Barkatpura

POLITICS OF THE COMMON-GROUND

2010-03-08T22:33:00.000-08:00

(The views voiced in the post are the personal views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organisation)

This post is essentially to revive the Barkatpura blog as a platform for internal discussions. I felt that we have little space for formal discussions (although informal ones galore :P) within the organization and the blog could provide that space.

If I have slackened in the use of formal language, proposed ideas that are not completely coherent and if I happen to hurt the reader’s sentiments, do excuse me. I am only trying to initiate a debate.

What better way to get people to respond than discuss Telangana?

The Telangana Debate

When the state is subject to hartals, huge political gatherings, heated discussions, student activism and self-immolations, how can you blame someone for being concerned?

Well I am concerned and I believe I should state my position on the issue. I am in support of the formation of the Telangana state as I believe it is an opportunity to address three related issues; democratization of policy-making processes, democratization of governance and lop-sided development (I will be referring to all three issues interchangeably from here on).

In this post I would like to address two questions that I felt would further clarify my position (as it has proved controversial to say the least). I will not be entertaining questions like- ‘how can you be from Andhra and still support Telangana?’ - from either of the regions in this post, as I think they question my ability to take informed decisions based on my understanding of what is just.

The questions I will try and address are as follows: a) How, I think, the issue of lop-sided development is related to the Telangana identity? ; b) How, I think, the formation of the Telangana state going to address the issue?

Social Aspects of Political Movements

History, I believe is evidence to the fact that political movements often have social characteristics that do not immediately relate to the issue at hand. I can confidently state two such examples off-hand. The independence movement, for instance, undeniably had a religious character. Most freedom fighters had used religion as a basis to appeal to people (including Gandhi who called his protest gatherings as public prayer and public fasting) even when the issue of independence could have been based on non-religious ideas of rights and freedom. Similarly the more recent Anti-arrack movement in Andhra Pradesh in the 1980’s was predominantly a women’s movement although the issue of alcoholism need not have been women centric. Similarly, the political movement against lop-sided governance and development has taken on the most prominent social identity in the region - Telangana identity. The fact that the social character of the movement is not directly related to the issue does not mean the issue can be side-stepped. The patriotism one finds for this identity has a history and therefore, is neither new nor irrelevant. It is relevant because those who have benefitted from the lop-sided policies in the past within the Telangana region (as well as the rest of Andhra Pradesh) are the dominant sections from the Andhra region. Therefore, the discontent that people of Telangana voice against Andhra-ites is directed at dominant Andhra-ites in Telangana and not (as often mistaken) at the people of Andhra or Rayalaseema. In essence, the movement is a situation where the people of a particular region are trying to amend their governance issues.

Importance of Internal Debate

How can the formation of the Telangana state address the issue of lop-sided development? Well the formation of the new state would have to be followed by restructuring governance systems and policy-making systems within the region so as to have greater representation and participation from its people. Issues of governance mechanisms can be taken up right at the inception and there is adequate knowledge in the public domain to ensure the exercise proves fruitful.

However, there are many from within the movement who would benefit from the formation of the state without having to restructure governance systems. Such people would gain not only from the formation of the new state but also from the existing power structures within the governmental set-up that do not allow for democratic governance. They would like to believe either, the issue is one of Telangana sentiment rather than the issue of representation or, the issues of representation can be dealt with after the formation. Ms. Rama Melkote, when she spoke at the public meeting organized by Hyderabad Forum for Telangana, said “Although many of us have a nostalgic view of Hyderabad, those who gathered in protest on the Osmania University campus believed it was more than just nostalgia…” She went onto to state how, it was believed by those who gathered in the Osmania University,the formation of Telangana would provide people of the region better education and livelihood opportunities. This distinction I feel is important as it captures the difference between those who want a separate state and those who want a separate state with better governance systems. In other words, there are forces within the movement that are looking to narrow the scope of internal debate so as to pursue their vested interests.

I think it is up to the people who constitute the movement to identify such forces and deal with them. Keeping in mind the Mumbai example where the debate on regionalism has been sabotaged by violent unconstitutional forces, the challenge before the Telangana movement would be to take the road less travelled.

