reluctant to allow their wards to spend time on voluntary work that did not contribute to the family income. Furthermore, by this time we felt the need for systematic record keeping and monitoring. This required regular meetings of volunteers, stationery, bicycles for transport and so on - but we did not have enough money.
When so-called professionalism and projects expanded - but not self-help: By 1987 it was difficult to run our organization only by collecting local subscriptions. None of us (youth friends) had an income to provide monetary support. Of all my friends, only I had a Masters degree. Friends suggested that I get a job and provide financial support from my income. I got a job as assistant program officer for training with the Association of Development Agencies in Bangladesh (ADAB) – a national networking body of NGOs. I started my first formal job on July 1, 1987 at a monthly salary of 3000 Taka (at that time, equivalent to 100 US $). My work place was Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh) and since I had two day weekend I could easily hop on a bus and reach my village in about five hours. Joining Association of Development Agencies in Bangladesh widened my understanding of ways to build a development organization (as a formal NGO) and to gain funds from donor agencies. I communicated this to my friends in the village so that they could formalise Voluntary Organisation for Rural Development (VORD) as a nongovernmental organization (NGO); VORD was registered with the department of social services in 1987. For the next 9 years (1987-95) I continued as the Chair of its executive board, participated as a volunteer, and performed my job with Association of Development Agencies in Bangladesh (ADAB) in Dhaka. From 1987 to 1991, Voluntary Organisation for Rural Development (VORD) continued to operate as a voluntary organization without any funding support from any external donor agency.
In 1990, the Swiss Red Cross sponsored a group of Swiss journalists to visit development agencies and their programs in Bangladesh. They visited Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, and other national scale development programmes supported by Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC). The journalists expressed their interest in visiting a community-based, voluntary program. The program officer of Swiss Red Cross knew about Voluntary Organisation for Rural Development (VORD) and its voluntary self-help activities and so he got in touch with me. The journalists went to our village and visited various voluntary activities. They were impressed to see that we were doing good work in 20 villages without any external funding. After their visit they published an article in Switzerland titled ‘The Youth the Hope of Bangladesh’, illustrated with several photographs of our work. In 1991, a team of high officials including the head of international cooperation of Swiss Red Cross visited Voluntary Organisation for Rural Development (VORD) and expressed their willingness to pilot a small program with VORD. During the 1992-1994 periods, with funding from Swiss Red Cross, VORD implemented a pilot project entitled ‘Self-Mobilized Community Health Improvement’. Financial support from the Swiss Red Cross to VORD continued till 2002.
In 1994, encouraged by the outcome of its partnership with VORD and other partner nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), the Swiss Red Cross decided to try a similar approach with other NGOs in Bangladesh. They provided funding and technical support to 20 local NGOs to implement projects of similar nature. My leadership and activities with Voluntary Organisation for Rural Development (VORD) drew their attention to me. They proposed that I join them to develop a Red Cross-mandated NGO in Bangladesh and to provide technical support to about 20 partner NGOs. Happily, I accepted the proposal. In January to July of 1995 I worked with the Swiss Red Cross delegate in Bangladesh to institute the ‘Development Association for Self-Reliance, Communication and Health (DASCOH). On August 1st, I left Association of Development agencies in Bangladesh (ADAB) and joined DASCOH where I worked as the national chief, a position next to the delegate of Swiss Red Cross. I had the full-time use of an official jeep and an attractive salary. I was so happy that, after a decade, the self-help approach we began in our village would be replicated by many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with Swiss Red Cross funding.
From 1994 to 1999 the Swiss Red Cross, in partnership with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), provided financial support to about 30 NGOs - including VORD - to replicate the Village Development Committee model of self-help. Despite provision of capacity-building training for VDCs and partner NGOs, the formers' dependency on the latter seemed to increase. My colleagues and I thought that we must enhance staff skills in participatory methodology - so we provided more training. We also gave increasing attention to augmenting their skills in Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) - using tools such as participatory planning and monitoring, and techniques of conflict resolution. Consultants were hired to help all partner NGOs prepare strategic plans to achieve sustainable village development committees and to foster community participation and cooperation.
Despite all our efforts, when the funding ceased, most village development committees became inactive. In our endeavour to prepare a good strategy for sustainability we collected cases of many other organizations that had tried to establish self-reliant people’s organizations and processes – only to find that they had similar experiences. This increased my frustration. I thought perhaps we had failed to build self-help attitudes such that, after phasing out our involvement, people did not care about the process continuing. Sometimes I thought that I did not have the answer and felt lost.
Emergence of interaction process of reconstruction
An opportunity to listen and my eagerness to learn Appreciative Inquiry: In 1999 I got an opportunity to do a postgraduate diploma and thereafter a Masters degree under the 'global partnership program' run by the School for International Training (SIT) in Vermont, USA and by Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in Bangladesh. I thought of conducting a study with village development committee members – to explore their ideas about promoting self-reliant people’s organizations – ones that would not become psychologically dependent on external facilitating organizations. My Master’s research topic was called ‘promoting self-reliant community organizations at the village level: Perceptions of VDC members and field-level facilitators’.
