Auroville Today, a monthly publication on Aurovilles development, recently did an interview with SLI's director, Ramasubramanian. The interview includes a brief introduction to the institute's work and what sets this training institution apart from others. It later focusses on challenges like corruption and caste discrimination as many development schemes in India face and how SLI handles these. By giving many examples of the institute's work, Ram makes clear that the Sustainable Livelihood Institute has had - and continues too have - great impact on both government officials and members of rural comunities that participate in one the programmes.
This interview is not the first time Auroville Today published an article on the Sustainable Livelihood Institute. In February 2016 the publication introduced it in Issue No. 319.
If you are a subscriber of Auroville Today you can read the full interview
here or the article from February 2016
here.
The full transcript of the interview below...
The
Sustainable Livelihood Institute
The
Sustainable Livelihood Institute (SLI) initiative is a joint project of
the Government of Tamil Nadu and Auroville to promote rural development based
on the principles of sustainable development (see Auroville Today 319, Feb. 2016)
The SLI began running programmes three years
ago. We talked to the Director, Ramasubramanian (Ram), for an update on its
activities and its impact.
Auroville Today: The name suggests that the
Sustainable Livelihood Institute represents a very different concept of
development from the conventional one. What is that concept?
Ram: Our
concept of development draws primarily on two sources. One is traditional
models, the other is Auroville’s experience. I think Auroville has created a
new form of economy where certain values are not compromised. You do not
deplete resources, you replenish them, and you are trying to minimise the
impact of inequality. So our idea of development could be articulated as not
only being ecologically-sensitive but also ecologically-proactive,
socially-responsible and, at the same time, economically-viable. This is what
we are trying to bring together in our programmes here.
What we are
doing here is continually transmitting alternatives into the mainstream but it
will take a while before it changes. However, the driver of these changes is something
that, increasingly, we cannot ignore.
What is this?
Climate
change is already a huge reality if you live in Tamil Nadu. For the past three
years we have experienced extreme weather conditions. In 2015 there were terrible
floods in Chennai, in 2016 we experienced the worst drought in 140 years. Last
year the state government released a report of the consequences of climate
change. The signs are not good. If we continue on the present trajectory, most
parts of the state will see an increase of 4 degrees above pre-industrial
levels by 2050. The consequences of this have not sunk in yet. A soil biologist
told me that just a 1° rise means the end of staple food as we know it today as
paddy will not grow.
Then again,
82% of our groundwater is in a critical state, the forests are depleting, and
much of the coastline will be inundated by sea rises in the future.
In this situation,
centralised planning is an oxymoron: policy and planning has to happen at a
bioregional level in alignment with the larger reality of climate change. Today,
for most parts of this state, we have the data to design a solution for each bioregion,
but the effort has to be to do it through the people themselves, by empowering
them with the required skills and knowledge. At the same time, in SLI we are
raising the awareness levels of government rural development officials on the
impact of climate change and showing them some of the responses from Auroville.
As a consequence, government agencies in some parts are moving from looking at
rural development primarily as ‘poverty alleviation’ to ‘sustainable growth’.
So in SLI you are working with both government
officials and those who live in rural communities?
Yes,
we work at all levels. Every head of the Rural Development Department of Tamil
Nadu’s 32 districts has visited us for an orientation programme. The middle level
managers, those who design local rural area initiatives, come more frequently
for regular capacity-building programmes. We also train government rural
community facilitators as well as community leaders, farmers, etc.
In contrast
to Auroville Village Action, we work with the whole state and we are very
closely linked to the state government. We do not make interventions but are
primarily purveyors of knowledge.
What kinds of programmes do you run?
We tailor
the programmes to the people with which we are working. The highest level – the
heads of government departments – don’t need to acquire skills, they just need
to know how to think differently: we call these ‘perspective building
programmes’. For the middle level managers, we have ‘management programmes’ and
at the village level the programmes are mainly about imparting skills and
knowledge.
We have
designed 24 different types of training programmes. During the first year, our
programmes were aligned with the programmes of the government rural development
departments. However, we introduced certain unique features. For example, in
SLI the trainers are the practitioners,
the ones who, like Krishna of Solitude Farm and Bernard at Pebble Garden, are
doing the work. This already challenges one
of the underlying assumptions in conventional training institutions which is
that theoretical knowledge is more important than practical knowledge.