This I believe is sufficient reason for me to support the movement’s over-arching ideas.

Film Club - Take your Pick 3

2007-10-24T04:21:00.000-07:00

The Bourne Ultimatum

Fight Club

Mission Impossible 3

Film Club - Take your Pick 2

2007-10-24T02:45:00.000-07:00

Nuvvu Naku Nachav

Dhee

Malleswari

Film Club - Take your Pick

2007-10-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

A few choices for this Friday's screening. Please post your preferences. If nothing on this list satisfies you, then you can ask for specific titles.

Zerkalo (Mirror) by Andrei Tarkovsky

Zatoichi by Takeshi Kitano

Film Club -

2007-10-22T23:13:00.000-07:00

The Film Club will be having screenings every Friday afternoon. I want to put up a list of all the DVDs owned by the Barkatpurians on the blog so I kindly request everyone to post the titles of their collection.

Conference on “Imperialism and resultant disorder: imperatives for social justice”

2007-03-18T19:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.5thiccg.org/subthemes.html

The primary and overarching theme of the conference will be about imperialism and social justice and their social (political-economic-cultural) and environmental (socio-ecological, physical) aspects. Representatives of political organisations, unions, and social movements will also be invited to address these inter-related issues.

Look at the website for details. Yugantar can consider presenting a paper in this conference.

Hasta Manana

2007-03-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

Indians are familiar with the concept of "Indian Standard Time" or IST. No, it is not the time derived from the 82.5 degree East longitude passing near Allahabad. The tardiness of Indians is legendary. Hyderabad in particular is famous in this already lax situation.
According to BBC however, Peru is the land where punctuality has died. So much so, that the government is making vigourous efforts to promote good time-keeping.

At noon on the dot, punctuality will make its debut in Peru. Lateness will be a thing of the past, or so its government hopes.
Sirens will blare and church bells will ring to remind 27 million Peruvians to synchronise their clocks with time set by the Peruvian Navy.

Long time no post!!

2007-02-25T23:02:00.000-08:00

Hello co-bloggers! It has been more than 3 weeks since the last blog. Where is everyone? What is update from barkatpura?
This is the status, as I know
Current associates who get to barkatpura atleast at lunch time: diia, vishnu, padma, suresh, kalyani, jaideep, sashi, lalitha, lalita, vithal, kodand, niranjan

Current projects:
Minority Women Negotiating Citizenship -IDRC
Community nutrition –ICRW
C-Pod – SRTT
Integrated land information systems- Speck systems

Could someone update me on what else is happening there??

Update from me:
Presently doing four courses: environmental policy and research methods, project management, food security and landuse. Working as a teaching assistant for cultural anthropology.

Highs: walked across the frozen lake :), would be visiting non-profits at DC in april with class, saw this cool film ‘fourth world war’ (about current social movements over the world), helping organize a huge anti war protest march in Worcester
Lows: miss people at barkatpura, miss Sharama’s food and conversations over lunch, the cold the morning (so hard to wake up in the cold), miss home :(

Thinksoft url

2007-02-01T03:13:00.000-08:00

For your information, the site for Thinksoft Consultants is up (and has been for a while, actually).

Ego Surfing

2007-01-15T22:56:00.000-08:00

Googling the name of yours truly threw up this link.

New Management

2007-01-02T12:50:00.000-08:00

Just a note to let you know that Blogger is being "merged" with Google after its purchase by the latter. Now your Google/Gmail IDs will work for Blogger as well.

Office Trip to Lepakshi

2006-12-13T22:47:00.000-08:00

On Dec 9th-10th, an office trip to Lepakshi and the Timbuktu Collective was conducted. Pictures and a report will soon follow.

Thought for Food

2006-12-03T13:05:00.000-08:00

When I'm sober I tend to consistently take an ultra-capitalistic view wherein the the government just governs and has no responsibility beyond making laws, enforcing them and collecting taxes to fund these activities. When I'm not, my expectations of the government are inevitably far greater. It is unfortunate that we have one all-encompassing institution called the "government", whose very name suggests that it has no business other than to govern. It is evident that society needs (what many societies already have) an institution with a higher purpose and that this institution must, to its best ability, ensure the well-being of all its members. It is inconceivable that such an institution should even contemplate not providing food, shelter, health care and education.