This study, together with many others, taught me two important things. First, people are dependent on each other e.g., for meeting material needs - no one can be fully self-reliant. Thus, the promotion of self-help is basically the promotion of a self-reliant psychology in a community – one in which a community gets on with things without waiting for external support. Second, I learned that to start with a focus on problems may not be a good way to promote self-reliance. From the many focus group discussions I had with VDC members, the following remarks are illustrative[7]:
“Our village development committee (VDC) started work to improve the village water and sanitation situation. During last two years we have gained knowledge and skills in implementing water sanitation activities. But now many villagers are asking for income generation activities and for education for children - for which we do not have good knowledge and skills. As days go by, more and more new demands come in to the village development committee. We solve one problem and then another comes. Doing work with the people is not easy. The person who is supportive today may not support the next day. I think it will not stop and always we have to learn new things.”
Abdul Hamid, Member Paikartala village development committee, Mohipur Nawabganj
And Ms. Roksana Begum, a member of Dharmahata village development committee observed:
“When you come then you ask us what our problems are. We have so many problems; when we see them all we become afraid. We see that we have no capacity to solve them - so we want you to help us. We cannot start what we don’t have. We started our village development committee in a small way. Over a period of time with your help we grew like the Banana tree. Now you are not here so the tree fell down. However big it is, no-one can make a pillar of room from the banana tree. But one can do so even if it is a small [8] Shal tree. Self-reliant village development committee needs seeds that can grow a strong tree like the Shal.”
A slightly different point was made by Mokles Uddin, a member of the Milik Gowra Village Development Committee:
“Irrespective of rich and poor if all people of this village are united and free from conflict then to make a village development committee self-reliant it is not a big matter.”
On completion of my master’s presentation and before my departure from School for International Training (SIT) USA, I shared an uneasy feeling with Jeff Unsicker, the secretary of the global partnership programme and the dean of SIT. I told him that whilst working for my Master’s degree I realized and strongly felt that psychological dimensions rarely get attention in theories and practices of development. Despite the use of participatory methods, the whole approach to planning and managing development creates a psychological and material dependency of the community that eventually results in the creation of a top-down structure both at local and global levels. For real development we need to challenge this approach and to investigate whether it is possible to apply a prospect-centred approach as opposed to a problem-centred.
Dr. Unsicker suggested that I study appreciative inquiry (AI). I bought and read a book on the subject. I could see that appreciative inquiry is a prospects-oriented approach to development and gives better attention to psychological aspects. However, I was also sceptical. First, I wondered how appreciative inquiry could work in communities like my village where human life is a struggle to meet daily needs. Should one ignore those problems and issues of daily life when appreciative inquiry does not want to talk of problems? And how will AI's positive orientation cope with individualism and greed? Furthermore, funding agencies impose their already-set priorities on communities - how can AI work with this?
This said, I thought that I should learn about an approach that tries to ensure the inclusion of material, relational and psychological dimensions of community development. I believed there must be ways to change human attitude that cares for collective well being but had no idea about ‘how’. Although I was gloomy I thought it is worth trying to use AI with a community struggling for daily existence - to learn how it can work to create a sustainable self-help people’s organization – one that does not become dependent on external agency.
On completion of my study in May 2001, I returned to my job. For the next six months, I tried to find an organization using appreciative inquiry in Bangladesh or in India, so that I could go to see and learn more; I failed. Further, I was looking for training courses or an academic program in India or in Nepal in which I could afford to participate but I did not find any. Always I was thinking about how to learn more about appreciative inquiry. In January 2002, I joined the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR)-Philippines. I did so because I knew this organization pioneered training and research on participatory approaches to development. Since I first started as change worker the image of IIRR and its credo[9] led me to think that this is the organization to which I should go. Now I would have the opportunity to learn AI.
Getting into the Taos-Tilburg PhD program: After joining IIRR-Philippines, the year 2002 passed quickly. It was my first job in a foreign country and with colleagues from different nationalities and different cultures. I continued looking for an opportunity to study AI. One day I found the Taos-Tilburg PhD program. In middle of 2003 I wrote a concept paper for my PhD study and sent it to Professor Kenneth Gergen - the Chairperson of Taos Institute. I knew this name from reading about AI where I learnt that AI is grounded in a ‘social constructionist meta theory’ - with which Kenneth Gergen is strongly associated. I am a grassroots development practitioner and not very learned. Perhaps my concept paper based on my grassroots experience would not seem very interesting to an eminent academic. Nonetheless I did not lose hope of getting a positive response. On October 26, 2003 I received an email from professor Keneth Gergen in which he wrote,
Dear Mr. Saha, Thank you very much for sending on all the materials relevant to entering the PhD program. Your work is indeed impressive, even inspiring, and I would like to continue the dialogue with you regarding possible participation in the program.
This response was a great inspiration for me. I decided that, if accepted for the PhD program, I would endure whatever struggle (mostly financial) I might face. I was accepted as a PhD student and started in September 2004.
