Lessons in development — लगे रहो (lagey raho)! keep going… stay on…
A super-cyclone hit the coast of Odisha on October 29, 1999. No one was prepared and the effects were devastating. Eleven days earlier, on October 18, a smaller cyclone hit the tribal areas of Ganjam, felling trees, crops and livestock and lives were lost. The asbestos roof of my home at Gram Vikas rattled and crashed on to the bed below, soaking the cot and mattress. As luck would have it, I had taken shelter with a friend, and escaped the roof crashing on me.
After October 29, attention quickly shifted from Ganjam to the more affected areas of Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Puri, which are also more politically dominant and vocal. As a small but significant NGO, Gram Vikas got involved in the relief and rehabilitation efforts. As we went around working alongside and talking with affected communities, I was struck by the different responses from the people in the tribal areas of Ganjam, and those in the non-tribal coastal areas.
While temporary shelters were made, the families in the tribal areas slowly, but with determination started putting back their homes. Resources were available in plenty after a few days of sun, fallen logs of wood, thatch, mud. They salvaged what they could find. They worked unquestioningly, and accepted our offer of “food for work” with gratitude, clearing roads, wells and village surroundings. They would have done so even without our reaching out.
The devastation in the coastal areas was many times more, the death toll was higher and given the landscape, the nature of devastation had different effects. The response of the residents though was starkly different here. Even weeks after the cyclone, they made little or no effort to put back their homes, even if resources were available, and we offered the same support of “food for work” or anything else they needed. A standard response was “we will wait for the government to come and assess the damage, otherwise we will not get the right compensation/ benefits”. They were more politically aware, and astute in their assessment, and their agency was not in solving problems for themselves but waiting for the state to fix it for them.
This one experience nearly 25 years ago gave me lessons on what happens when the state views people as beneficiaries, what we see widely in the “laabharthi” phenomenon. While citizenship rights are undisputed, and citizens stake to services are inalienable, what the laabharthi status confers to recipients is a loss of agency to be part of the solutioning process. The malaise extends to funding and philanthropic organisations and civil society organisations, who see people and communities they work with as “beneficiaries”.
There is power and politics in the language we use. The connotation of beneficiary is linked to benefactor — s/he who does good/ does well (bene), or bestows a favour. The person at the other end is a receiver, as if devoid of agency. “So what word should we use, other than ‘beneficiaries’?”, I often hear from well-intentioned people. Of course we are still not asking people what they wish to be called.
The founders of Goonj saw through this conundrum and decided to challenge the arrogance of wealthy donors who keep themselves at the centre to decide who the beneficiaries will be and determine their needs, keeping the recipients forever beholden to their largesse. By what one could called demonstrated disruptive approaches, Goonj calls out the politics of this skewed way of giving.
The celebration of Goonj@25 on February 18, 2024 happened in a large auditorium with a lot of laughter, and an eclectic group of participants from civil society organisations, volunteers, friends, well-wishers and staff of Goonj. It was unlike any other celebration, with no chest thumping, where with humility they shared some of their experiments, and people from the audience popped up spontaneously to share their relationship with Goonj. The spirit of community couldn’t be more evident than in that space.
For more reflections on the work of Goonj read — Lessons in development — Start by asking ‘Who is poor’?
In the photo here are the founders of Goonj, Anshu and Meenakshi Gupta. The platform they are sitting on in the older photo says “kripaya faltu na baithein (do not sit idle)”. From the signs of it they don’t intend to. They’ll keep pushing boundaries, challenging the status quo, enriching the discourse, and creating level playing fields in the arena of development.
