Hailing from Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district, Shankar Singh is a social and political activist, musician, lyricist, theatre artist, and storyteller. He co-founded the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) alongside prominent activists Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey. MKSS is known for its role in advocating for and implementing the Right to Information Act (RTI) in the country.

Shankar Singh has employed a variety of creative strategies to champion the rights of marginalised labourers and farmers, focusing on issues such as wages, employment, and other government social entitlements. His approach is marked by a unique blend of entertainment, music, and sharp wit and satire. He has led many successful movements and campaigns, both at the grassroots and national level. Notably, he has contributed to the implementation of landmark schemes like MGNREGA and government processes such as social audits.

In this conversation with IDR, which is the second of two episodes, Shankar Singh talks about using different mediums—folk music, drama, and puppetry—to engage with communities during social movements. He also discusses what those with specialised skills have to offer to grassroots nonprofits and offers valuable perspectives on carrying on in the face of disappointment and fatigue.

Here are some highlights from the conversation:

00.16 | On working with different mediums

I got the chance to see puppets at one place, the Literacy House in Lucknow, so I started following these people. I felt that I had to learn this and asked them to teach me how to use puppets. Whenever I got the chance, I’d go to them. There was a workshop there, after joining the nonprofit. I went to that workshop. But in the same campus there was a department of puppetry that did only this work. I showed a lot of curiosity in it. I thought that I definitely wanted to acquire this skill. Then I learned puppetry from there. I assimilated puppetry into my thought and then expressed myself through it. 

I felt that these mediums are very strong, be it drama, songs, stories, or puppetry. I completely assimilated these mediums while working with that nonprofit. 

[During L K Advani’s Rath Yatra,] we thought about what we should do. We made a beautiful chariot out of a cart that we got from the vegetable market, placed big horses made of cloth in front of it, and wrote ‘Ghotala Rath Yatra’ on it. We put placards around an umbrella. These placards bore the names of all the ghotalas(scams) that had taken place. And a chair was placed on the cart for the leader to sit on. The chariot was covered with saffron decorations. We did all this behind the tent, and the police did not know that we were doing something. And I announced on the mike, “Tomorrow at 5 o’clock in the evening, a Rath Yatra will start from here. And the leader of our Rath, his name is Rajvani, he will come from Delhi. He will be riding on the chariot and there will be a Rath Yatra.” 

The next day we took out the chariot from there. And I was on top of the cart as a leader. I was dressed such that all the parties were included. The Congress cap and saffron-coloured gamchha (scarf). And the leader sat on a chair on the stage. There was a ghotala umbrella, and on the front it said ‘Ghotala Rath Yatra’. It also said Rajvani. And he came out. And there was also singing, “Ghotala raj ki jai jai bolo, jai-jai bolo, jai-jai bolo. Bhrashtachaar karo, hari hari bolo.” (Praise the reign of scams. Do corruption and take the lord’s name.) “Arey hawala ka halwa chaat chaat khaya.” (We really enjoyed the black money pudding.) 

Whatever scams happened like this, we kept talking about them in songs. 

08.11 | On how people with specialised can collaborate with those working on the ground

Let me give you an example. When this person called Vineet came to us, he said that we can see the Jan Soochna Portal. But how do we show it in the village? For this, he took a projector. Placing his small projector on a white wall, he brought out the Jan Soochna Portal. Then he called over some children, who thought they were being shown a film. So first he played a small film, some seven to 10 minutes long. He showed something related to RTI. The children saw it, enjoyed it. Then he asked one child to bring his ration card. He entered the ration card number in the portal. Vineet then displayed it on the wall, and when he did that the child could see a photo, which was of his father. He said, “Oye, this is my father’s photo,” and was quite amazed. Then Vineet said, look, I will show you all the times you took wheat. When he accessed the information on the portal, he said that the child’s family had taken 80 kg last month.

The child ran home, called his father and brought him back, saying, “They’re saying that you took 80 kg. The film in the projector is saying it.” The father said, “It was not 80 kg, we got 40 kg.” “But they’re saying something else.” The father came and asked to look. Then he saw that it said 80 kg. “Sir, it is not 80 kg. We took 40 kg.” “But here it says 80 kg.” “But I am telling you that I took 40 kg. We have never got 80 kg, we have got 40 kg every time. Every alternate month.”

He went to the dealer, who is from the village, and said, “Look at this, I have got 80 kg on paper and you gave me only 40 kg.” The dealer asked him where he had got this information from, and told him to take the rest of his wheat but not make any noise.

Soon, people queued up before Vineet asking for their ration information, and Vineet kept giving them this information. There was a line outside the ration [shop].

12.30 | On incidents that have left a lasting impact

There is an old couple in the village, they don’t have children. They don’t even have a house; they live under this shed. So I have helped them in getting pension. Sometimes they’re not able to get the ration food, so there are fights with the dealer on why they have not been given it. Sometimes he gives it and sometimes he doesn’t. I could not go for two to three months. Vineet and I both could not go, so they reprimanded us with great authority, that you did not come. I just asked them how things were going. “Okay,” they said.

When I lifted the lid of the drum, I saw that there was nothing in it. And there were no other things either. I asked, “Is there no atta (flour)?” “No, it has been five days. There has been nothing.” “There has been nothing for five days?”

Vineet went to bring her wheat and I was sitting near the old woman. She asked me to write down my mobile number on the wall somewhere. “I don’t have a phone but if someone comes I will tell them to talk to you.” I came [back] after writing [the number]. That day I felt very sad. And the next day I get a call that the old lady has passed away. We had brought that wheat. Even that wheat was of no use.

When we arrived [at the cremation,] there were some very big things being said there. Spiritual conversations. I mentioned that I have met this family, and said that this death happened due to hunger. Then this person asked how. I said I had visited them and there was no food in that house for five days. I said that I had bought the bag of wheat from the ration shop yesterday, and it was not even useful.

17.36 | On maintaining his passion for social change

While doing this work, many times you feel tired and disappointed. It definitely happens. It happens in my mind too. Whenever I have felt that I am in a lot of conflict and trouble, or if I am not sure about what I am doing and feeling stuck, that day I go to some poor person’s house. You sit there for an hour or two, you will understand their whole economics, and you will think, how can I stop? What is the condition of the family I have met? And what about me? I am much better off. I start thinking, personally, I don’t have any problem at all. I would not be doing any good if I withdrew myself. One’s enthusiasm doubles. And there is a lot of strength [in being around] a poor person, who has nothing but darkness all around, how will he survive in his life? Strength is found there. In this area, we know the houses, the families [that are struggling]. A friendship is formed whenever you go and talk to them. They also come to us, and together we try to find solutions. And then I don’t feel any physical fatigue, and my enthusiasm comes back.

Read the full transcript here.

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Know more

• Watch the first part of this interview here.
• Learn about the Indian theatre movement.
• Watch Shankar Singh sing to bring awareness to the people of Rajasthan.

Hailing from Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district, Shankar Singh is a social and political activist, musician, lyricist, theatre artist, and storyteller. He co-founded the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) alongside prominent activists Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey. MKSS is known for its role in advocating for and implementing the Right to Information Act (RTI) in the country.

Shankar Singh has employed a variety of creative strategies to champion the rights of marginalised labourers and farmers, focusing on issues such as wages, employment, and other government social entitlements. His approach is marked by a unique blend of entertainment, music, and sharp wit and satire. He has led many successful movements and campaigns, both at the grassroots and national level. Notably, he has contributed to the implementation of landmark schemes like MGNREGA and government processes such as social audits.

In this conversation with IDR, which is the first of two episodes, Shankar Singh delves into the complexities of building a movement, shedding light on how the journey of a movement is charted and the concerted efforts required for it to succeed. He also offers valuable perspectives on identifying grassroots issues and building effective communication channels for collaboration between the government and the people.

Here are some highlights from the conversation:

00:22 | On early life and influences

After finishing school, parents insist that their kids take up some or the other job. I don’t have any brothers or sisters. My father died early on, so my mother became a widow at a very young age. She told me to think about getting a job since she wouldn’t be able to educate me any further. So, I moved to the city.

While doing all these jobs, I ended up at a place where there was a nonprofit organisation nearby. Chance, it was all chance. I asked [the people there], “What is going on here?” and someone responded, “This is an organisation.” “What do they do?” I asked. “This is a nonprofit,” they said. I told them I had never understood what nonprofits do. “They talk about why the condition of the poor is what it is, why there is poverty, how to face it—they talk about that.” I asked about money (salary). They said that people are paid for their work.

“So you get paid for talking?” I asked. Then I said that for money, even I would talk.

As soon as I entered that nonprofit, I felt that there were many types of people there. Some had started working and then left their jobs, and some had MBBS degrees, some had done engineering, some had done a law course. And among them was Aruna, who had left the IAS. I thought, why do they come here, [what do they hope] to achieve by leaving everything? This curiosity gave me many opportunities. The nonprofit took away my fervour of being a teacher, and working there for a year changed my mindset.

08.29 | On the formation of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)

[When we started working in Devdungri, people] knew that I was a local from this area, and would call me Shankar mama because my sister-in-law’s house is here. People started asking, “What do you want to do?” You know, when you set out to find out something about people, before that they want to know about you. “Who are you, why are you doing this, what do you get, how much money are you paid, and what’s in it for you?”

Then they thought that we had come here to earn more. People started asking, what they will earn in this house? How? Will they plant mines or do something else? We started talking to them. I said that we want people to think about what they need and how we can help them.

The first person who came to us was [a local named] Lal Singh. Lal Singh ji had come to our place to work as a mason, to do some kitchen repairs. He also asked us what we wanted to do here. We told him that we will do this…even I was not very clear. He said, “We have a big issue [in our village]. We have a jagirdar (feudal landlord)—a thakur—and he is very cruel. He beats whoever he wants and no one can file a complaint against him with the police because he is a jagirdar.”

The villagers kept trying to figure out how to confront that jagirdar, but were beaten up every time. We said that we will talk in your village, and so we got a chance.

It took a year for the village to gradually unite, and that was because of Lal Singh ji. Some families were still in favour of the jagirdar. Some land was collectively allotted to the village. The organisation (MKSS) had not been formed till then.

When we went to measure the land, the thakur attacked us. He attacked the villagers as well. This news reached Sohangadh village and, the following day, at least 50–60 people from there arrived here on foot. They said that they would go and fight [the jagirdar]. We said no and decided to go to the village and have a talk. The next day we held a meeting in the village. That was the first time we had a choice [between violence and non-violence]. We could have taken the path of violence since we had been beaten up. Those villagers could have gone and beaten up the thakur, and there would have been no solution to what would have followed. Each party would be violent to the other and take turns. So we said no, we do not want to take that route. The entire village—children, women, everyone—walked 11 km to Bhim. At that time, just one village was involved in this. We walked through the village telling people about the thakur and ended up outside the office of the tehsil Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM). We sat there all day long. The thakur was arrested in the evening, and the news spread in the entire area. People started speculating about how much influence ‘these people from Devdungri’ (referring to Aruna, Nikhil, and me) wielded since they got that thakur arrested. “He is a jagirdar, but he was arrested. There is something very special about them.” After that we started working in this area. This incident is from 1987. In 1990, the organisation (MKSS) was set up.

17.02 | On agitating for the Right to Information

When this movement started, what was the first question we asked? We did not say that you (the government) should improve our education system, that you do all these things for us, make our health systems equal. We had asked a question. The people in the villages where we went and held meetings had said that they (government works) do not pay us the full amount. They do not pay full wages. We said to them that this is the question we should be asking the government. I told them thatwe will not go, you all come along, and together we will ask why you aren’t paid the full amount you’re owed.

