Why grassroots development workers are the real heroes
There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets credit - Robert Woodruff, Coca Cola CEO, 1926-1954
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has provided a new template for India’s development agenda. His New Year's Eve address was redolent with phrases that had a singular message - an India free from corruption and an India where economic equality will be the fundamental mantra.
India spends more on programmes for the poor than most developing countries, but it has failed to eradicate poverty because of widespread corruption and faulty government administration. To use development jargon, India is not getting the "bang for the rupee". This apparent failure has haunted social scientists and policymakers, making poverty seem all the more intractable.
A major flaw in our development paradigm is that the focus is more on physical resources and less on human resources .We seem to discount the human factor in all our programmes. Behind the gleaming images of icons of successful development crusades is the untold saga of the sacrifice of the field staff who hold the fort as brave grassroots warriors.
Development work is dirty, you have to soil your hands, you have to cope with vile at the lowest dregs of some of the societies in which you have to pursue the work. Business schools don’t teach you how to fight goons; risk mitigation strategies like sophisticated metrics and business algorithms can’t hold water in the face of the mad frenzy of populist politicians; technological gadgets can’t speak the language of humanism.
We should really applaud and honour ordinary men and women, who have nobody to back them, yet are working doggedly to keep projects rolling. Nobody can fathom the immense mental and physical suffering they and their families undergo. I doubt whether outsiders like us, protected by passport, police and the state, can be justified in goading others to risk their livelihoods, their families’ well-being, or their lives.
To take risks for oneself is one thing. To encourage others to do so is quite another. As Adlai Stevenson has commented so pithily: “It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
Even more, for any outsider to encourage vulnerable poor people to take risks raises ethical questions, especially when it is they, and not the outsider, who will pay the price of failure. A very honest and painstaking reflection is demanded of all so-called social interventions touted as serving the bottom of the pyramid population.
New agricultural practices being propagated with inducements and promises raise several ethical questions. Too much has been talked about of the wealth at the bottom of the pyramid, as if it is a cash cow to be milked at will or they are so many low-hanging ripened fruits waiting to be plucked. The peasants might have a keener understanding of development and its implications than the economists sitting in the rarefied atmosphere of Yojana Bhavan.
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| Social change flows from individual actions. (Photo: India Today) |
It is this distance that has grown between the planners and the people in the rural matrix that has plagued the rural financial system. Too much dependence on data and much less direct engagement with the poor has been the major cause of failure for most state mandated development programmes.
Those brave and committed development workers may feel that their position is hopeless, that there is nothing they can do. The "system" is too strong for them. Perhaps the best antidote to this despair is to study the examples and lives of those who have fought against the odds and succeeded.
In every country there are some courageous people - political and religious leaders, civil servants, workers in voluntary agencies, academics, scientists, and others - who have refused to give in, who have stuck by their principles and whose lives shine as examples to others of what can be done. For those who side with the poor, too, there may be unexpected floods of support.
But not all can expect recognition or become folk-heroes. For most of those who put the last first, the satisfaction and rewards are not fame, but in knowing that they have done what was right, and that things are, however slightly, better than they would have been.
Their small deeds may not command attention; but in merit, they may equal or exceed the greater and more conspicuous actions of those with more freedom and power.
For the test is what people do. Social change flows from individual actions. Small gains well consolidated as part of a sequence can mean more than big gains which are unstable and short-lived. By changing what they do, people move societies in new directions and themselves change.
Big simple solutions are tempting but full of risks. For most outsiders, most of the time, the soundest and best way forward is through innumerable small steps; they could be just nudges and tiny pushes. Slower and smaller steps also help build people’s adaptability to changes. We should look for small innovations, not just blockbusters.
Several development successes have occurred in less than optimal settings often under appalling conditions of weak governance, widespread corruption, minimal infrastructure, deep-rooted social divisions and poorly functioning judicial system.
In each case, creative individuals saw possibilities where others saw hopelessness. They imagined a way forward that took into account local realities and built on local strengths; they were willing to experiment and ignore the skeptics, until the skeptics became supporters and often partners working to bring about change on a larger scale.
There are managers who have shown personal courage and ingenuity in creating safe spaces in which they can pursue development work. Their reward is not early promotion or early transfer. Their families stay far away in towns where the faculties for education and healthcare are at least satisfactory. Their transfer is ruled out because there are no replacements to relieve them.
Before I took up a full time career in development banking I worked as a journalist focusing on the development sector. I wrote extensively in both the national and international press and travelled externally in the remote hinterland. This experience provided me a first-hand idea of rural problems and motivated me to become part of the development revolution.
As a journalist I could never visualise the hazards of a career in villages. All along I had been protected with an important identity card which provided me ease of access to even the most powerful bureaucrats. It gave me much needed security and protection from local leaders.
A village is served in too many conflicting ideologies and your city breeding doesn’t adequately weaponise you to deal with the crude and rustic manoeuvres of local leaders. In the heady world of policy and investment conferences, it is easy for policymakers to forget the incredible tenacity and endurance demanded of grassroots development workers.
Much and warranted attention is paid to the lives of recipients of aid and benefits of social progammes - their household lives, saving habits, gender relations, etc. It’s held that the key to measuring the effectiveness of aid is contained in such details.
Rarely, however, is the lens turned on the lives of development workers themselves: how workers’ moral beliefs interlink and conflict with their initial motivations, how they relate to aid beneficiaries, their local NGO counterparts, and other staff, the effect of transient lifestyles and insider language, and the security and family issues that come with choosing such a career.
Personal courage and values count. Whatever refined city values we hold so dear, they are tested in this field. Peaceful coexistence with political agents remains an ongoing challenge.
Senior bureaucrats are smart and may leave little paper trail behind to provide clues to their motives. Junior officials are not intelligent enough and their naivety also imposes severe handicaps on them. They are also under direct fire as they serve as the primary interface of the administration.
The system gives no protection to the sincere and honest among them. A bureaucrat once told me that if he cleared my file immediately, he might face a vigilance inquiry as it will be perceived that he had acted in undue haste. The soon-to-retire bureaucrat decided that the best option was to pass the buck, by delaying the application until it became someone else’s responsibility.
We have the example of SEWA where highly talented women have renounced their ambrosia and devoted their entire lifetime to empowering poor women. It would be outright vanity to dream of becoming social heroes overnight. The real development story is an aggregate of initiatives in thousands of clusters led by extraordinary people, few of them known and the vast majority of them unknown.
Though much rural development is welcomed by the whole population and does not involve outsiders in personal risk, much also involves conflicts of interest where the weak are dominated, exploited and cheated by the powerful.
Where that happens, many of the rural poor and those who work with and for them face abuse, discrimination and danger; the bravest and most direct are often threatened; some are assaulted; and some are even killed.
There is much innovation and even heroism and sacrifice by staff of development agencies known only to project beneficiaries and other staff, which is not only left anonymous but undocumented.
Even when programme results are reported, the names and actions of the individuals who made the process successful on the ground are seldom known.