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Saturday, August 27, 2016

[mukto-mona] Why Transformative Actions Fail In Development [1 Attachment]

[Attachment(s) from Shazzad Khan shazzadk@yahoo.co.uk [mukto-mona] included below]

Dear Respected Editor,
Please publish the attached article in your esteemed daily. Please edit if necessary, but please do publish it.
With kind regards.
Shazzad Khan
Gulshan-2, Dhaka

Why Transformative Actions Fail In Development
A practitioner's view...
By Shazzad Khan
 
In the development sector 'social transformation' or 'transformative action' is a very commonly-used jargon which denotes that without transforming the society no tangible change is possible. In most cases when the question of development is raised by development gurus or actors in the fields, they want some sort of attitudinal and behavioural change in people in the society at large, so that the intended positive change can take place tangibly in their hearts and minds. There is no doubt that the definition itself and its intention of social transformation is very rightly conceived and the expectation of its end results are what development arena desires for. But the problem begins with what development desires for and how the desires are placed by the change-makers of development in the real life.
 
When we talk about 'social transformation' or 'transformative action' we begin to ponder over a theory or concept that we want to instil in a certain section of people in a society. This essentially indicates that the instillation will gradually change the 'collective psyche' of the people to bring about desired attitudinal and behavioural change. Now the question is: when we want to strike on the collective psyche of a society do we really care for the deep-rooted and centuries-old cultural foundation and practices that dominate collective psyche itself? To be very straightforward – no, in the common trend of development.
 
There is no denial of fact that the 'collective psyche' of a society is founded through a process of centuries-old learning and practices of a certain region. In judging this collective psyche the influential factors of the 'certain region' is very important. When we consider a certain region we essentially need to consider the 'forming units' of the region itself, i.e. the people. And when we consider a certain section of people we have to consider their fundamental factor – their 'culture'. And this culture is essentially based on their deep-rooted and centuries-old respective religious beliefs, insights, outlook, mindset, rituals, practices and taboos. All these are broadly dominated by two very strong 'influencers' – 'religion and evolving norms' of a particular section of people living in a particular region, which we call a society.
 
Once again there is no denial of fact that a society of Bangladesh is not similar to a society of Sweden or any other Western countries. This comparison is in global context. Again, in local context of Bangladesh a Muslim society is not starkly similar to Hindu society, although there might me some similarities due to similarity in regional boundary. In consideration of regional boundary there might be cultural similarities (e.g. language, behavioural practices), but at the same time there might be dissimilarities due strong influencer like 'religion'. The influence of religion makes a different cultural foundation for Muslim from that of the Hindus (e.g. outlook to the existence of God, religious do's and don't's). Similarly, a Bengali Christian culture has both similarities and dissimilarities with that of Hindus or Muslims. Further down, in the Adivasi society the culture of Chakma is different from that of Santal.
 
In our society 'development' is nothing new; we know it as Unnayan for centuries together. What is 'new' is the word 'development' itself. In our villages, where most often 'development initiatives' have been directed now from past few decades, people's spontaneous collectivism had been the driving force for the Unnayan of the rural people – be it education, agriculture, food production, fisheries, flood control, fighting epidemics, facing disasters, etc. The villagers had their own way of taking up initiatives and coping mechanisms. But this Unnayan had sunk down as 'development' emerged with new connotation – having some sort of defined terms. What those defined terms are, is not the purpose of this write-up. However, the purpose is to say that the Unnayan that we had, had no definitional boundary, but had visible and tangible changes leading to people's self-development and social change.
 
But as soon as the 'development' crept in 'from abroad' with defined terms and foreign donations, the whole perception of 'people's self-development' shifted to foreign ideas, foreign definitions, foreign literatures, foreign dependence, foreign choice, foreign decisions, foreign allocations, foreign culture and foreign people. The Unnayan had turned out to be development with some middlepersons acting as professionals on behalf of the 'development-doers' to carry out their foreign agendas in our local context – in the villages, to the villagers as 'poor people'. Eventually we had fallen into the hands of the aliens and the saga is still continuing till today, without stopping.
 
So what we see every day in our development now? A host of local professionals, parroting foreign ideas and agendas on donors' behalf with handsome salaries and fringe benefits. These mediocre-intellect professionals denote themselves as 'development workers' – who have become so not 'by choice' but 'by chance'. These people have nothing creative to do but to impose their masters' alien ideas, agendas and actions on the 'their-defined' poor, marginal and destitute people in our local context. As these professionals have no footing because of their absolute dependency on foreign money for their livelihoods, they just preach what they are taught or instructed to do. They cannot or do not stop to consider that their parroted learning cannot be dovetailed with local religious and cultural realities.
 
An inventory of examples can be cited to expose the above reality, but let us take one or two. Very recently, same-sex-marriage agenda has been raised by few of these development professionals (NGOs) in Bangladesh. The idea of same-sex marriage is a Western concept, the desired end-result of which is to frame a legal provision for it. Even in the Western countries same-sex marriage is considered as a taboo from religious and cultural perspectives and legal provision for it is consciously discouraged. However, instigated by the Western thinkers these local development professionals are trying to raise this agenda, as they are doing a job to please their masters. But in reality it is neither acceptable in our religious or cultural context of people's collective psyche – be it Islam, Christianity, or Hinduism. The interesting point is that in some Western societies a woman may accept and share that her brother or son is going for a same-sex marriage or a man may accept and share that his sister or daughter has love-affair with a same-sex girl. But in case of Bangladesh even these development professionals never can accept this for their brothers or sisters, sons or daughters in their family or social life, let alone sharing it! The simple reason is: the cultural and religious mindset cannot make it happen. Therefore, if this is so, how can it be a development agenda in our context? How can this be instilled in the collective psyche of our people? Isn't it very obvious that it will have to fail?
 
Similarly, some of the development professionals are fighting for making sex-work an occupation or a profession. If it is so, will these professionals allow their sisters or daughters to adopt sex-work as a profession or an occupation by their choice? Can they utter that their sisters or daughters are doing sex-work as a solemn livelihood option?
 
To conclude, it can be said that the double-standard roles of the development agendas and development professionals have made many social transformative actions as futile efforts in our local context. The dichotomy between mostly Western agendas and local realities and the meek approach of our development professionals have seen so many wastages of money, efforts and time in social transformation. Unless we liberate ourselves from the cobweb of double-standard and wretched dependency on donors, and give first priority to people's collective psyche (including individual's), any transformative action in development will be destined to fail.
 
[The writer is a grassroots worker. He can be reached at Shazzadk@yahoo.co.uk]


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