So when I went to [the government official] and asked him why he does not pay people the full amount, he said that they do not do the full work. [Then the people said,] “But even when we did the full work, you didn’t give full wages.” He said that there must be some other reason for this. I asked, “What is that reason? Show us the documents. Show me that paper in which you noted down how much work someone has done and how much they were paid for it.” [The government official replied,] “How can I show you these documents? They are government documents.”

When he refused to show us the papers, we contemplated what to do next. I suggested, “Hold a protest in front of their place, sit in front of the tehsil, sit in front of the BDO’s office.”

The following day the SDM invited a couple of representatives from the protest. “Those of you who are the main people, come here. I will show you the muster roll because collector sir said so,” he stated. I was very happy that this victory happened on the first day itself. As soon as I went inside, he ‘showed’ us the paper [by quickly opening and closing it]. We said, “Not like this, give us a photocopy of it.” He replied, “How can I give you a photocopy? That is not possible.”

The collector said, “Tell them they won’t be given photocopies. As if we can give just anybody photocopies! There is no law like this. Do one thing: Tell them to copy it by hand. Write it down. But no photocopies.”

We felt that all right, we got one victory. We manually took down the muster roll, and they insisted we use pencils instead of pens.

As soon as we reached the village, we began reading it aloud. The villagers inquired, “What are you reading?” I replied, “This patwar ghar (land records office) was constructed here. These individuals had been employed here.” [The villagers replied,] “But how is his name on it? He died a while back.” “She also had passed away before the construction of this.” “She was not present at the time.”

One of them (a government official) walked over to me, peered over my shoulder at the paper, and said, “Oh, this paper is fake.” I asked, “Why?” [He replied,] “It is written in pencil, you will write anything and bring it, is this a government paper? Government paper is printed, not written in pencil. These people are lying!”

We came to the conclusion that there is no other way. We will have to sit in protest again, so we mobilised people. Leave everything else, we should have the right to see these documents. The slogan was raised: Leke rahenge hum iss baar, soochna ka adhikaar. (This time we will win the right to information.)

We persevered for as long as we could because we wanted to have that law. We did not get tired…it was the government that eventually relented, leading to the implementation of the Right to Information Act.

24.18 | On building and sustaining mass movements

I understood that there isn’t some book where it’s written what you need to do to sustain a movement. When you go among people and actually work, that is when one gets to learn, and one’s own values are determined. 

This work is such that it is not possible to do it alone. Hundreds of people have contributed in this. No one can carry any movement alone. I am the one telling you all this, but it was a movement that depended a lot on what people believed, and the methodology was also determined.

In the movement, people came from one place to another, paying their own fare to sit in the protest. In their minds, they realised how important this is. At that time perhaps people might not have thought how the Right to Information [Act] would help them, because at that time they were thinking about wages. Their wages were stuck. As soon as people demanded information, they didn’t receive the information but they received their wages due to the fear that if the information was released, it would lead to bigger revelations.

26.23 | On mobilising for the right to information in a politically charged environment

Today… corruption has reached a level where there is complete complicity in corruption. This includes [government] employees, leaders, and some common people too. There is severe corruption due to the nexus of all three. That corruption will come out only because of your RTI.

Today, the matter is an electronic one—the computer has arrived. Everything is here, but what are you (the government) trying to show? You are showing what you want to show. What you don’t want to show, we all know that you won’t. Suo moto, we say in the RTI Act’s Section 4. Information has to be shown to citizens suo moto. In Rajasthan, there is the Jan Soochna Portal. You can see all the information in that portal. Where is my pension stuck? What is the reason for it being stuck?

In a way, this era of RTI will continue only if there is a movement today. In places where people are fighting and struggling together, they get the information they need and there is no murder. Those who are fighting alone are being murdered. We used it (the RTI) the most in the organisation (MKSS). [We] got public hearings done, got everything done, but they know that this is a group that is fighting for a cause together. It is not that we have never been beaten up or assaulted, but when a group is formed, it has its own strength.

30.45 | On keeping the democratic spirit alive

Look, no matter who wins, this is a democracy; whoever wins, that government is ours. We cannot say that this government is not ours, and we will not talk to it. Because our dialogue will be with whoever is in power. There will be no dialogue with the one who loses. But we will have to have a dialogue with the one who won. This is democracy, if you are sitting on that chair then we will communicate with you. We also raise the same slogans: Sarkaar humare aap ki, nahin kisi ke baap ki (the government is ours, not one person’s property) or Yeh desh hamare aap ka, nahin kisi ke baap ka (this country is ours, not someone’s father’s).

Read the full transcript here, and watch the second part of the Shankar Singh interview where he speaks about the role of music and theatre in driving social movements.

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Know more

• Watch this TEDx Talk by Shankar Singh to learn more about how the RTI Act came to be.
• Read more about why we need more accountability laws with rising attacks on RTI activists.
• Read about a day in the life of an eMitra who enables citizens to access their rights digitally.

Flavia co-founded Majlis, a legal and cultural resource centre that provides women and children with quality legal services. She has written incisively and extensively on a raft of social and legal issues around women’s rights, family law, minority rights, and secularism.

Flavia talks to IDR about her long and eventful journey with the women’s movement, commenting on its major milestones and the path it is currently on. She underscores the need for affordable legal services and tells us why working with the police is an inalienable part of Majlis’s campaign to help women secure their rights.

Can you tell us about your early life and the influences that led you to the women’s movement and to law? 

I was born in Bombay in 1947, but I grew up in Mangalore, where I was raised by my maternal aunt, who was unmarried. My parents were in Aden, Yemen at the time with my four sisters; I had a brother too, but he passed away early on. I studied in a Kannada-medium school till standard 10. Just before my SSC exam, my aunt passed away in her sleep. I then joined my parents in Aden. But shortly after, my father died too. To help support the family, I took up work as a typist at a post office. It was in Aden that I learned English. I lived there for three years before returning to Mangalore with my mother and sisters. I was 20 at the time.

On returning, I was almost immediately married off. But my marriage was a wreck. I was physically and mentally abused and didn’t know what to do. I tried to break the marriage off several times, but I just couldn’t.

In 1980, I became involved with the women’s movement in Bombay. I found moral support among the women I met there, and it was with their encouragement that I ended my marriage that same year. By then I had been married 13 years and had three children. I took my daughters with me and left my son with my husband. I put my daughters in a boarding school and sold whatever jewellery I had to buy a small place in Borivali.  

It was around then that I set up the Women’s Centre in Bombay for women who had suffered domestic violence. It was a safe place where they could gather and talk, share their stories, and exchange resources such as references to good lawyers, counsellors, and jobs. We first ran the Women’s Centre from a friend’s house. Then Smita Patil—who had heard me speak at a conference and was impressed with my work—donated to us the proceeds of her film Subah, and we were able to buy a place of our own. News of the centre soon spread through word of mouth and articles in the press. 

Alongside running the centre, I studied law and earned my degree in 1988. By 1997, I secured my MPhil from the prestigious National Law School, Bangalore. One of the factors that motivated me to study law was the challenge of finding good lawyers whom we could recommend to the women who came to the centre.

It was a difficult time…my children were young, and I was working at the centre, not earning much. I sometimes wonder how I came so far. (Laughs)

Tell us about the beginnings of Majlis. 

In 1990, my friend Madhusree Dutta and I started Majlis, a legal and cultural resource centre in Bombay. (Majlis means ‘association’ in Arabic.)  

I set up the legal support cell and Madhusree set up a broad forum for interaction between different arts practitioners. She was a theatre and documentary film director who wanted to cultivate a new feminist cultural practice through theatre and film. We were joined by activists from academia, architecture, and other professions, all working to make Majlis a creative, social, cultural, and legal locus of the women’s movement in Bombay. As for me, I wanted to move away from protest and activism to ground-level interventions. Protests were important to raise awareness about an issue, but once legal reform was achieved, it was important to set up a sustainable practice of strong litigation support for women to ensure that the impact of those reforms was felt on the ground.  

I considered writing a powerful tool for the campaign, and published articles, reports, and books on legal reform, women’s rights, secularism, the cases we came across, and the legal and systemic bottlenecks we encountered. All of it helped build advocacy and raise public awareness on a range of issues—from domestic violence and sexual abuse to the Uniform Civil Code debate and the death penalty. At the time, there was very little writing on women’s rights and legal reform in the mainstream.   

We are now Majlis Legal Centre because our focus is wholly on legal support. Earlier, on account of the word’s association with Muslim fundamentalism, we had been under pressure to change our name, but we stood our ground. The name speaks for our secular ideology and our allyship with minorities. We also run a support centre for victims of sexual violence called Rahat, which is doing well.      

The way we work has also changed and become more structured. Earlier, our interventions were ad hoc and wide-ranging. Later, as we grew and raised larger ticket funding, donor preferences led us to making our work more streamlined.

You have been a part of the women’s movement for 40 years. How has it changed?

In the 1980s, the women’s movement concentrated on law reform, with rape and domestic violence—particularly dowry-related abuse—forming a key concern. It championed women’s empowerment, challenged patriarchal power structures, and questioned the conservative role of women as subordinate in the home and in society. The movement drew public attention to women’s issues, thanks to which they started to figure more prominently in the state’s development schemes and welfare programmes.            

Many issues that we campaigned for in the ‘80s and ‘90s ended in legislative reform. For example, our two-decade-long campaign against domestic violence resulted in the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) 2005, a civil law that gave women rights within their matrimonial home, maintenance, child custody, and protection from future violence. Our campaigning also led to amendments in the rape law in the 1980s and in 2013; reforms in Christian personal law; and subsequent amendments to the Indian Divorce Act that made it possible for Christian women to seek divorce only on grounds of cruelty.       

Today, the women’s movement has taken a different shape; more nonprofits have cropped up and a lot of welfare work is going on. There’s also more professionalism in the field. It’s important however to remember that the women’s movement cannot operate in a silo; it is an integral part of other social movements such as human rights, sexual identities and sexual orientation, people in same-sex relationship, social transformation, and against caste-based violence.

Women today have rights, but are they exercising them? Are they filing more cases?

Unfortunately, legal services have become commercialised, expensive, and consequently unaffordable for women from low-income and marginalised communities. And the free legal aid available to them is often of poor quality. This is the most challenging aspect that organisations like Majlis face today—the lack of experienced lawyers willing to work for the poor. People spend huge amounts to get a legal education now, and they’re anxious to earn it back.

Individual lawyers take up pro bono cases occasionally, but it’s not enough. We have many interns working at Majlis, but they largely come for the experience and seldom return on graduating. Our organisation survives on grants, but without experienced lawyers how can we support women at scale? Today, unlike in the past, Majlis doesn’t have many in-house lawyers; we have 10–12 empanelled ones to whom we refer our cases, and then we monitor their progress.  

It must also be said that contrary to people’s presumptions that the Domestic Violence Act would give women licence to file false cases against their husbands, women aren’t filing as many cases as they should because they are scared to go to the police. Women want rights for themselves more than they want punishment for their spouses.

Majlis has been working with the police since the 1990s. What does it take to build trust?

We started actively working with law-enforcement agencies when we realised that laws, in and of themselves, would not help the cause of women until they were implemented on the ground. A crucial part of this was working with law-enforcement agencies. This wasn’t easy, because it meant making inroads into the criminal justice system, which was inaccessible to nonprofits.