So, in my mind there are just two questions left regarding the food issue: implementation method and increasing the government's ability to provide. The first tends to get sufficient attention from non-governmental quarters; the second, only to the extent that it overlaps with the first. Who, for instance, is looking into making the FCI more efficient?

Was going to stop rambling and get to the crux of what I wanted to post about. Macadamia nut pancakes are calling (from the other side of the island). Expect the real post in a couple of days :-).

A Big Bureaucrat Proposes and a Bigger One Disposes

2006-11-23T04:49:00.000-08:00

The hulchul over reforms in tank irrigation is winding down - the outcome? Business as usual.

The seven month effort that went into designing a new delivery model running outside of regular government channels and enrolling expertise from the open market and the non-profit sector has come to nought.

If the analysis is to be believed the imperative for designing the new system is all because of the role a lowly minion in government known as the PAO plays. I dont even know what the expansion of that acronym stand for but apparently he is a person who can bring an IAS officer charging at full clip to a standstill through the inventiveness of the queries he can raise to delay payments endlessly. So all the systems that have been designed by creating 'societies' are apparently a tactic whereby the operational IAS head of a project retains financial control without reference to government systems. So much for what people wanted me to believe - that it is primarily a way officers with a strong 'social conscience' are able to bypass the inefficiencies and vested interests within government.

There may be some truth in the matter. There is surely a strong incentive within government financial systems to pass a small number of high value (multicrore) bills. A large number of smaller bills where the propensity of vendors to incentivise the payment may not be high or the incentives offered may not be attractive enough to hasten processes surely will recieve lower priority or even come up against some red-tape and bureaucratic harassment.

But is this sufficient cause to design a parallel system. Because, after all the guy causing all the hassle is someone who is way down the hierarchy of the very system these guys (IAS) are lording over. Interesting question.

Anyway the proposal of the Big Bureaucrat was shot down by the Bigger Bureaucrat - the reason? In his opinion 'societies' that have been set up in this manner hardly have a better track record in matters of financial probity.

What's one to make of all this. One thing is for sure - there is some redrafting we have to do of our report.

Traditional versus Modern

2006-11-16T22:35:00.000-08:00

Another aspect within the theme of Urbanization that I think needs to be looked at is the bipolar divide between traditional/ Métis versus modern (corporate versus local) and how it is effecting our city.
This has been buzzing in my head after I heard a world bank economist speak. He said they were measuring literacy in India. The subjects they based the measure of literacy was on English and Maths. So if a student had studied in a non-English medium school and is real smart is still an illiterate by the world bank standards.
We need to retain and encourage traditional knowledge, language, industries, culture and not let urbanization impede it. It is sad how the irani cafes are being replaced by coffee chains, Telugu and Urdu by American English (training courtesy call centres), local industries by MNCs. I dont know about do-ability or funding prospects of this aspect but it is important.

... in Flanders field

2006-11-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

If I haven’t misread-between-lines… All the blogging thus far seems to indicate Urban is the way to go?

Correct me if I’m wrong.

So, urban vulnerability sounded good to LI and me. SK is honing down on urban governance seconded by AM, and KL is into urban initiatives... echoing the service provision thread? All these are undoubtedly interconnected. So that’s good start towards foxy hedgehogging =)

Any other Urbaners speak up now. No, that’s not a threat.

However, while we are at it, may I trouble you good folk to blogitate further on some of this. Specifically, I’m trying to figure out Urban Governance – theory I get, being focused on access to citizenship n all – but what’s your take? What is it about the metropolis, globalization, decentralization, governance et al that gets your goat?

If someone wants to throw the dice that would be great…

If we do want to work on a prospectus at some stage, this discussion would, methinks, be useful.

(oh, the title is in dedication to today being that rare Canadian occasion, a holiday)

Congratulations!

2006-11-13T01:42:00.000-08:00

Our blog is a month old today. The statistics:

15 blogs in 31 days or an average of 1 every two days.

Frequency of posting: self 8, sarpvinash 1, diia 1, anita 2, lalitha iyer 1, vithal rajan 1 and lalita 1.

what say?