Initially I thought I would go back to my own country and village to do my research. I discussed this intention with my supervisor at IIRR - Dr. Scott Killough (Director of IIRR-Asia). After going through my research plan, my supervisor thought that my proposed research (which was interventionist) would be beneficial for IIRR’s program development and learning about AI. With this understanding, he encouraged me to conduct my study in two villages in the Philippines. IIRR could then base its future programs on the results. Considering my financial situation and the hardship of shifting and resettling my family, I thought that it made sense to continue in Philippines. With the help of my IIRR colleagues, and the two villages in Philippines, I was able to conduct this research that joins inquiry and intervention.
Doing, learning, rethinking, and adjusting: an ongoing journey to make and remake self-with others: Writing this now, many faces and facts are alive and with me. The face of my mother; a picture of one of my grand fathers; the memory of collecting donations together with my village friends; friends in traditional social work in our village; joining party-political activities and comrades; working with many friends in establishing a small local NGO in our own village; colleagues in organizations for which I once worked; people engaged in my Master degree study. Together they generated the question ‘is there a better way of doing things?’ Jeff Unsicker; the teacher from SIT from whom I first knew those words ‘appreciative inquiry’ and who inspired me to do this higher study; Professor Kenneth J. Gergen, from whom I got the inspiration and the suggestion to study ‘social construction’ (words which I never heard before); my present colleagues and community of this research. Dian Marie Hosking – my adviser of this PhD research –added another two words ‘relational construction’. When first time I went Netherlands and worked with my adviser in writing this thesis then the Taos Institute awarded me 1000 US $ which enabled me to buy the air ticket. However, till yet I had monetary crisis to buy food and pay for my accommodation in Netherlands. My adviser Dian Marie Hosking provided me accommodation in her house in Husden village, lunch and dinner cooked by her, and showed me places taking me in her car; simply cannot be seen as a teacher-student relationship. Knowing the financial situation my another adviser John B. Rijsman collected financial assistance of 3000 Euro from a Dutch company and made it easy for me to publish this thesis and travel another time in Netherlands while defending this thesis. My IIRR colleague Sammy Operio worked with me when I was working with the barangay community. Another colleague Philip Penaflor read my chapters as reader and made comments to help me. Md. Haroon –Ur- Rashid, one of my well wishers who voluntarily gave me input in correcting my English while writing this thesis. My wife and son allowed me to cut part of my time which I had to give them.
With all these participants I feel I cannot claim that it is me, making myself, telling 'my' story. ‘My story is not mine at all’ but rather, is constructed and reconstructed in relationships with many others. Thinking back, at the age of 16 I did not think of going from house to house with friends to collect donations for our village school - but the situation made it happen. I had no idea that this story, constructed so many years ago, would continue its journey in collaboration with so many other stories . Every day and every moment we make and remake ourselves and our thoughts in connection with others. In this story of myself construction and reconstruction I could reflect on this ongoing journey of self-changing and my contributions to changing others as they have changed me.
I constantly renewed my perspective. Now I no longer consider the individual as a ‘container of mind’. Instead, I have come to see this as the view of an ‘entitative epistemology’ that attempts to shape individual minds and fuels individualism. I (re)learnt that ‘many selves’ are made and remade in ongoing processes of multiple interactions and relationships (and realized that my self-story fits well with this view). Therefore, achieving social change is a process of constructing relational processes. Now I think of interactions and relational process in the community as my unit of analysis and action - for development - and social change. Further, I see that methods for facilitating development and social change are not freestanding but are better seen as co-genetic and co-constructive.
I believe that development research /training/consultancy should reflects a very particular value for ‘going on’ together in multi-voiced, different but equal relations that create and re-create ‘power to than power over ’
[1] Bap means father and Dadar mean grandfather Vita means the homestead they constructed. In Bengal, cultural identity of a person is deeply rooted with this sense of permanency of settlement.
[2]The caste system of Hinduism classified all Hindus into four classes as Brahmin, Khatriya, Baishmya and Shudra. The Baishmyas were responsible for trading. Within Baishmya, Saha is a particular segment for controlling kinship networks within it.
[3] Swarsathi is the goddess of education according to Bengali Hindu mythology
[4] Taka is the currency of Bangladesh; in 1975 One Dollar was equivalent to Taka 15.00
[5] Jatra is a brand of popular plays with characters and plots. Acts and scenes to the accompaniment of songs, sung in folk tunes, are masterfully crafted and presented to rural people in a simple yet gorgeous manner. The traveling Jatra groups of Bengal perform under the open sky. They are essentially in the form of an opera with definite characteristics. Jatra is an integral part of folk life. The fee for each show varies between Taka 5000/-and Taka.30,000/- per day. The average audience strength per performance could be anything between 5000 and 20,000 people depending upon the play and the reputation of the company.
[6] Ganges is called Padma in Bangladesh
[7] I made notes of things people said as the meetings went along.
[8] ‘Shal’ is called by the local people, a tree of good quality timber
[9] IIRR Credo: Go the people, Live among them, Learn from them, Plan with them, Start with what they know, Build on what they have, Teach by showing-learn by doing , Not a showcase but a pattern, Not to conform but to transform, not odds and ends but a system, Not piecemeal but integrated approach, Not relief but realize.
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