Our earliest intervention was with the Mumbai Police—we trained them on the new provisions of the amended Rape Law and monitored the impact of that training. The training was initiated by Sadanand Date, an officer we met during the Bombay riots.

In addition to acquainting officers with the nuances of the laws, our training teaches them how to interrogate women and children sensitively.

We conduct separate training around the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. This involves changing perspectives and helping the police look past prejudices (such as disbelief that a family member could be the perpetrator of a sexual crime against a child). We train DCPs, ACPs and police station heads, and the lessons percolate down to other staff.

In addition to acquainting officers with the nuances of the laws, our training teaches them how to interrogate women and children sensitively; what guidelines to follow when escorting perpetrators and survivors for medical examinations; how to prepare detailed case reports to secure government aid; and so on. These guidelines are contained in the Standard Operating Procedure we drafted for the police. The right procedures can strengthen police investigations and improve conviction rates. 

Forty years ago, dowry and domestic violence were prominent issues. What plagues women today?

Domestic violence continues to be big. The terminology has changed—from dowry to domestic violence—but the problem still persists. Newer issues, such as sexual harassment at the workplace, have cropped up. We’re also seeing more cases of child sexual abuse, especially in domestic settings. The police refers these cases to us because of our experience in litigation. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, one seldom encountered cases of sexual abuse, be it of women or children. Having a law like POCSO in place has helped improve the reporting of crimes against children.

As with POCSO, dowry, rape, trafficking, and other crimes, I believe the thrust of the law should be on supporting survivors rather than fixating on extreme punishment, like the death penalty, for perpetrators. The death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. The real deterrent is certainty of punishment, not the severity of it. Increased punishment is touted as the most effective solution, but my question is, can stringent punishment bring about change in society or an increase in conviction rates? What other mechanisms and structures do we need for this?

You have been central to the women’s movement in India; what do you hope for the future? 

Sometimes I get the feeling that the more we do, the more there is to be done. You can’t rest in peace and say, “Okay, I’ve done my work.” New complications spring up all the time and you have to stay on your toes.

Take the case of the Domestic Violence Act. It’s a good act, very nicely framed, but magistrate courts assign trial dates after two or three months, and don’t pass interim orders either. Moreover, courts are clogged, and when a woman goes to court, she becomes frustrated with the delays and complicated procedures. So even if the law is good, its purpose is lost when the supporting system is faulty. You need to campaign for more courts, for better functioning of those courts, and so on—all that needs to happen alongside having the law. This is why the struggle must continue. There are many women’s organisations launching campaigns, and that’s very positive, because you need to have these campaigns to build public awareness.  

I do however worry about the future. We worked for law reform and respite for individual women, but issues have now blown up to such an extent that there’s work to be done not just at the individual level but also at the community level. Women from marginalised and minority communities find themselves caught in a hostile environment, fuelled by a communal hate campaign. Violence against women has started to take new form.    

Crimes against women are not individualised; they’re political.

I was asked to write a piece on how I see things shaping up for women 25 years hence, but I see this future as very dismal. I titled the article From Mathura to Manipur, from the perspective of the violence we’re witnessing. With Mathura, the violence was directed at an individual. But with Khairlanji and, more recently, the rapes in Manipur, sexual assault has been weaponised against communities.

There were many more elements involved, not just an individual person. Crimes against women are not individualised, they’re political. And for them to stop, the political climate has to change. We can no longer only look at changing lives at the individual level; we must look at change at the community level. Individual solutions cannot give us the kind of respite that is required unless the broader political context changes. Securing women’s rights today seems much harder than it was in the ‘80s.

What would you like your legacy to be?

I don’t know about legacy, but I want to be remembered as somebody who, through her experience, has addressed questions of community, of secularism, and of law reform, who has struggled, travelled this journey, lived a certain kind of life, and shared that life with others as an inspiration for them so that they can change their own situation. This is how I want to be remembered.

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Know more

• Learn how the police can be made more responsive to gender-based violence.
• Read this article to learn how gender attitudes in India have changed.
• Read this report to learn about digital feminist activism in India.

She was also at the forefront of the campaign against the ban on the movie Fire in 1998, and has played a pivotal role in helping the Indian women’s movement to focus on working-class lesbian women and women in rural areas.

Maya is currently the programme director at Vikalp Women’s Group, a nonprofit that seeks to increase women’s accessibility to health, education, and livelihoods.

In this interview with IDR, Maya talks about feminist and LBT movements in India. She traces the intricate intersectionality of these movements and the politics of class and geography. Maya also highlights the differences in the lived experiences of rural and urban India, and underscores the significance of language in everyday life.

Could you tell us about your early years and influences?

I was born in Ajmer, Rajasthan, and studied at a convent boarding school. Growing up, I was surrounded by women. In addition to living in a women’s hostel, most of my family members were women too. So, we all felt like equals. No one was ordering anyone around. But, as a girl, I was aware that I was lucky to have an education. A lot of people used to ask my parents what the point of educating daughters was when eventually they have to leave for their husband’s house. Relatives would constantly question my mother for prioritising my education over household chores. 

Female friendships played a very important role in my early years. My friends taught me valuable lessons about life, desire, and love. They were my support system and I’m still friends with them 50–60 years later. But I did experience discrimination. There were larger systems that compelled us to stay silent about our experiences. As a lesbian, I was taught to believe that my desires are wrong. I didn’t protest; it was as if the system had quelled my voice.

I didn’t realise this at the time. It was only when I went to Delhi for my bachelor’s degree, followed by my master’s, that I grasped the true extent of these issues. I learned that there were other queer women around me, but everyone used to make fun of them. This was a message to me as well: Just stay quiet and toe the line. Marriage was inevitable, a natural phenomenon. And so I got married to a man and had a son.

I was deeply unhappy in my marriage for several reasons, but the foremost among them was the power imbalance between my husband and me. I was shouldering all the household responsibilities. Marriage shed light on gendered inequalities, and it was a devastating realisation for me. It felt like I was like standing at the door, gazing longingly at the world that exists outside, but never leaving.

During this phase, I read a lot. I remember reading Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch and finding it very liberating. In Delhi, I joined a women’s collective, Saheli, and it was a different universe. The office had steps outside, and I would be so excited to go in that I would climb them in seconds. It was like a cool breeze on a sunny day. The community reminded me of my hostel and my family. The small things that the women said would give me hope and a different perspective. I remember a girl once said that she liked knitting because you could always take the threads out and start over. This thought left a profound impact on me. We were very open about our feelings; we talked about domestic work, we also fought with one another. I realised there were a lot of women like me.

The office was under the Defence Colony flyover. Whenever a vehicle crossed the flyover, it would cause a tremor in the office. For me, that was symbolic. My life, too, was tremulous then. Something new was building inside me. And as it built, I finally got the courage to leave my husband of 10 years.

How did you start your journey as an LBT and women’s rights activist?

In 1984, the anti-Sikh riots broke out. It exposed me to a world I had never experienced before. Until then, I was consumed with understanding my own oppressions. During the Sikh riots, I met a lot of young women who were forced to marry their deceased husband’s brothers or uncles. This was done because the families had lost an earning member and there was a government compensation for the remarriage of women widowed during the riots.

Many of these women were already dealing with the trauma of losing their husbands and didn’t want to remarry. Witnessing their suffering helped me comprehend gender issues beyond my own. I saw that oppression is systemic. While their experiences were very different from mine, a common thread of injustice bound us all together as women.

As I was moving out of my husband’s house, I joined another feminist organisation. I started living alone in a servant quarter in a middle-class locality in Delhi. While working there, I met a woman with whom I fell in love. She was a great singer, poet, and writer, and she taught me a lot. Our relationship was very difficult because of our class differences. This was also the time when I was learning about the intricacies of class, gender, and sexuality, and how and where they overlap to create new systems of violence. I realised that class is not just about money—class is culture, class is language. It was a very beautiful relationship that enriched me.

In its early days, even within the women’s movement, conversations around same-sex love weren’t public.

The 1990s changed a lot for women. The women’s movement of the period was sparked by incidents such as the Bhateri rape case and the ensuing protests, and the dowry deaths and conversations around their causes. The LGBT movement in the country was also gaining pace around the same time. Less than Gay, also known as the ‘pink book’ and the first report on LGBT rights in India, was brought out by Siddharth Gautam [and others] in 1991. Three years later, following Kiran Bedi’s refusal to allow condom distribution to male inmates in Tihar jail, a public litigation was filed to repeal Section 377. 

In its early days, even within the women’s movement, conversations around same-sex love weren’t public. Things started changing as the media began to cover more stories about violence against women, and activists like us started to point out that many of these women were lesbian and queer. We also formed a lesbian rights group called Campaign for Lesbian Rights (CALERI). Eventually, issues of sexuality began to be addressed; though the space for this was small and invisible, it existed.

It was during this time, while preparing a report for the autonomous women’s conference, that I first encountered the word ‘lesbian’ being used openly. We used to have the autonomous women’s conference every few years. Many queer women were part of this. I recall a conference in Tirupati where we all stayed in one big hall with a common bathroom. We felt so comfortable in our bodies. I realised how freeing it is to see yourself naked and also witness the bodies of other women in their varying shapes and sizes. Sometimes people feel ashamed about who they are, but a collective of women and allies can help you see the beauty in you. Having a community and talking to other people like you who support you is very important. 

How did you start working with people from socio-economically marginalised communities?

During my initial days of working in the low-income neighbourhoods of Delhi, I remember asking someone why they didn’t buy their masalas and vegetables in one go, and why they went out daily and got a bag of salt and a bag of chilli. She told me that she bought in small quantities because she was paid a daily wage. Whatever was left after paying for food was spent on medicines. I was learning every day.

I joined a labour union, which helped me delve deeper into class politics. However, at the union, we were not supposed to discuss issues of sexuality and gender. They had the usual arguments that the movement will lose its focus and that bread-and-butter issues are more important. LBT people in the union formed their own study circle. We would meet in cafes and talk about our problems.

I think middle- and upper-class people often have the privilege to not disclose their sexuality, or even live the lives they want to. Working class people don’t have that choice. Around this time, I started writing stories of lesbian women and trans men for my book Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India. I was also collecting stories from people in the union. I went to a conference and spoke about these issues, and the union was quite upset. One day, as I walked into their office, I felt something was wrong; the atmosphere was so tense. I was told that I was ruining the image of the union and was asked not to return.

How do you think feminist and queer movements in big cities differ from those in small cities?

As I learned more about gender, I began reading books by Uma Chakravarti—the feminist historian who among other topics wrote extensively on widowhood. Widow remarriage was being discussed everywhere in bigger cities in India, but no such conversations were happening in my house. My grandmother was a widow and she used to shave her head and wear black sarees. So villages and small towns do not have the kind of exposure and conversations that urban India has.

Now there’s social media everywhere but it only gives people information, not knowledge. For example, social media tells trans men that they need sexual reassignment surgery, but it doesn’t explain to them the ways to access it. In the absence of proper knowledge and support, this can leave them vulnerable to exploitation by frauds.

There’s more acceptance in rural India than city dwellers are aware of.

Another thing is language, which is changing so much. For example, someone in the queer community who is from rural India and not well versed in English may not understand what the term ‘cis’ means. English speakers talk to one another, and when that conversation is happening, a lot of people get left out.