2006-11-13T01:14:00.000-08:00

There are complaints that contributions are not forthcoming. Let me have a go at it i thought!

As i have already indicated "Urban Initiatives" is my area. Within that framework how would it be if we have to plan to adopt an area in the city as a pilot for Yugantar. That is to experiment with a) involving people in the infrastructure that is being developed, b) mapping of the area -proper house numbers, lane names and a physical map, c) creating channels for pedestrians, cyclists, zebra crossings for the pedestrians, d) having facilities like proper traffic lights and public toilets, e) parks or sitting benches for old and children etc. There can be million things of this nature and for this there would be a need to collaborate with different institutions.

The other set of things could be with governance issues. If there are SHGs and Citizen's groups in the poorer areas of the city, to seek their representation in the municipal bodies to lobby for GOs, to lobby for pavement businesses (recently the sultan bazar pavement bookshops have been destroyed)vegetable vendors etc, and Low Income Group housing for the providers of services and so on.

Just random thoughts. Things like this do interest me ceratinly.

lalita

The Buzz of Fellowfeeling

2006-11-13T00:36:00.000-08:00

a poem I came across that says it well

I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough

I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well.

All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

Brands and Missions

2006-11-08T03:49:00.000-08:00

In a way 'thinksoft' was intended as an exercise in brand building. At the time the 'thinksoft' idea started the scene in hyderabad was that people would consult part of the year and spend most of their time working in the 'voluntary sector' (as it was then mostly known). So do some high paid work that would take care of expenses when doing low paid 'voluntary work' for most of the time. The only problem was that people had to do their own individual marketing to get work. So we thought let us build a 'brand' (thinksoft) that would do the marketing and a roster of people willing to take on consulting work for part of the year. Of course things really didnt turn out this way and we became a bunch of full time consultants with hardly any roster.

I dont rightly know if the reason was some kind of 'mission drift' or the model was in conflict with the 'objective reality'obtaining at that time.

The good thing of course is that we have ended up with a brand. Though how it stands in relation with the other well known social sector brands of Hyderabad is hard to tell. My own sense is that compared with the others we are fuzzy and hard to pigeonhole and that sometimes is a strength and sometimes/mostly a weakness.

2006-11-05T05:11:00.000-08:00

Hi! This is Vithal
So you guys have a blog. My first go at this!
With all this hi-tech savvy-ness, Barkatpura should be able to go into global bidding and we should all manke money sitting at our PCs?
So, how do we do this?

Mapped!

2006-11-01T14:28:00.000-08:00

Mapped!
This is not connected to the ongoing discussion on the barkatpura blog rather something which I got interested in ‘how mapping is an intrinsically political act’.
I was intrigued by maps when Sashi gave me this book ‘the map that changed the world’ (by the way I still have the book at home with me shall return it when I come) and then I read this book ‘seeing like a state’ which speaks about how maps were created to control people and tax them. Also how maps are made to claim and or appropriate land and resources and sometimes misread.

This is one of my favorite maps because unlike all the maps I learnt geography from America is not on top of the world and Europe is not magnified.
http://www.wall-maps.com/World/UpsideDownWorldMap.htm

My Declaration

2006-10-31T20:30:00.000-08:00

I want to work in the area of urban governance. This has to do with both democracy and dissent. More important, it will allow me to stick around Hyderabad and work with people I know best. Within this I have to choose an area/domain that has a potential for both for change and an impact.

The project proposal to the Ratan Tata Trust is a step in this direction. Do a scan and see what others are doing - what's interesting and what's not and more important what seems to work. Help us get an idea about the possibilities. Though we are thinking of it in a project mode and it will take more than a year to complete - the eureka moment does not have to wait that long. It could happen tomorrow or it may not happen for the whole year. My guess is it'll happen sooner rather than later. Once that happens it is away to the races.

We (I) will have ourselves (myself) a topic and maybe 2-3 years to work on it and make an impact. This harping on impact is from my present desire to be closer to the action (activist mode) rather than influencing (however marginally) through advisory/consulting roles.

