#IndiaWantsNetNeutrality

#IndiaWantsNetNeutrality

Posted by Parvinder Singh on Saturday, April 11, 2015

Community as an entrepreneur!

Entrepreneurship dominates the social change discussion these days. It is understood differently across stakeholders and partners who make up the social change landscape. A possible fresh approach could be to look at the community itself in that framework.

Right-based organisations have often struggled and succeeded in positioning community as the key change maker and linked awareness about the notion of rights or right holder as a key investment in larger change process that is deep and sustainable.

When you spend time with the community witnessing how people rally around demands of entitlements and rights, it becomes clear how the rights-based framework, when seen as an entrepreneurship model, works on leveraging incremental changes to create chain reaction that unlocks public investments and creates enabling space for large-scale changes.

For instance, when a community comes together to get a school building, toilets, teachers etc the narrative is two fold. First, the demand framework looks at building awareness, solidarity and access points. Second, linking it to a change narrative that community builds to plot its investment case and rally the community around a bunch of essential schemes.

In other words, while one looks at how schemes have been taken up by communities and converted into social processes, we also need to highlight how individual entitlements have been linked to create a much wider narrative for a policy framework that is focused on public investment in key services.

Communities have been working as entrepreneurs using smaller access and assets to demand and unlock much bigger piece of schemes and hence public investments. We often miss out on highlighting this dynamics and hence lend space to shallow analysis of how entitlement schemes are not optimal. 

There is a need to look at the community as an entrepreneur on three counts: the creation on enabling environment around schemes to turn them into social mobilisation processes; harnessing interconnected schemes while strengthening demand and supply linkage; making a case for a larger framework for development based on rights and entitlements.   

Why business as usual will not do!

As we run-up to the end line of the Millennium Development Goals, apart from the shortfall in the targets, there is a lot of focus on the tremendous gains world has made on reducing hunger and poverty. A few underlying determinants of the gains have been political stability, strong democratic institutions and policy instruments. Access to services and entitlements are integrally linked to peoples' voice and representation.

Progress in meeting the MDGs — and specifically in reducing poverty — has been strongest in countries where growth has been sustained, institutions have provided peace and stability, and policies have been directed to the helping disadvantaged people. China and India together lifted some 232 million people out of poverty.

As a million flowers bloom, so to speak, in terms of expressing outrage over the glaring and growing inequality across the globe, I am tempted to add what we have known from social groups and marginalised communities campaigns. The critical mass or poorest of the poor will continue being on the margins if the business as usual approach, that misses out on systemic engagement on inequality, continues. The issue of poverty and social exclusion are linked both as a cause and consequence. This narrative needs to be central to the discussion on inequality.

According to the research recently conducted by the World Bank, if each country’s per capita income grows at its average annual rate over the past 20 years, global poverty is estimated to be just under 8 percent in 2030, much higher than the World Bank’s 3 percent global poverty target. Under this scenario, 18 countries will still have poverty rates above 30 percent in 2030. The goals will not be achieved with a business-as-usual model.

Even if we were to pick up the target of hunger reduction, the data clearly reveals that the pace of reduction slowed down considerably over the last decade, when compared with the 90's.

"The proportion of undernourished people—those individuals not being able to obtain enough food regularly to conduct an active and healthy life—decreased from 23.6 per cent in 1990–1992 to 14.3 per cent in 2011–2013. However, progress during the past decade was slower compared to that recorded in the 1990s. Should the average annual decline of the past 21 years continue on to 2015, the prevalence of undernourishment would barely exceed the target by about 1 percentage point. Meeting the target, therefore, will require considerable— and immediate—additional effort, especially in countries which have showed little headway."

In India we have been very clear in approaching poverty and inequality not purely from economic lens as the poorest constitute of socially excluded or marginalised groups. 

"The World Bank’s Global Monitoring Report for 2014-15 on the Millennium Development Goals says India has been the biggest contributor to poverty reduction between 2008 and 2011, with around 140 million or so lifted out of absolute poverty. Unfortunately, even this remarkable feat is not enough—the report says that in 2011, India accounted for 30% of those living in extreme poverty in the world. "

These figures for India are important because, without India being able to engage with inequality social, political and economic the absolute numbers will not go down. 

The policy choices will have to go beyond linear welfare schemes. The logic of pre-distributive justice, meaning not just trickle down but about access and control of resources, will have to come into play. The concept of dispossession, which relates to excluded communities being plundered through co-option of the common resources and denial traditional rights, needs to be mainstreamed as the neo-liberal economic system isn't just about leaving a few behind but taking from the poorest for the gain of a few.

#BlogActionDay #Oct16 #BAD2014

Inequality is trapping millions into poverty

There is a need to break the acceptance of inequality. The inequality today is linked to way we prioritise policies and resources. The concentration of wealth and political power needs to be debated and there are signs of unrest and conversations on engaging with inequality not just as a economic indicator but also about whose voice counts. 

I will be writing towards the Blog Action Day on three issues: 

1) Linkage between inequality and social discrimination

2) Myth of public spending being detrimental and even not feasible in terms of economic viability for the state

3) The notion of political capture, democratic spaces and media.

 #Blog #Vlog #podcast or #socialmedia profile to take part in #BlogActionDay on #Oct16 #BAD2014  http://j.mp/RpDiS0

These Shocking Statistics Reveal The Full Extent Of The Glaring Inequality In India

In our country of 1.25 billion, there are only some people who get to choose- their choice for dinner, their preferred course of education, mode of transportation and everything else; however, a much larger population struggles to survive. They don’t get to make any choices and they are forever trapped in the existence struggle trying to make ends meet.

The glare of economic success through signboards of development surely loses its sheen if lakhs of us go to sleep hungry every night. Children, marred with malnutrition walk endlessly to reach schools that falter at providing quality education. Inequality in India manifests itself in endless forms and the only way to get around is get through it and structurally reframe policies and deliveries.

The state of inequality in India is above the danger mark and we need quick action to bridge the ever widening divide between haves and have-nots. This inequality has doubled over the last 20 years since the top 10% of wage earners now make 12 times more than the bottom 10%. These gruesome statistics about the socioeconomic divide make us the worst performers among all emerging economies.

These Shocking Statistics Reveal The Full Extent Of The Glaring Inequality In India