What I have noticed though is that there’s more acceptance in rural India than city dwellers are aware of. People here know how to navigate social boundaries. For example, I met a Muslim lesbian woman in one of the villages I worked in. She was in love with another woman, but her family was forcing her into a heterosexual marriage. One day she decided to just take the leap. She told her partner that she would get married and then leave her husband and come back home later, and she did. While her partner is now married, they are still going strong. It may seem odd to other people, but that’s the only way she could continue her relationship.

I have also seen trans men and women get married following traditional rituals. I am not saying it is easy for people in the villages. But there is acceptance in many cases, especially among the tribes.

How do movements carry on and what can one generation learn from another?

Movements slow down and become invisible, but they don’t end. They always continue. When we go on pride marches, is that not an extension of the freedom movement? Are we not asking for freedom?

The younger as well as the older generations can learn a lot from each other. People like us can turn to the younger activists to understand how to use technology for activism. I also admire their clarity of goals. They know exactly what they want to study, and what they want to be and how to achieve it.

The younger people can learn the art of letter writing from the older generation. We have everything on social media, but we have lost the art of writing letters. Since we don’t have enough documented queer history, these letters can serve as great archiving material.

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Know more

• Read this article on what it means to sustain a social change movement.
• Read this article to learn more about feminist activism in the digital age.
• Listen to this podcast on the history of lesbian movements in India.

In this interview with IDR, he talks about his journey from civil engineering to public policy, the climate emergency, and why coordinated efforts at the global and national levels are crucial to face this challenge.

Can you tell us a little about your childhood and early influences?

I grew up in Ahmedabad at a time when India’s freedom struggle was at its peak. I was seven years old during the 1942 Quit India Movement, and my school was shut for close to a year because most of the teachers were in jail for months. In school, our teachers often talked to us about the Gandhian values of sarvadharmasambhav (equal respect for all religions), ahimsa, sarvodaya, the evils of untouchability, and so on. We had multiple visitors who would come and address us in the school assembly every morning. Sometimes classes would be suspended because the visitor was so interesting. At home too, my father was indirectly involved with the freedom struggle and wore only khadi. In many ways, all of this had quite a lasting influence on me.

After my 10th grade exams, in which I stood fifth across the board of Gujarat and Maharashtra, our school principal came to my house and asked me about my future plans. Those were the days of India’s first Five-Year Plan. The idea of building dams, roads, and bridges, and contributing to the development of independent India seemed exciting. I said ‘engineering’. He responded, “All bright students are going for engineering and medicine, but the country also needs economists. Why not study economics?” But I went on to get my BE degree from L D College of Engineering in Ahmedabad. After I graduated, I went to IIT Kharagpur to pursue a master’s degree in structural engineering, post which I went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA to do my PhD in civil engineering.

MIT really allowed me to expand my field of study. I was offered a research assistantship at their computer centre, and became an expert in computer programming during my time there. MIT also allowed me to take courses on almost any subject, and I enrolled for many different courses such as architecture and appreciation of Western music. Additionally, I started taking courses in economic theory, macro and micro economics, and development. By the time I finished my PhD, I had enough credits to get a master’s degree in economics. I followed that up with a small thesis on benefit-cost analysis of biogas plants in India.

After MIT, I had two job offers—one from Boeing, and the other from the MIT Center for International Studies to work on planning models for India. I picked the latter, and this proved to be a turning point in my career. The team at the centre included Louis Lefeber, Sukhamoy Chakravarty, Richard Eckaus, and me. Indian data was used to explore various development strategy options for India. This led to a book that Richard and I wrote on India’s third and fourth Five-Year Plans called Planning for Growth, published by MIT Press. That is how I started my journey as an economist.

After my work at the MIT Center for International Studies, I was offered a job as a professor of economics at the Planning Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi.

You’ve clearly dabbled in various fields—civil engineering, computer programming, and economics. How did you start working on climate change? What has that journey looked like?

It was my time at MIT that taught me how to quickly switch from one discipline to another. But energy policy was something I was already interested in from very early on. In fact, from 1969 to 1972, I was involved with India’s energy policy when I worked at the Department of Atomic Energy. Nuclear energy was a buzzword at the time, and everyone thought that it was the next big thing in energy. Dr Vikram Sarabhai and I even presented several papers on the impact of nuclear power on developing nations. However, shortly after, the Limits to Growth study was published, which put a huge question mark on the hype surrounding nuclear energy.

My shift to climate change was also driven by the increasing attention that environmental issues were drawing in India and globally. The then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, was deeply connected with various environmental concerns. In 1971, she set up the first National Committee on Environmental Planning and Coordination (NEPC), an advisory body to the government that looked at the environmental impacts of various development projects, of which I was a member. I was also part of a committee set up in the late 1980s under M S Swaminathan—more popularly known as the Father of the Green Revolution—where we drew attention to the need to assess and value the economic losses caused by environmental degradation.

It was around this time, in 1986, that the then RBI governor, C Rangarajan, invited my wife, Dr Jyoti Parikh, and me to set up an independent development research institute in Mumbai. And so we started the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), one of India’s first independent research institutes that looked at development research from a multidisciplinary lens. From macroeconomics and industrial organisation to human resources development, energy systems, and environmental issues, the institute offered research programmes across various disciplines.

Fast-forward a couple of years to 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit, where IGIDR was asked by the UN secretariat organising the summit to prepare a background note on environmental stressors and the factors leading to climate change. This was a landmark moment. With my colleagues, Jyoti, and others, I presented a paper to the UN Secretariat. The paper highlighted that it was the consumption patterns of developed nations that were primarily responsible for the rapidly changing climate, and not the growing population of emerging countries—20 percent of the population comprising industrialised nations was consuming 80 percent of the world’s resources. Hence, they were responsible for most of the pollution and emissions in the world.

At the Rio Earth Summit the concept of common but differentiated responsibility was highlighted in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

At the same time, Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) released a report called Global Warming in an Unequal World. This report too argued that developed countries were responsible for the bulk of climate change and that the responsibility could not solely rest on developing nations. It was, in fact, at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit that the concept of common but differentiated responsibility was officially highlighted in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

So all of these ideas came together during that time and helped my transition in working on India’s climate policy.

You’ve been working in this space for close to five decades. And this concept of common but differentiated responsibility is still something we’re talking about in global forums on climate change. Have we made any progress from when you started working in climate action up until now?

In terms of the global climate policy, we have made very little progress. Global warming takes place not from annual emissions of countries, but from the cumulative stock of emissions in the global atmosphere. Think of it as a parking space where you’ve parked your car. You need to pay a parking fee from the time you started parking your car there—the elapsed time. Similarly, countries should have to pay from the time they started generating emissions.

So if we were to tax countries on their emissions, we should do so on their cumulative emissions from 1990 when the preparations for the Rio summit started. (Since that summit, no country can claim that it was ignorant of the threat of climate change). If they pay even USD 1 per ton per year as parking fee, it can generate a significant sum of money, which can help contain these emissions and provide finance to developing countries for mitigation and compensation for the loss and damage they suffer.

The first major step towards this came at COP 21 in Paris, where it was acknowledged that developed countries need to financially aid developing countries when it comes to climate action. However, this was deemed a voluntary action, and not mandatory. Hence, there is no way of penalising countries that don’t curtail emissions or do not contribute to this climate fund. As a result, there has been little progress on this front, and the promise by industrialised countries to raise USD 100 billion a year from 2020 onwards has not been fulfilled.

It’s like in our Hindi movies where there is a wealthy and powerful zamindar who persecutes everyone, and nobody can do anything about it. As the audience, we know that he’s not going to change voluntarily. This is the reality of these wealthy-country emitters—they don’t want to change, and they’re always putting the blame on India.

Even if you look at the most recent COP 26 in Glasgow, there was a disproportionate focus on coal and its contribution to global emissions. What no one talks about is that if you take just the combined emissions from oil and gas, they contribute far more to greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

As opposed to ‘phasing down’, which was the terminology that was finally agreed upon at COP 26,  the ‘phasing out’ of coal, or a total shutdown of coal plants can have huge repercussions for India.  

The political reality globally is that we have not seen much official action, except for some promises. 

As a country we are still largely dependent on coal power, and it provides livelihoods for many. Even though there is talk that renewable plants can generate more employment, at present it doesn’t hold true for countries like India. Renewables generate more employment in countries such as the USA that don’t have to expand their electrical capacity significantly. Hence, building incremental renewable power plants generates employment. But in India, instead of building a coal plant, if we were to build a renewable plant, the loss of employment in coal will be higher than new employment we can generate in a renewable power plant.

The political reality globally is that we have not seen much official action, except for some promises. And while some countries are taking strong measures, such as Europe, India, and even China, other developed countries must do more.

What has changed?

Something that has shifted for the better is the public’s, especially the younger generation’s, perception of the climate emergency even in developed nations. People are now much more aware of the threat, and of the fact that their future is hanging in the balance. And that countries must work together to curb the temperature rise.

As part of IRADe, we first suggested a strategy for carbon capture and storage way back in 2005.

At the same time, there has also been a generational shift in the global corporate leadership. This has resulted in businesses becoming aware of their carbon footprint and the part they can play in climate action. This is progress but it’s mostly in voluntary action, not in a global coordinated action, which is the need of the hour.

At the government’s end, there has been some movement too. As part of IRADe—an independent nonprofit think tank that Jyoti and I set up in 2002—we first suggested a strategy for carbon capture and storage way back in 2005. The idea was to invest in developing technology that would help capture and store excess carbon so that burning coal doesn’t add to the global environmental burden. However, it is only now, in 2022, that NITI Ayog has released a policy framework for carbon capture in India.

Over a career spanning almost five decades, you’ve seen so many governments, and so many policies come through. What does the future hold for the country as we tackle the global climate crisis?

There is a lot I have seen over the course of my career. I have been a member of the economic advisory councils of five prime ministers of India, and of the Planning Commission during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s time. Be it Rajiv Gandhi, V P Singh, Chandra Shekhar, P V Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, or Dr Singh, I have interacted with all of them, and I am fortunate to have contributed to some of the policies that helped shape India as it was emerging post Independence. While we deal with one of the biggest global crises of climate change, I think as a country we need to focus a lot more on the tech side of things. We have made some good progress but we need to work on carbon capture and storage, develop cheaper substitutes for lithium-ion batteries, and so on in order to become truly independent.

Moreover, we can’t address the current crisis without looking at our own lifestyles. The problem is that even if people want to switch to climate-friendly actions such as public transport, cycling or walking, or efficient energy consumption, it isn’t possible because the infrastructure in most cities doesn’t support the shift. In such a situation, governments need to ensure that they can enable citizens to switch to more sustainable methods, and citizens must exercise their rights and ask for more facilities. This is the only way we can get ahead of the climate emergency, if at all.

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Know more

• Read this article to learn more about why ‘phasing out’ coal is difficult for developing countries like India.
• Listen to this podcast to learn how the climate crisis is affecting jobs in India.

Over the last 40 years, through your own work and that of Ashoka Fellows, you’ve had the privilege of seeing the world change. What is different about social entrepreneurship today versus when you set up Ashoka four decades ago?  

Back when we got started in the 1980s, we had to invent words to describe the new world of social entrepreneurship whose birth we were helping. We were sitting at Nariman Point, in what was then called Bombay, and struggling with naming the idea. We first created the broader concept and name: changemaker. This was easy—just take the two strong verbs ‘change’ and ‘make’ and put them together. However, we needed a different phrase to describe the small number of changemakers who redefine or create society’s big systems. After some trial and error, we ultimately settled on ‘social entrepreneur’.