Incidentally the proposal has the 'in principle' support of the Trust. We are going through some minor hassle with the documentation that needs to be submitted along with the proposal.

List them out

2006-10-29T09:37:00.000-08:00

May be we can all begin by listing out specific themes/ areas we are interested in and discuss if we have the expertise of taking it up as a hedgehog / foxy hedgehog?

Food security: because we have been researching food security as a part of the ICRW project and also because we have been the secretariat for the food security advisors. By the way are the meetings of the food security advisors still being conducted?

Urban Migration: For the way Hyderabad is rapidly growing in population and considering we are a mega-city in the making. What is happening with the mega-city proposal with SRTT?

I am also interested in following up with the anti-pollavaram campaign thought its not in the urban space

2006-10-28T03:46:00.000-07:00

who are the lurkers here-dont see no word from anita nisha? so wahts the complaint about me? li

Prospects for a Prospectus

2006-10-28T00:28:00.000-07:00

Am posting this as a blog rather than as an addition to the comments Diia’s blog.

When we (or people we associate with) started off in development there were not many people around and it seemed natural to get into get into many topics. I think a further reason was because of our association with grass-root rural development. If you want to do something about life in a village you have to get into everything (agriculture, health, gender, sanitation, ecology etc.etc.) But lots has happened since and the whole development game has long been mainstreamed and there are specialized NGOs even in rural development. (microfinance organisations, sustainable agriculture organizations, forestry organizations, housing organizations, dalit rights organizations and so on). So one kind of thought this is leading to is that if you are a generalist it is difficult to scale up activity or even survive.

Bears thinking about. One of my gripes/critiques of what Satyam Foundation does is as follows: How can you work in five cities with seven areas of work (health, education, livelihood etc.) and hope to make an impact in all of them with a miserly budget of Rs.5 crores? You probably need to pick one area and do a really good job of it.

The other thing that bothers me is our tendency to be a boutique and not mass-production (is that the antonym?). As we get into the NGO mode it may be wise to have some service offering(s) that gives us the locus standi (beyond our individual credentials) to participate in public fora. Service offerings have a further advantage of being replicable and scalable – and so once they are designed and validated constant intellectual effort is not needed. It will be really cool if 70-80% of our work did not involve innovation and intellectual effort (but mere operational excellence!) but brought in the bread and butter.

All this in justification of choosing a domain and a niche within it on which to focus. Not that it means you dont do other things (given what we are I think that is inevitable).

my nayapaise - Discussing Prospects

2006-10-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

Some of us had chatted briefly over the summer about initiating a discussion in the larger Yugantar/ Thinksoft community to work towards mapping out a prospectus for Yugantar; i.e. identify and outline Yugantar’s core areas of interest/ expertise; are there particular themes/ issues/ areas Yugantar wants to confine its work to or will it be a ‘grab-what-you-will’ deal. Well, expertise might broaden the prospectus more than we want, so maybe we should focus on interests?

Urban Development (UD, is there an alternate term?) – as an umbrella concept addressing a lot of the individual interests of Yugantar’s core-team and a lot of the work that Thinksoft has done/ Yugantar is doing – seems to be the area of general interest. I had meant to write a short note on ‘whats up’ in the UD scene from the donor-perspective, but I have not really been able to pull it together. I have done some fleeting ‘research’ and here is the gist of it (have generally taken a cue from Jaideep and banished my inner-editor! Thanks Jaideep…)

There seem to be some commonly identified entry points under which most programming on urban issues takes place. Firstly (and IDRC is major-ly into this) under the larger rubric of environment/ natural resource management; specific issues are, water, sanitation, solid-waste management, and urban agriculture. Under more generic socio-economic programming, urban migration, housing/ land, urban and informal economies, governance/ local leadership/ services for poor, infrastructure development projects vis a vis sustainable growth, safety/ security – esp. gendered violence, food security, and a lot of interest on policy influence and impact. The consolidated theme of urban vulnerability, and not simply urban poverty, seems to be the in-thing. The programme leader of the urban poverty and environment programme initiative said that a big ‘learning’ from a donor-roundtable at the recent WUF was that there is not enough donor attention to UD – SIDA, DANIDA and IDRC seem to have largest programming initiatives on these issues.