Secondly,
we are emphasizing action-oriented learning, which means less classroom teaching and more hands-on
experiential training. The other thing we insist upon with government officials
is repeat training. One-time exposure
is often not sufficient to motivate them to make changes, so they come back for
a more advanced course. Also, we do follow-up visits to check which community initiatives are succeeding and
which are not.
Another
thing we do is we digitalise everything: from the moment a trainee arrives till
the feedback, follow-up and impact stories, everything we do is entered online
and is accessible. We maintain a very high level of transparency and this has
given us a lot of credibility within the government.
By the
second year, the villagers were calling us to say we have learned this from you
and have implemented this and now we have this problem. Can we come to learn how
to solve it? So now the community programmes are driven more by their needs. When
somebody comes with a request, we look at the situation, we design a training
for them and we send it to the authorities for approval because all these
trainings are sponsored by the government.
In other
words, we and the government have become facilitating agencies, linking an
empowered rural community with the knowledge and skills that they need.
There are many components of sustainability, including
sustainable construction, governance, economy. When you impart skills to the
villages, are you trying to cover the whole range?
Yes. Our
faculty consists of more than 42 Auroville units, including the Earth Institute,
Sunlit Future, Village Action, Botanical Gardens, Pitchandikulam, and tailoring
and food-processing units.
We have
also been able to host as guest faculty thought leaders in their respective
fields, from all over the state. When they come, they share this knowledge with
government officials and community members. But obviously they also want to
interact with Aurovilians, and this enables a cross-pollination of inspiration
and ideas.
This is all very hopeful. But two big
challenges that development schemes in India face are corruption and caste
discrimination. How do you deal with this?
It cannot
be denied that this state is probably one of the worst in respect of white-collar
corruption: the rural people are exposed to a lot of corrupt practices by
government officials and have to deal with it because they have no choice. However,
while corruption is deeply embedded in the system, a government official has a
choice to be a part of it or not.
One thing
we do when officials come here is to create a space where they can honestly discuss
all issues, including corruption. One participant said he resented the
corruption when he joined his department fifteen years ago but he realised that
he had succumbed to the system and he had become what he hated. When he left
our programme, he said he realised he had a choice.
One thing
that works well in getting them to reflect is we ask them to talk to a camera
every day as if they were talking to themselves 20 years from now. We also ask
them to write letters to themselves about the legacy they would like to leave
behind.
These
exercises are very powerful; for some of them it is the first time they have
reflected upon themselves.
So we push
them into situations that break down barriers. They do drumming circles, forest
work, bodywork, clowning work and cycling. These are people who have not got out
of their jeeps and cars in a long time; one of the things that we emphasise is that,
“slowing down is the beginning of sustainability”.
Once, after
a cycling session, a government official said, “Now that we are always
travelling in jeeps and on motorbikes, we are completely isolated from the
community which we are meant to be serving. What has become of us? The first
thing I will do when I go back is buy a cycle for myself and start to cycle
again.”
What about the influence of caste
discrimination?
This is
definitely an issue. For example, a government official, a community
facilitator, came here for a training programme in food-processing. She was so
impressed she went back to a Dalit community in her area and convinced some
women to set-up a food processing enterprise.
However, they could not sell the products even in their own village
because food from their community was not acceptable to other communities,
castes, in the same village.
But that was
not as as shocking as facing a similar response when they went to a government
office to sell their products. This was humiliating for them.
We heard
about this story when we went to that district for a follow-up visit. We went to
the village and spoke to those women and you could see the anger and
humiliation in their eyes as they described their experience of this
caste-based discrimination. We told them we would ensure that the blockages would
be removed and their products sold, but would they be willing first to attend a
training programme with us to ensure that they make products of a quality that
cannot be easily rejected in the market?
They agreed
and received training. When they returned to their village, they were accompanied
by two graduate students in rural development who were interning with us (we
receive interns from six universities across India). The students market researched
their products and presented their findings to the district authorities, who
granted one lakh capital to set up the enterprise. The students then stayed on
until the first cycle of production was completed and did test marketing.
The
district authorities were very happy about the way we had handled this and they
launched this project at a district level function.
So, through
our continuous support (we continue to monitor this enterprise), we made the local
problem of caste no longer economically relevant for the women because now they
could sell their products elsewhere and so negotiate their space better.
But there
is also a balancing act for us as facilitators of these interventions because
while caste discrimination is terrible, caste is also an aspect of local
identity and, as such, a means of preserving local values against the global economic
onslaught on local identities.