The word ‘entrepreneur’ tended to be synonymous with business, at least historically up to that point. However, around the late 1970s and early 1980s, the citizen sector was beginning to become entrepreneurial and competitive in the same way that business had been for several centuries. The citizen sector was also beginning to break free from being funded by, controlled by, and prohibited from being competitive by, the government. And India was one of the first places where a significant number of first-generation social entrepreneurs stood up and set out to change the world for good.

Today, the big difference is that the construct of social entrepreneur is part of everyday thinking and language. And just think about what that means. People can look at these entrepreneurs and think: If she can do this, and such work is practical, and she’s being respected for it, then that’s an opportunity for me; it could be an option for my life. So the first step was to introduce the construct of social entrepreneurship everywhere in the world. Social entrepreneurs are people who can change a major pattern or system of thinking and acting. They pull people together, multiply impact, strengthen an idea, and make it more viable and scalable.

The second construct is what we are working on now: Everyone a changemaker. You and I want everyone to have a good life. But one cannot have a good life if one cannot give. And to be able to give, one must be able to play in today’s everything-changing and everything-connected new (and only) reality. So, the biggest change is that we understand that consciously.

Very few people are going to change society’s big patterns. The difference between a social entrepreneur and a changemaker is that an entrepreneur changes major systems and/or frameworks of thinking on a large scale. But everybody can and has to be a changemaker. Saying that out loud and actually working on it is the second big change for us at Ashoka. The Ashoka Fellows remain critical to this new thinking and this work.

So, we have an open-source system to find the best big pattern-change ideas for good in the hands of the best social entrepreneurs. Nothing has changed about that. But with that we are also able to spot where there’s a whole group of new people and ideas coming up (a recent example is good tech and climate). In each such area, we then map and plot and then entrepreneur together to achieve maximum impact.

If you are a changemaker, there is no job shortage; indeed, there is ever-burgeoning demand for you.

Both of the major framework changes that we’ve been working on deal with livelihoods. Because if you can’t contribute to change, in a world defined by everything changing (and yet connected), then you are not going to have a livelihood. This new reality is the complete opposite of the old world, where jobs were characterised by repetition. Those old jobs are dying. But if you are a changemaker, there is no job shortage; indeed, there is ever-burgeoning demand for you.

Societies everywhere are increasingly divided into the people who have the abilities that this explosively growing new world demands and those that do not. The demand for the former significantly exceeds supply, which is why the salaries and incomes of that group are going up. But then you have a large population that isn’t able to play in this new game. Their jobs are in a precipitous death dive, as are their incomes and sense of belonging.

And we are at a stage of history where if you’re not a changemaker, your livelihood, your satisfaction, your ability to contribute in any dimension of life are all in free fall. And as a result, societies all over the world are divided and angry and therefore unable to deal with their problems. If you do not allow people to have the ability and power to give—which is the most fundamental right if you think about it—where are they in life? This power to give is linked to livelihoods, which is a far more accurate way to look at the field than mere jobs.

A lot that has changed as a result of the pandemic and the climate emergency and growing inequality are huge challenges. In India, we’re seeing increasing unemployment as well. What needs to be done differently to be able to solve the challenge of livelihoods in the context of all these other challenges that we face?

The areas your question talks about are several examples of a world where everything is changing faster and faster. For people like us change is the norm; it’s comfortable, and we know what to do. We know how to put ourselves together with all sorts of combinations of people. We are part of not just one but many such teams. We help one another get better at it.

Now, imagine what it’s like if you’re not part of this team-of-teams world. It’s not going to go well for you. Those who already have the power to give must realise it is critical that they help everyone else be the best possible players, because otherwise neither their team nor society is going to do very well.

The right to give, to have the ability to give, is the most fundamental right.

The right to give, to have the ability to give, is the most fundamental right. The biggest gift is giving other people the gift of being able to give. And that’s what every member of the team in a fast-changing, ever-connected world requires. There is no ambiguity about this—it brings health, happiness, and longevity. And in all the great philosophic traditions, you can’t practice love and respect in action if you don’t have the abilities to give.

COVID-19, the climate crisis, and other changes are only going to get bigger, faster, and more and more interconnected. Unable to play or contribute, you are a failure. Just think about that. We’ve got maybe 40 percent of the world’s population that thinks they are failures. They know that there’s no demand for them, and that things aren’t going to be very good for their kids either.

I don’t have the statistics for India, but in the US, when you compare the counties with little changemaking with those that are strong on changemaking, the low changemaking counties have lost four years of life expectancy in one generation. That’s only one of the costs of not having the abilities to contribute.

How do you define counties that are changemaking versus those that are not? And what is the role of business in adopting this concept?

One simple measure is the proportion of the jobs that are repetitive. If you’ve got a significant proportion of repetitive jobs, your economy is going down fast, because those jobs are going away. Moreover, you’ve got a population that doesn’t have the ability to play the new game, so no one brings the new jobs there because the people can’t fill them. And so you have an accelerating downward spiral.

Now let’s think about businesses for a moment. Your business is not going to succeed if you don’t help all your workers become changemakers. The CEO of a large (5,000 employees), successful company in the US recently told me that his whole business system could be under threat from anyone. He therefore needed everybody in his organisation to be looking for possibilities and threats all the time. He estimated that 10 or 15 of his people might spot such an environmental change, clearly not enough to survive in a rapidly changing world. He came to Ashoka for help because he knew he needed everyone in his company to be thinking like those 10 to 15 people. He is unusual in that he could see and articulate the problem.

It’s not just a matter of ethics, of being fair to your employees, but also of survival.

The answer to his—and other business leaders’—problem is that everyone needs to be a changemaker in their organisation. It’s not just a matter of ethics, of being fair to your employees, but also of survival. Companies that are not everyone-a-changemaker organisations are in big trouble. And they’re going to get into more trouble as the rate of change and interconnection keeps getting faster. Perhaps your company has been able to get by for a while, because everyone else is behaving in the old way. But as that stops being the case, you are on thin ice.

If you want to move ahead, well, you should be able to see and understand this new everything-changing world. And you’ve got to have all your people be able to see it and play in it. You’ve got to organise as a fluid, open, integrated, purposive team of teams. And if you don’t do that, changemakers won’t work with you. Those two things go together.

What gives you hope for the next generation?  

When you talk to anyone who has the gift of being able to give, they have a good life and they’re helping other people have that gift. When you imagine what the world is going to be like when everyone is a giver, and everyone is helping others be ever more powerful givers, that is a completely coherent world. And it’s very close to the traditional South Asian view on the purpose of life—it is about being one with the universe. That’s the highest level of empathy.

Development has always been about how to help people be powerful.

Development has always been about how to help people be powerful. So, if we’re all helping one another be the best possible changemakers, that is, givers, that’s a pretty good world. Everyone has the ability. Everyone has that right. We just have to link arms and make sure that everyone does get that right. Because otherwise we’re going to suffer a rapidly deepening ‘new inequality’. That means society’s divisions will get worse. As will our ability to deal with COVID-19, climate change, income inequality, and so on.

Changemaking is the new literacy. It is the new reality.

—

Know more

• Dip into How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas to learn about how individuals from different walks of life have used innovation for social change.
• Read about how nonprofits can understand generosity better.

Over the past three decades, Sushma has been leading transformative action in the country in the areas of gender justice, indigenous cultures, traditional livelihoods, local governance, and disaster rehabilitation. She has pioneered many grassroots initiatives including the Kutch Nav Nirman Abhiyan—a district network of civil society organisations—and Khamir, a platform for craft artisans. Sushma has also authored a book titled Picture This! Painting the Women’s Movement.

In this interview with IDR, she talks about the evolution of the feminist movement in India, and how it led her to work with women in drought-prone Kutch. She explains why a process of transformative action is crucial for women to navigate gender roles and patriarchy, and how the SHG movement’s focus on metrics has greatly diluted the meaning of ‘women’s empowerment’ today.

Could you tell us about some of the early influences in your life?

I was born and brought up in Baroda, Gujarat. My parents moved to the city soon after Independence as my father, who was a microbiologist, had begun working on one of the first indigenous penicillin plants in Baroda.

My childhood was deeply influenced by my parents of course, but also by the cultural milieu of Baroda, which I was privileged to experience from a young age. My father was a gentle soul who filled my life with a lot of books and intellectual pursuits. It is he who instilled a spirit of curiosity and inquiry within me. My mother, on the other hand, was the ‘doer’ in the family, the one who took charge of everything and who would never take no for an answer. I often think of her as the first feminist in my life, who never ventured into public life.

She enrolled my sister and me in a boys’ school along with my brother, as she was against us being educated in a missionary girl’s school, where she felt girls were trained to be ‘girlish’. In retrospect, studying in a boys’ school is perhaps what prepared me to work on gender issues with both men and women later in my life.

Baroda too has had a huge influence on me. As a university town in the 1960s and ‘70s, it was buzzing with students, artists, and academicians from all over the country. Throughout my growing years, the winter months would be filled with concerts, recitals, and theatre every day.

In college I studied English literature, after which I pursued my master’s in literature and economics. By the time I was close to completing my master’s though, I started feeling restless in this world of books and literature. I felt as if I was occupying a world that was completely different from the world ‘out there’. This was in the 1970s and the early ‘80s, which was a politically tumultuous time in India. The Emergency, the Jayaprakash Narayan movement, the George Fernandes Baroda dynamite blast—it felt like a period of ferment. Many young people were discovering a new calling, rising to it, and taking to the streets. Around the same time, the feminist movement in India was moving away from constructs of women’s ‘welfare’, ‘upliftment’, and ‘development’ to focus more on the identity of women, their agency, and their condition and position in society.

I too was coming into my own as a political being, yearning to become a more active participant in society. Torn and confused between my love for literature and my growing sociopolitical interest, I felt that becoming a political journalist would help me transition from literature to activism. So, for the next two and a half years, I pursued another master’s, in development communication, at Cornell University in the United States of America.

It was actually my time in the USA that made me want to work with women in rural India.

Once there, I did everything but development communication. This was the first time I was interacting with students from all over the world, and it exposed me to so many different perspectives and ideologies, including the Left. This was also when I was introduced to the world of the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire. Even while I was beginning to dive into the works of Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Vinoba Bhave, it was Freire’s pedagogy that spoke to me then, and really implanted tools for my future work with women and rural communities.

How did this lead you to work in Kutch, right at the border between India and Pakistan?

It was actually my time in the USA that made me want to work with women in rural India.

When I returned home after graduating, I was still trying to figure out exactly what I would do next and how I could begin. On a trip to Ahmedabad for an interview with Elaben (Bhatt), founder of SEWA, I met the founders of Janvikas—Pheroz Contractor and Gagan Sethi. Janvikas had just begun its work as a facilitative space supporting young professionals to go and work in rural areas. And soon they became my biggest support in moving to Kutch and helping me to incubate Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan in 1989. KMVS focused on organising and mobilising the rural and urban women of Kutch into local collectives, enabling them to address issues concerning their lives, communities, and areas.

In the 1980s, the landscape in India was changing. Delhi-based feminist organisations such as Jagori and Saheli had begun to stir the consciousness of women through creative campaigns, trainings, and sharing of resources. Back home in Gujarat, SEWA was already leading work with women in the informal sector—with trade unions and cooperatives—and beginning to work on forming rural collectives.