Don’t know if that’s useful at all, but perhaps we can launch into a mini-FGD here and see what specific entry-points we would like to/ can target. Of course, the above list is merely cud. As far as I understand, the megacity concept-note written by Sashi et al addresses a whole host of these issues. Responses from people, whether random ruminations, engaged debates on Yugantar’s future, or statements of interest are not only welcome they are the dire need of the hour!
(We need to pull some more folk onto this blog – is someone at it?)

Tagline Suggestions

2006-10-23T02:13:00.000-07:00

Hello folks. Thinking of adding a tagline to the blog name. It should be a short phrase which can be appended to the title. Eg: "Barkatpura - Home of the Free and the Brave" or "Barkatpura - The End of an Era".
Also, the name can be changed as well. While the url is fixed, the name of the blog can be modified. Any thoughts on that?

-----------------------

Some disconnected ramblings by Sarpvinash on Farhan Akthar's Don can be found here.

The Daily 300

2006-10-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

I think this blog should be a team blog and everybody who gets on it must have a responsibility. And that is that we should have a target that we will contribute 300 words a day to it as new posts. Comments dont count. If this is too steep then we should create a roster and everyone should do it by turn. At the moment we are four (five if we manage to get nisha enrolled) so 300 words every fourth day.

So who is going to start? i suggest an alphabetical order so you go first anita. anita, lalita,(nisha), sarpvinash (whos that??) and sashi in that order.

Out of Africa

2006-10-17T01:50:00.000-07:00

The per capita quantities through the PDS have been dwindling over the last year or more in Andhra Pradesh. Yesterday there were demonstrations in Hyderabad protesting that the supply of kerosene and rice was being stopped for white card holders in hyderabad. i am not sure about the rice but i can believe that about the kerosene.

Seems like more and more that happens in India is modelled after what they consider is working in Africa.

There is a big experiment going on in some southern African countries that says that direct cash transfers are the best way of subsidising or reaching welfare dollars to the poor, vulnerable, disaster stricken and so on. The thinking being that once money is in the hands of the poor then the market will take care of the supply side of welfare.

No need to bother about bureaucratic competence, corruption, supply chains and so on. Just do this one big thing right (getting the money into the hands of the poor) and the rest will take care of itself.

The model is gaining a backdoor entry into India in the form of the Rural Employment Guarantee. Once we say that 100 days of minimum wages are available to anybody who is seeking work and also establish that empirically this is true through surveys and social audits -we can also say that anyone interested in keeping body and soul together in a socially acceptable way in India (no begging, stealing etc.) can afford do so at market determined prices.

So our dependence on the elaborate Public Distribution Systems will gradually reduce and over a period of time we can dismantle it or confine it to the statistical outlier population. Stands to reason doesn't it?

Opportunity Knocks

2006-10-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

Had breakfast with Kim Alter. Wanted to find out how the first week with the Social Impact cohort had gone on. She said they were rated well but ......... What were these buts? Course content was not contextualised; it was not pitched correctly - they were straddling both a 'professional development' curriculum as well as an 'organisational development' initiative. The attention and interest of the participants was not uniform across the sessions; quality of resource people was not up to expectation, given the available pool; mentor related issues and co-ordination etc. etc.

All in all a good program but lacking a competent grounding.

Which leads to the interesting part. Are we interested in supporting this programme - initially till January ending. Then if mutually we decide that the experience is positive in terms of outcomes and relationship we could think of a more strategic arrangement.

Should we or should we not. We are not exactly desperate for work right now!

What do you think?

2006-10-14T05:01:00.000-07:00

welcome to barkatpura

thinking about what url to give the blog. yugantar or thinksoft but both are taken. a url is a locator and in a sense it is analogous to a physical location so thought why not call the url the physical location of where we are - so barkatpura.

also could be apt because the place has always had an identity crisis. are we a movement or an organisation; are we commercial or a charity; are we hierarchical or we flat-structured; are we radical or merely liberal; and so on.. the only thing we dont have a doubt about is our location and that certainly is in BARKATPURA

so welcome and contribute to the MPDS (multiple personality disorder syndrome)