The story demonstrates that caste discrimination
is also prevalent in government officials. Can you address this when they come
here or is it too sensitive?
It is very
much prevalent but we cannot address it directly. What we do is we put them in
a very different environment. They soon realise that this is a place where
there is no caste discrimination, a place where they are given care and respect
by people, like youth from the local villages, who are complete strangers. This
affects even high-ranking government officials.
In the
government bureaucracy there is this huge hierarchy, so if you come from a
background where you are already socially discriminated against because of your
caste and you are confronted by this huge government hierarchy, it only
reinforces the sense of inequality. We break this sometimes without even
realizing. Often, we have Joss taking officers for a morning walk in his
community to show them the afforestation work. They are very impressed. But
they are even more awestruck when he serves them tea afterwards, because in terms
of their hierarchy, Joss would be many levels above them and he should not be “serving”
them. This breaks down a conventional barrier and they begin to understand
there are other ways of interacting, knowing and learning. Higher officials
often complain about the lack of honest feedback, but the lower officials in
the department are rote taught into practicing hierarchy out of deference.
Hence, they do not share their experience honestly.
What happens when they go back to their usual
work environment?
Both in local
communities as well as in government, the younger ones, in particular, want to
change things in their work environment, but they also express frustration at
not being able to make a difference. But we tell them it is possible, you have
a choice, you do not have to perpetuate this. We provide them with examples of
alternatives, so they know they can challenge it, and they know that there are
people here who will support them in challenging it. Often they call us and
tell us they have challenged or changed something.
Each one of
them is personally impacted. When we go to state government offices, people come
and telling us how in their personal choices they have changed because of
coming here. A very senior officer came for a programme and made his own farm
organic. In one village we went to, an official took us to his house because he
wanted to show us how he was composting his garbage now.
Radical change
is possible in individuals but in systems like the government it cannot be
radical; it has to be gentle, like a whiff of fresh air. I think we are slowly
working towards building a critical mass of people in the system who talk a
different language, who hold certain values as important. When ten of them sit
in a room to discuss rural development and at least eight of them are using
terms, values, processes, practices, they have learned here, that for me is
serious impact.
So you are optimistic about the impact of SLI?
There is
one village, Chinnarampatti, in Vellore district where almost 65 people have
come to us for different types of training. If you go to that village, you see
evidence of Auroville knowledge everywhere. There is a beautiful tree nursery
created and managed by about 20 women that is supplying saplings to the
Forestry Department where the plants come from Auroville nurseries. There is
organic farming, a cattle camp using ethno-veterinary practices, women creating
herbal cosmetics, while another group is thinking of setting up a
food-processing unit. And all this happened because one man, the panchayat
secretary, came here for a training, saw the value of what we were doing in
Auroville and convinced his people.
For me, the
most promising thing is that new initiatives are coming up all over the state
based upon ideas of sustainability. One of our faculty mentioned that there are
400 dedicated organic food shops in Chennai alone. Organic farm-related shops and
millet bakeries are appearing in all parts of Tamil Nadu, farmers are
exchanging seeds etc. When SLI organized a seed exchange programme among local
farmers, more than 600 farmers from the area visited us that day and more than
350 varieties of traditional seeds were showcased and exchanged.
At every
level you see these changes happening and SLI is being seen more and more as a
facilitator for such changes. There are five other government training
institutes in rural development across this state and now many of the practices
we use in SLI, like practitioners being trainers, have been adopted by them.
Recently, a
hundred million dollar government programme was launched by the Tamil Nadu Rural
Development Department. The government is recruiting 600 officials for this
project from all over Tamil Nadu, and we have been asked to provide orientation
and induction for all of these newly-recruited staff. This is a very
significant recognition of our work. In
fact, this new government ‘rural transformation’ project and how Auroville
ideas and practices of ‘’transformation’ are providing inputs into it is
another interesting story in itself.
Another
recognition is the number of civil society players who have heard about us and
want to see what is going on here. Many of them have visited us and now there
are requests to do programmes for NGOs as well. I am often asked to share our ideas
with governments in other states as well. For example, a few months ago we met
the Chief Minister’s team in Maharashtra and gave a presentation about SLI because
they were considering doing something similar in Nagpur.
So even without
broadcasting what we do and just concentrating on doing it well, people are
starting to recognise us. In the larger rural development space we are still
very small in terms of the numbers that we are able to process, but our impact is
already quite large.
From an
interview by Alan