For the first time in India, the Rajasthan government launched the women’s development programme, known as WDP, to organise rural women over issues that concerned them. It really was a stimulating time to marry feminism and rural empowerment. However, I felt that feminist work had yet to fully intersect and integrate with the overwhelming issues of rural development. This was something that I was passionate about and wanted to explore further. 

Back then Kutch was witnessing huge outmigration due to the continuous droughts from 1985 to ‘88, with women getting left behind. Although the region did have a fair amount of charitable and philanthropic presence, community empowerment work—with women in particular—was not visible. Kutch beckoned me in many ways, and took me in.

What did your work with women in Kutch entail?

Due to the droughts in Kutch, one would find women working tirelessly on drought relief sites—digging useless pits in the hot sun to earn minimum wage. Around the same time, as a part of drought relief programmes, the government handicraft corporation started buying and investing in the local crafts of Kutch, which were being produced by the women there. While this created huge supply and demand for embroidered products from Kutch, the value chain was controlled by intermediaries who happened to be all men. And women were getting a pittance for their labour.

At KMVS, we realised that women had deep locational and geological knowledge of water sources.

More than that though, it was the lack of water that was central to their distressing condition. Traditional water sources lay in disarray even as government-run tube wells tried, and failed, to carry water to villages that were 120 kilometres from the source. With men migrating out with their livestock, the burden of survival fell on women entirely. And yet nobody was turning to the people for solutions. Nobody was turning to women for sure. 

At KMVS, we soon realised that they, in fact, had deep locational and geological knowledge of water sources. Women also had a deeper conviction to find sustainable solutions, and more gumption to counter government inefficiencies and corruption than the men. So water did become the rallying point around which issues of patriarchy and gender discrimination were brought up.

It was important to create a safe space for reflection, where women could come together and address the range of issues they were facing.

One thing worth mentioning here is that in some of the communities we began work with, women were not allowed to even step outside their courtyards. And while it was easier for them to articulate their low remuneration and invisibility in their craft production, issues concerning their reproductive health, for example, were shrouded in silence.

So where does one begin? Through our interactions with the sangathans (collectives), especially with their female members, we learnt that for women to navigate issues of patriarchy in their homes and families alone, they would first have to step out into the public domain, take up issues concerning the entire village as a collective, and counter male dominion together.

To stir this process of transformation, it was important to create a safe space for reflection, where women could come together and address the range of issues they were facing. This is how the women’s sangathan as a space for collective action, reflection, and self-realisation was born.

Male members of the community resisted women entering the public domain or playing public roles.

This process of action and reflection, which we know as conscientisation, helped women develop a critical understanding of their social reality. It enabled women to identify and explore the root causes of their oppression. However, coming together wasn’t always about finding a solution to a problem. The mahila mandals and sangathans gave women an opportunity to chat about their lives and their changing worlds, sing and dance together, laugh aloud, argue, fight, celebrate their differences, and script a new identity. In the process, many bonds of friendship were cemented between all of us. More importantly, while I was trying to enter the lives of women in Kutch, I too opened up to let them into my inner world. One cannot expect communities to share their vulnerabilities without sharing one’s own.

It was through many fun-filled, immersive sessions that women gradually came to recognise gender and gender roles as merely variable social constructs. And in the process of reflecting on our circumstances and decisions, we would also try to grapple with our own understanding of why we may have behaved in a particular way. Everyone had to learn how not to feel, think, or be as society said we were ‘supposed’ to.

There was backlash, of course. Male members of the community resisted women entering the public domain or playing public roles. I recall a time in the early 1990s when the women in a village were trying to revive a traditional water body that had not been used for the past 40 years. The male village leaders sued the women, taking them to court over the claim that the land holding the water body belonged to one of them. This turned out to be an epiphanic moment for the women. They pushed back, remarking how earlier they hadn’t even been allowed outside their courtyards but now, thanks to the men, they had reached the court. Eventually, after a large group of women met a startled judge in his chamber, he ordered an out-of-court settlement, which went in favour of the women.

Can you tell us how the women’s movement has evolved from when you began working to today?

When I began working with women, there were similar women’s collectives taking shape in rural Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, and elsewhere in the country. There was this overwhelming feeling of being part of a shared commons, co-creating a new future with lakhs of women we had never seen or met.

However, the growing effectiveness of women’s collectives led to an inevitable impulse on the part of the state, donors, and civil society at large to multiply the formula, and formalise these collectives. Thus began the upscaling of self-help groups (SHGs).

I have yet to understand how and why SHGs— which are largely an instrument for livelihood generation—became an exclusive community institution for women, with women?

With the SHG movement, a large part of the focus has shifted from women’s conscientisation to metrics and tangible economic achievements. Even though many of the SHGs have been quite successful on these counts, the heart of the women’s movement has somewhere become limited to addressing economic transformations. SHGs may have helped women change their condition of poverty, but they have not necessarily enabled them to transform their gendered position in the socio-economic set-up. The processes of transformation that the women’s movement of the 1980s and ‘90s invested in—one of self-reflection—has been greatly diluted in the optics of ‘women’s empowerment’—a somewhat reductive concept today, a buzzword in the mainstream. To me, it sometimes feels like the soul has gone from the women’s movement.

Moreover, with gender becoming a project embellishment as it were—I know I am caricaturing the moment, but that is how it often seems—the onus of ‘empowerment’ in any programme is squarely placed on women. Men are completely absolved from being active participants and actors in the overall process of transformation— gender or otherwise. I have yet to understand how and why SHGs— which are largely an instrument for livelihood generation—became an exclusive community institution for women, with women? Why don’t we have SHGs of men too?

The positive development I see is that the 73rd amendment, mandating local self-government, has been a game changer for women in the past two decades. The political engagement of rural and urban women in local governance has been quite remarkable.

What I tell myself every day and what I often share with young people these days is that no matter how dark it gets we have to ensure that we don’t allow the darkness to enter us.

And yet, the more women have claimed space in the public domain, the more aggressive society’s pushback has been. Look at the absolutely brutal forms of sexual violence women and girls—across geographies, ethnicities, religion, castes, and age groups—are being subjected to. A prime example of this is the hijab ban in Karnataka, and the kind of abuse women and girls faced because of it.

So, I think these are the two major shifts I see today when I think about all the gains and strides made by the women’s movement in the past few decades. First, most women’s collectives, and SHGs in particular, have become instruments for economic transformation alone. Second, the rise in communal hatred that is ripping through our entire society is robbing the women’s movement of its immense potential to unite irrespective of caste, class, gender, and religious lines.

What are some things that you would like to pass on to young people who are working in the development space already or are just entering it?

Every era sees different challenges. The kind of challenges we are seeing now, for example, where bigotry sits with us in our living rooms, is not something we have ever confronted. So I can’t really speak from experience here. And I consider my words as more of a reflection on us and our times, rather than advice. 

What I tell myself every day and what I often share with young people these days is that, no matter how dark it gets, we have to ensure that we don’t allow the darkness to enter us. Because when that happens, all is lost. To avoid that, we must first invest in our own internal transformation and continuously draw on our experiences, practices, and influences. Those of us in the sector are sometimes so focused on working for external transformations that we miss looking inwards. To be able to give oneself to this space consistently and committedly, to remain spirited, and quietly resist all forms of oppression, dominance, and injustice, one cannot but remain equally committed to one’s own being, and to the practice of becoming aware of oneself in every moment, at all times.

I think each one of us needs to resist the kind of intolerance and hatred we’re seeing today and bring back a spirit of non-violence in our actions and our thoughts.

Many young people I interact with share the kind of pressures they experience. They have aspirations of wanting to be ‘big’ in order to be impactful and effective, with everyday achievements being announced on social media. It can make one feel anxious and inadequate constantly.

So, what I want to share is this: We should not shy away from doing things that may seem small. Small is beautiful. When we keep the small within us alive, our hearts just keep growing larger, and we ourselves become bigger and better human beings. We have to remind ourselves that some of the biggest transformations have taken place because of some very ‘small’ acts and actions.

But when we suffer from the pressures of scale, of waiting to become big, our hearts begin to shrink a bit.

I also feel that, as members of civil society, we all need to do much more than we are doing now in order to snap out of this collective inertia. We need to move beyond business as usual. Maybe we need to step back, go out afresh, and re-engage with young minds and hearts across our remotest villages, kasbas, urban informal settlements, universities, and the most privileged and underprivileged spaces, in order to redefine the way forward.

If we do not allow ourselves to be a medium to shift the moral compass in society today, then we may regret it in the future. I think each one of us needs to resist the kind of intolerance and hatred we’re seeing today and bring back a spirit of non-violence in our actions and our thoughts. Because non-violence is really nothing but the presence of love—where there is love, there will be no violence.

Civilisations have seen so many cycles of change where things really caved in and where the darkness rose. But then, perhaps, the darkness comes only for us to be able to see that thin ray of light shining through the cracks.

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Know more

• Learn more about India’s feminist movement in the last decade through this interactive article.
• Read this interview with Kamla Bhasin, one of the most prominent voices in India’s feminist movement.

Over the last four decades, she has been at the forefront of several other people-led movements as well including the Right to Work campaign which led to the institution of MGNREGA, and the Right to Food movement. In 2000, she received the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership.

In this interview with IDR, Roy talks about building and sustaining participatory movements, the role of sangharsh (struggle) in driving change, and the power of the collective voice. She explains why the right to freedom of expression is critical for India, why civil society must fight to sustain it, and hopes for a free and open society where the young can function without fear within the boundaries of constitutional morality.

Could you tell us a little about your early years and early influences?

I was born a year before Independence. This placed me squarely alongside the journey of the new and nascent country that we call India, or Bharat. I grew up in Delhi—I’m a Dilliwali as they say. My family was progressive and privileged by education—my mother had studied mathematics and physics, my father had been to Shantiniketan when he was a young boy of 10, and my grandmother had done her senior Cambridge. Issues of equality were part of the daily routine. Regardless of their class, caste, or literacy levels, everyone who came home sat together and had tea from the same cups. I did not realise at that time that this was not ‘normal’. I grew up celebrating all festivals and listening to the stories of great human beings.

I was sent to Kalakshetra in Chennai to learn classical dance and music, and to a range of schools after that. I studied English literature and completed my postgraduation from Indraprastha College, Delhi University, in 1967. I taught a year in my college and, in 1968, joined the civil service as part of the union territories cadre. I was posted in Pondicherry, and then in Delhi. I resigned in 1975 to come to Rajasthan to work with the rural poor.

There are several reasons I have worked all my life. My mother was an extremely intelligent and accomplished woman. She did not however participate in public life, which frustrated her, because she believed that women were not less capable than men. But in a man’s world, women were always looked down upon as domestic accoutrements. This was extremely distressing for my mother, and it became deeply ingrained in me that a woman has to have a life beyond the domestic sphere.

You could say that my first politics was feminism. The second was caste politics.

It is one of the fundamental postulates on which I have built my life—a woman must have a place where she can express herself with freedom. You could say that my first politics was feminism. The second was caste politics. My father, grandparents, and great-granduncle had fought discrimination, particularly related to caste. Understanding caste, untouchability, and the rigidity and discrimination of the caste system were part of my growing years. And since I grew up in Delhi shortly after Partition, religious discrimination and violence, and the havoc they cause, were also part of my emotional memory.

I joined the civil service because I felt that it was possibly a place where one could actively work to reduce discrimination and inequality in society. When I left the civil service, I started working with a nonprofit called the Social Work and Research Center, or Barefoot College, in Tilonia, Rajasthan.

In those nine years I de-schooled myself. I learned about cross-cultural communication and about poverty, caste, and gender seen through the lens of those who suffer discrimination. I understood what prevents the poor from upward mobility. I learned from extremely intelligent working-class men and women.

I learned a lot from one woman in particular—Naurti, who has stayed a friend for more than 40 years. She is Dalit, and a little younger than me. She was a wage worker when we first met. She chose to become literate, a labour leader who led the fight against unfair minimum wages, an acknowledged leader of women’s rights, a computer operator, and a sarpanch. I was part of her campaign on minimum wages. I took the law to her through an awareness programme, and she organised the people. Finally, in 1983, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark judgement on minimum wages—Sanjit Roy vs the Government of Rajasthan—invoking Article 14 and Article 23 of the Constitution. Naurti has been a comrade and together we have fought against sati and rape, and for the RTI, MGNREGA, and other rights-based programmes. She is an extremely courageous woman, and we continue to be friends and equals.  

At Tilonia, I learned about the need for an organisational structure for participatory management. It is critical to build democratic ways of functioning with equality. How do you facilitate participation and what are the non-negotiables? The first principle is that you have to listen, and you have to accept dissent. You must also accept that in order to reach a consensus, you have to give up something. This happens only if there is a structure to do so.

As I grew in my politics, I realised I didn’t want to be a development-wali. I wanted to be a participant in the struggles to access constitutional rights. I went to central Rajasthan to work with the workers and set up the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), along with like-minded friends—Shankar Singh and Nikhil Dey. MKSS is a sangharsh (struggle) based organisation. It is located in a mud hut in Devdungri and doesn’t take any institutional funds. It is where the demand for the RTI was crafted and began, as did other struggles. It has been a long journey. At this moment, we are struggling for an accountability law, and are on a yatra to all the 33 districts in Rajasthan to ask the government to implement its electoral promise. I still work and struggle.

You’ve shown the country how to build a movement that has outsized impact. How do you build a movement and sustain it when you don’t have institutional funding?

A funded movement is limiting. Mahatma Gandhi said that when you fight your own people, you must not at any point open yourself to the criticism that the battle is funded by vested interests. Funding must come from people whose battle is represented, or from supporters of the movements and campaigns. A campaign for equality is not a project.

Participatory movements and campaigns are affected by many variables—the government that can put people in jail, the mafia that can beat them up, the societal and feudal structure that one has to navigate. It is impossible to tell exactly when something will happen. You cannot therefore predict the outcome of a campaign.

When you work with people there are three kinds of work: seva, nirman, and sangharsh. Seva is welfare or service—providing food to those who are starving or caring for those who are ill. Nirman is development—running schools or a women’s skill programme. MKSS’s work falls squarely in the third area of sangharsh, or struggle. It is almost always political work in its broadest definition—that of asking for constitutional rights within the framework of democratic participation.

All three ways of working are necessary to build a healthy society. The rights-based work done by organisations such as MKSS and the Narmada Bachao Andolan need not necessarily have a big budget. It can be sustained by what we now call crowdfunding.

MKSS and I believe all struggles for equality are rooted in a political understanding.

MKSS and I believe all struggles for equality are rooted in a political understanding. It is political not in the sense of competing for state power, but for realising constitutional rights. I am constitutionally enabled and mandated to fight this battle by the chapters on fundamental rights and the directive principles of state policy. In the course of the battle, we are not against the judiciary, the legislature, or the executive. But we demand that they function for the people, specifically in reference to constitutional norms.

At MKSS we draw the minimum agricultural wage as an honorarium. We are a small group of people—around 20 of us, and we have continued like this for more than 31 years. We live like the people we represent so that we know their hardships. We welcome and invite people to contribute to our movement in both kind and cash. We believe in asking for money from the people we represent. Firstly, because there is humility in the act of asking—we don’t exist without the people and their contribution brings them dignity and closer to owning the issue. Secondly, they evaluate us and hold us accountable. If we do not deliver, we will not be supported.

Money is less important than people’s participation.

But money is less important than people’s participation. The 40-day long dharna (a peaceful demonstration) in Beawar in 1996 was a landmark in the struggle for the RTI, and was a story of people’s participation.¹ We walked through 400 villages asking for support. Every family gave us five kilos of grain and four to six days of their time by joining us at the dharna. It became a high point of life in the town. Everybody congregated at the dharna site because it was full of energy. We ate there, lived there, and had events there—poetry readings, celebrations of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s birthday, Labour Day, and more.

The movement started as a working-class demand for the RTI to fight corruption and arbitrary use of power, and slowly expanded into understanding how essential it is for democratic functioning and the fact that it’s a constitutional value. As a friend of mine, S R Sankaran, an IAS officer, said, “It is a transformatory law, because through the RTI you can realise other rights—human rights, economic rights, social rights, and more.”

People realised that transparency is an important way to fight corruption and arbitrary power. But if that dharna in Beawar hadn’t been sustained and supported financially and politically by the local residents and the trade unions, it could not have happened. That is the power of the collective voice—it’s the coming together of people, where we own the issue, it becomes our own fight, and when this transition happens, people are with you to struggle till the end.

How can you get different stakeholders, each of whom may have different goals, to align with your mission? 

There are a few non-negotiables. First, one’s own transparency and accountability must be an important component of our public life. I come from a privileged class by virtue of my birth and education. I work with very underprivileged people. When one is in a position of privilege, conversations have to begin by stating our probity and integrity, and with transparency. For example, there was a daily account of donations on a board at the dharna in Beawar.

Second, you have to be equal, not just talk about equality. Deep down we have to understand that everybody is an equal, that everybody has a right to think, to talk, to be. A dilemma arises when you talk to people who do not share the same basic principles. If I am in discussion with a person who believes in caste, I should have the ability to start a dialogue with them about how completely illogical caste is. But unless we enter into a dialogue we really do not have true engagement, friendship, participation, and growth.

The Dalits and the poor taught me that for them any expression of equality means struggle, and the courage to confront.

What is the role that civil society organisations can play to engage more actively with the current government so that the voices of the community are heard?

We are losing our right to protest, the right to dissent, the right to access public spaces. And what is democracy if you don’t have the public ear and public space. All of us must ask for the right to dissent in a democracy, the right to be heard. The problem with Indian democracy is that despite the presence of millions of voters, the pool of decision makers get smaller and narrower at the top. The voice at the bottom ceases to be heard. Decisions that affect millions of people are taken by a few, not in Parliament, not even in the Cabinet. MKSS believes that the street is our Parliament and our policy room. That’s where we go to protest and converse. When you’re on the street, you communicate with people who are not exactly part of your campaign or movement. That’s the kind of stimulation you need to have a civil society movement. We filed a PIL in the Supreme Court to regain access to the Jantar Mantar, and were successful in July 2018 in regaining the use of public space to protest.

My generation was very fortunate—we were not denied the right to freedom of expression. We could say what we liked. Today, we are beginning at the drawing board to get a system of governance that allows free expression and freedom of speech, which are fundamental to a democracy.

Engaging other stakeholders is equally critical. The RTI movement involved everyone—the media, academia, lawyers, and others. MGNREGA would not have happened without economists such as Jean Drèze, Jayati Ghosh, Prabhat Patnaik, and others who used fiscal arguments to counter the government’s constant refrain of ‘no money’. The RTI law was drafted by Justice P B Sawant, an ex-Supreme Court judge and chair of the Press Council of India.

Civil society is a target today because it amplifies the voices of justice and equality.

If you want anything to succeed, you have to involve a range of people. And you have to convince them about your idea—this must happen through public communication. Civil society is a target today because it amplifies the voices of justice and equality. We also have to understand that civil society is a large umbrella; it’s not just activists. It includes practically the entire population of India, because except for the state and the market, everyone else is civil society. We have to fight to sustain what we have.

What is your message for young people in India? How do we make sure that we don’t waste the legacy that you and your fellow travellers have bequeathed us?

The right to freedom of expression is fundamental to everyone’s well-being. Any system that tries to repress and suppress this right denies not only a democratic or constitutional right, but also a human right. It denies the right to life and liberty. Hence, for many of us today, the major preoccupation is India’s democracy, global democracy, and the attack on the right to freedom of expression, on account of which so many young people have suffered.

The most important right being corroded in the last seven years is free speech and expression with equality. It is such an important part of life and an important guarantee of real democracy. And today we must regain whatever we’ve lost, and sustain whatever we have for a better future. It doesn’t matter whether you’re involved in sangharsh, seva, or nirman, whether you’re a small or large organisation, whether you are a woman or a man. It doesn’t matter where you’re located. The right to free speech and expression is fundamental for freedom and liberty.

In this new, contemporary India, young people have a big struggle ahead to regain this right. The RTI is critical because it has brought a sense of reassurance to the nation and to the eight million users of that right that we are sovereign. The closest any campaign has come to set the discourse on public ethics is perhaps the RTI. The MGNREGA, by bringing in social audit, has spread the ideas of transparency and accountability across the board. These two big campaigns of which I am a part not only fostered participation, but also translated an ethical principle into implementable policy. And that’s critical. Because if you can’t convert those principles into an implementable, practical, pragmatic, tangible reality, they only exist on paper.

Young people must also understand that there is no such thing as ‘my work’ and ‘your work’. There’s simply work to be done.

Young people must also understand that there is no such thing as ‘my work’ and ‘your work’. There’s simply work to be done. The issue should be far more important than our individual selves. We are all instruments that bring an issue alive. We all want to be recognised and acknowledged—it’s a human condition. But at what cost? Understanding that one’s personal good lies within the general good is important.

Do you have any concluding thoughts for all of us?

We see an increasing slew of attacks against religious minorities, Dalits, and other marginalised communities. Civil society, which speaks out against oppression and amplifies the voices of the marginalised, is also under attack. Violence, instead of discussion and debate, has become a common response for settling disagreements. But what makes all this worse is the state’s covert and overt support for perpetrators of violence.

We need to nurture a culture of non-violence. Non-violence is born of tolerance, courage and a respect for life. It is a great Indian heritage, which is being undermined. We need to build forums for exchange of ideas and dialogue, which is what a constitutional democracy is all about.  

I wish for a free and open society in which the young can function and do whatever they want to do without fear within the four corners of constitutional morality.

Finally, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the thousands of people who have contributed to my growth, reassuring me that there is goodness in humanity and that we all have roles to play as more equal, just people, and that we can bridge the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged. I hope that in the years I have to live, I never stop talking truth to power.

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Footnote:

1. Aruna Roy with the MKSS Collective. ‘Hamara Paisa Hamara Hisab: Beawar and Jaipur Dharnas, 1996’, The RTI Story: Power to the People. New Delhi: Roli Books, 2018.

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Know more

• Watch this TEDx Talk by Shankar Singh to learn more about how the RTI Act came to be.
• Read an excerpt from The RTI Story: Power to the People.
• Read this perspective from Arun Maira on creating effective coalitions.

In this interview with IDR, Fernandez talks about the evolution of SHGs in India. He explains why nonprofits need to help communities build their own institutions, elaborates on the fractured relationship between civil society institutions and the government, and tells us why the social sector needs to spend time with, and learn from, the informal sector.

Could you speak about your childhood and the early influences in your life?

My maternal grandfather left his home in Goa at a young age to study in Pune. He then got a job with the Burma Oil Company in 1904, which is also where my father ended up working as an apprentice engineer. I was born in Burma. When World War II broke out, our family caught the last boat from Rangoon (now Yangon) to Kolkata with a small bundle of belongings, from where we proceeded to our ancestral home in Goa.

My father was sent directly to Abadan, Iran, and then to Assam, where he was the general manager of the Assam Oil Company. I was brought up by my maternal grandparents and grand-aunt while my parents were in Iran, because in those days—more than 80 years ago—they didn’t take kids everywhere. My grandparents were conservative, traditional Catholics, and my childhood revolved around my school and the Church.

Traditionally, many in our family dedicated their lives to the Church. I too was ordained a priest in 1953. Soon after, I was posted as the secretary to the Archbishop of Bangalore, where I dealt with files and accounts, and was close to the power structure. In 1971, I was asked to move to Kolkata to manage the Bangladesh refugee programme as the deputy director of Caritas India, the official institution of the Catholic Church that responds to disasters and promotes development.

Like my religious beliefs, my ideas on development have changed over time.

This experience exposed me to a whole new world, making me question my thinking that was built on religion and tradition. Working and living with people, especially the poor, during the droughts in Maharashtra (1973) and Ramnad (1973–74) brought new ideas and beliefs to my world view. Eventually, in 1976, I left the Church.

Like my religious beliefs, my ideas on development have changed over the years. As young people we were taught to eat all the food on our plates because somebody is hungry somewhere. So, we were encouraged to go and give food to people. Later, as I grew up and started work with Caritas, I learned that you don’t give a person fish, you teach them to fish. But when I started working at MYRADA, where I’ve dedicated about 40 years of my life, I discovered that that was only half the story—that even if you teach people to fish, they can’t reach the river. Particularly in India, since there are so many obstacles in the way for the poor. There are social barriers, caste barriers, great power imbalances.

The SHG concept, which revolutionised the area of microfinance and livelihoods in India, was your brainchild. How did you get around to developing and building the SHG movement?

When we were working in rural Karnataka during the early 1980s, the issue of power was particularly stark in the two institutions we worked with: the ones that were established to support governance (the panchayati raj), and those that promoted institutional development (the cooperatives). In our work with the Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) in Karnataka, we discovered that these cooperatives were controlled by the powerful people of the village; the poor people were marginalised. In fact, the PACS, which were supposed to provide finance to the poor at subsidised rates, were used as an instrument to exploit them.

For example, the president and secretary of the cooperatives, who were large farmers with economic power and social status, would borrow money from the cooperative at 7–8 percent and on-lend it to others at 40 percent. Moreover, their borrowers, who were invariably their tenants or smaller farmers, were at their mercy—they were at their beck and call; they had to plough their lands first and then their own.

Seeing this play out, we realised that cooperatives don’t work in stratified, structured societies. The model of cooperatives—which was promoted actively by the government to support the livelihoods needs of vulnerable populations—worked well with the milk cooperatives in Anand, Gujarat, because the smaller producers rode on the backs of the big ones. The 100-kilometre milk collection route needed to be viable in that they had to be able to collect large quantities of milk. And it was the big farmer who could supply 25–30 litres of milk versus the small farmer’s 1–2 litres of milk. So the small farmer piggybacked off his bigger neighbours. But in the credit cooperative, it was the opposite. Here, the wealthier, bigger farmer exploited the smaller one because they could; their social and economic status gave them power and influence, which they took full advantage of.

This doesn’t mean that the concept of cooperatives is faulty. Some cooperatives work because the commodities are different. The principle we learned was that the institution that you decide to use—in this case, a cooperative—has to be appropriate to the resource being managed or objective to be achieved. If you use the wrong institution, you can end up doing the opposite of what you intended. Use a cooperative for milk, you’ll succeed. Use a cooperative for credit, and it will be exploitative.

You cannot learn what happens in the field in management classrooms.

It took close and regular interactions with people, especially with the poorer farmers, in places where they felt comfortable, including tea and liquor stalls, for us to arrive at this learning. You cannot learn what happens in the field in management classrooms. If people want to work in the informal sector, they have to learn in the informal sector, where the people are, where they feel comfortable telling you about their lives, their problems and solutions. And they have to feel comfortable in the field. If you make them come to your classroom, you will not get any information because those spaces are intimidating.

You have to spend enough time with the milk unions, the farmer groups, the women’s collectives; here you will learn politics, economics, and sociology. It was through sitting in a liquor shop in Huthur, Karnataka, that I learned the dynamics of the big farmers versus the small—that they would borrow from the cooperative at 7 percent and lend it to the poor at 40 percent.

Could you tell us more about what you learnt through your interactions with the people?

When the poorer families came to discuss their issues with the PACS system with the MYRADA staff, they came in groups of 10 to 20. We soon realised that they never came alone—they needed support and so they came with a group of people they trusted. When I started talking to them, I discovered that the people in these groups were united by relationships of trust. And that is what pulled them through the difficult times. When they wanted money, they would ask someone in this circle. When a mother wanted to go somewhere, she would ask someone in this group to keep her child. They trusted one another—these relations of mutual trust and support were a strength. So we said, why not build on this strength?

We called these groups affinity groups. We said that if we want them to have control over their lives, if they had to find the path to the river, we would have to invest in them in terms of time and training—what we called institutional capacity building. Even today people think that you can focus on individuals, educate them and provide skills, and they will thrive. But these are not individual skills, these are institutional skills—how to meet, how to participate, how to solve problems.

We knew from experience that in most cases a poor person cannot bring about change by themselves, especially if it involves taking on mighty power structures.

We knew from experience that in most cases a poor person cannot bring about change by themselves, especially if it involves taking on mighty power structures. They needed others to join them, preferably in an institution of their own. Learning that these groups chose not to question or challenge the local power structure was an important lesson for us. They feared a backlash, and they couldn’t afford that since they had to live in the village. Instead, they opted to form institutions—in this case, SHGs—which could provide them with the support they needed to gain a degree of independence from the powerful families that controlled their society.

We soon discovered something else—that the poor had sufficient strengths to form these institutions. We have to realise that if we want people to really stand on their own, we cannot work on their needs. Most studies are based on how do you assess needs, how do you assess the problems. We learned that if you build on people’s needs, you don’t empower them. On the contrary, they will expect you to take the lead and solve their problems because you’ve created a relationship of dependency.

Building institutions is the beginning of the basis of power. You can understand this clearly from the farmers’ movement of 2020. If they had met one day and had a dharna, nobody would have paid any attention. Or in the case of women who go and protest outside a liquor shop, and no one listens. The farmers’ protest worked because they sustained it. And they would never have sustained it had they not built an institution. And as part of building it, they had to educate people, constantly tell them why they were doing it, what the goals were, and how they had to keep at it. That is important—the repeated messaging, sustained presence, and participation.

Training groups of people on how to sustain themselves and their movements is one of the biggest sources of power for the marginalised.

How can nonprofits help in the building of institutions?

If the organisation’s mission is to build people’s institutions, and to support the community to take the lead across every step of the process, then a strong understanding between the donor and their nonprofit partner is critical. This approach has its downsides—building institutions and involving people in the project’s process needs more time and skills than donors budget for. Moreover, not all of them approve the costs incurred for institutional capacity building. 

Further, all people’s institutions do not progress at the same speed, and progress is not always linear, especially when they meet hurdles created by entrenched power structures. Many take two steps forward and one step back because they do not want to cause tension or are not sure of the fallout.

There are upsides too, however. People find their own ways of overcoming the hurdles created by unequal power relations, and they move forward at their pace and at the time of their choice. If a nonprofit takes the lead without involving people’s institutions, the tendency is to opt for a strategy which is quick but potentially confrontational. The nonprofit is then usually forced to leave, and the communities are left worse off as a result.

On its part, it is important that the nonprofit makes the effort required to set up an organisational structure, operating systems, and an internal culture that is appropriate to support the implementation of its mission of building people’s institutions.

The SHG model has been so successful in some areas. Why has this model of local institution building and devolution of power not worked in other areas?

It is important to understand that finance was not the objective of the SHG model—it was empowerment. The model was scaled with the help of financial institutions like NABARD, because it needed policy changes around lending and access to finance in the country. However, initially the SHGs were the mandate of the various state Women’s Development Corporations (WDCs), which focused on empowerment. Unfortunately, the political patronage for WDCs faded and gradually they became weaker. Today, there are almost no WDCs, except MAVIM in Maharashtra. With this gone so has the focus on empowerment. The SHGs are now part of the Rural Development Department, which means that they are run by the government as a financial intermediary as part of the delivery system, and not as an empowered local institution that reflects the power of the people.

Just as SHGs have become mere delivery arms for the NRLM, the relationship between the government and nonprofits has become very transactional across sectors, especially during and post COVID-19. What are the implications of this?

This transactional relationship changes the role of civil society completely. The previous governments, for the last 50 years, paid attention to nonprofits, because they understood the critical role they played. But even they clamped down on nonprofits that protested against industries causing pollution and environmental damage, and on nonprofits that played a significant role during the Emergency. 

In general, our governments have never really respected civil society; they have tolerated it.

In general, our governments have never really respected civil society; they have tolerated it. Today it doesn’t even tolerate us—it calls us the fourth frontier of warfare. There is a sharp difference between tolerate and respect. If I tolerate something it means I don’t agree with you, but I put up with you since I cannot do much to control you. But if I respect you, it means that I might even support you because you are doing something worthwhile even though I may not agree with it.

So why didn’t civil society ever get respected?

There are several reasons. One, civil society does not align with the government’s approach of uniformity, speedy delivery, and politicking to win votes. When programmes started by civil society are successful, politicians tend to take credit—for votes. Bureaucrats on the other hand develop projects that incorporate features of the nonprofit’s programme, but they do not give them the space and time required to grow. The government also wants standardisation because it’s easier to control and manage administration of a state, district, and block by eliminating any room for discretion.

There is and always will be an uneasy relationship between government and civil society. That is not a problem. It depends on how you balance the differences. That’s where respect comes in. The moment we don’t understand what respect is, we become intolerant. At MYRADA, for instance, we have had times when one quarter of the institution questioned the government, partially worked with the government but also managed to introduce changes where required, and the rest nurtured independent new initiatives. It’s very important to balance all of these competing priorities in one organisation.

If you do not want to balance the myriad approaches of engaging with the state, you can’t work in a society like India. We have different pressures, but you must know how to get the government in, you must also know how to get the nonprofits together, and you must also know when to tell the government that ‘we don’t agree, but we have an alternative’.

What can civil society do to change this current transactional and, at times, hostile attitude that the government has towards it?

There are signs that civil society is restructuring itself. Though individual activists for social change are an endangered species in the present political ecosystem, there are a large number of action-based organisations that promote people’s participation and institutions in the informal sector. Civil society institutions are also emerging from large social movements like the recent farmers’ movement, and from an increasing sense of marginalisation among Adivasis and Dalits.

Ultimately, though, change is going to take place, perhaps not in the Parliament but on the street. It will happen outside our formal institutions of democracy. The problem though is that if it’s going to happen outside and in the informal system, which is large, and the next generation of civil society thinkers and practitioners do not know enough or care to learn about the informal sector or spend time there, there will be problems.

We need be immersed in this new India from whose experience we can draw inspiration for a new vision, and spread an alternate narrative infused with the values of respect for plurality (many) and diversity (different) and equal opportunities for all—values enshrined in our Constitution.

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Know more

• Read this article to know why small and marginalised farmers need more than financial inclusion.
• Watch this video to learn more about Aloysius Fernandez’s journey in the social sector.
• Learn through a series of Madhubani paintings how a women’s SHG in Odisha saved an entire village.