SW010105 Social Work Practice with Communities

Course Outline

Module 1 Community - meaning - types, structure and dynamics

UNIT 1: Community: Meaning, Definition and types. Characteristics, Structure and

Functions of Community

UNIT 2: Social Analysis of community: Social System, Economic System, Political System,
Cultural System, Legal System, Religious system, Value System, Consciousness, Social
Problems, Dominations, Dynamism, Functions of community.

UNIT 3: Deconstructing concept of communities: Dalit, Feminist and Racial connotations of

communities, community and identity. The process of community integration and
disintegration.

Module 2 Leadership and Community Organization

UNIT 4: Leadership: Concept - types of community leaders and power structure (Catalyst,
connectors, civic leaders, elite, officials) of the community, Significance of leadership in the
process of community development.

UNIT 5: Theories of leadership.

UNIT 6: Community Organisation as a Para-Political Processes Community organization as a

para-political process, Leadership, Concept of power, sources of power, Understanding
community power structure, Powerlessness and empowerment, Cycle of empowerment,
Challenges in participation.

Module 3 Community Organization

UNIT 7: Community organization - definition, objectives and a brief historical development

of community organization in India, Community Organization as a method of social work.

UNIT 8: Principles of Community Organization

UNIT 9: Phases of Community Organisation: Study, analysis, assessment,discussion,

organization, action, Evaluation, modification and continuation. UNIT 10. Methods of
Community Organisation: Methods (Arthur Dunham‘s classification of CO methods- method

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of planning and related activities, group decision making and co-operative action,
communication, promotion and social action, financing and fund raising, method of
administration)

UNIT 11. Characteristics of a Good Community Organiser, Skills needed for community
organization, Role of Community organizer

Module 4 Approaches, Models and Strategies of Community Organization

UNIT 12: Approaches - The social work approach, the political activist approach,
neighbourhood maintenance approach/community development approach, system change
approach, structural change approach.

UNIT 13: Models of Community Organisation – Locality Development Model, Social

Planning Model, Social Action Model.

UNIT 14: Strategies and techniques in community organization: formation and capacity
building of CBOs, capacity building of community level institutions (PRI, SHG), strategies
for capacity building of the marginalized groups, committee formations, Organising
conferences, training programmes, consultation, negotiation, leadership and cadre building
and networking.

Module 5 Application of Community Organization in the various fields of Social Work

UNIT 15: Social Audit, Social Impact assessment studies, PRA /PLA techniques

UNIT 16: Ongoing community programmes at the grass root level

Module 6 Social action

UNIT 17: Concept of social action, objectives - principles, methods of social action.

Means of Social Action: Research and Collection of Data – Survey, Analysis and
Assessment, Planning Solution, Meeting Key Persons, Groups and Agencies, Public
Meetings, Discussions, Create Public Opinion, Awareness, education, Use of Mass Media
and Press Meeting for Propaganda, Use of Legislation and Enforcement of Legislation,
Representation to the Authorities, Proposal to the Authorities, Coordinating the work of
different groups and agencies, Implementing the Action and Reflection, Modification and
Continuation.

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UNIT 18: Strategies of Social Action: Campaign / Promotional Strategy, Collaborative
Strategy, Pressure / Advocacy Strategy, Negotiate Strategy, Legal Suasion / Litigation
Strategy, Conscientization Strategy, Human Relation Strategy, Political Organisation
Strategy, Economic Organisation Strategy, Conflict Management Strategy, Situation
Modification Strategy UNIT 19: Social Problems and Social Action, Role of Social Worker
in Social Action, Social Activists and Social Action Groups in India.

UNIT 20: Social action for social reform and social development - scope of social action in
India. UNIT 21: Social Legislation through social action - Role of social worker In social
action. Social Action Groups.

UNIT 22: Paulo Freire and Saul Alinsky in working with community

Approaches by Paulo Fraire, Saul Alinsky, Mahatma Gandhi, Ambedkar, Medha Patkar and
Other National and Regional Social Activists.

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Module 1 Community - meaning - types, structure and dynamics

UNIT 1: Community: Meaning, Definition and types. Characteristics, Structure and

Functions of Community

Community:

Man cannot live in isolation. He cannot live alone. He keeps contact with his fellow beings
for his survival. It is not possible for him to keep contact with all the people or to belong as a
member of all the groups existing in the world.

He establishes contact with a few people who live in close proximity or presence to him in a
particular area or locality. It is quite natural for people living in a particular locality for a
longer period of time to develop a sort of likeness or similarity among themselves. They
develop common ideas, common customs, common feelings, common traditions etc.

They also develop a sense of belonging together or a sense of we-feeling. This kind of
common social living in a specific locality gives rise to the community. The examples of
community include a village, a tribe, a city or town. For example in a village community, all
the villagers lend each other hand in the event of need in agriculture and in other occupations.

They take part in all important occasions which occur in a neighbour‘s home. They are
present when marriages, deaths, births take place in any family. They celebrate the festivals
together, worship common deities and jointly face all calamities. In this way the sense of
belongingness in generated among the villagers which creates village community.

Meaning of Community:

The word community has been derived from two words of Latin namely ‗com‘ and munis. In
English ‗com‘ means together and ‗munis‘ means to serve. Thus, community means to serve
together. It means, the community is an organisation of human beings framed for the purpose
of serving together. Community is a people living within a geographical area in common
inter-dependence. It exists within the society. It is bound by the territorial units. It is a
specific group while society is abstract. ―Community living is natural to man.

He is born in it and grows in the community ways. It is his small world. Men, we have seen
began with group life. Over the time, they occupied a habitat and while in permanent

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occupation of it; they developed likeness, common habits, folkways and mores,
interdependence and acquired a name.

They developed amongst themselves a sense of togetherness and an attachment to their

habitat. A community thus has a habitat, strong community sense, and a manner of acting in
an agreed and organized manner. There are various definitions of community.

Osborne and Neumeyer write, ―Community is a group of people living in a contiguous

geographic area, having common centres of interests and activities, and functioning together
in the chief concerns of life.‖

According to Kingsley Davis, ―Community is the smallest territorial group that can embrace
all aspects of social life.‖

As Sutherland points out, ―It is a local area over which people are using the same language,
conforming to same mores, feeling more or less the same sentiments and acting upon the
same attitudes.‖

Maclver defines community as ―an area of social living, marked by some degree of social
coherence

For Bogardus it is a social group with some degree of ―we feeling‖ and ―living in a given
area.

Mannheim describes community as ―any circle of people who live together and belong
together in such a way that they do not share this or that particular interest only but a whole
set of interest.

Basic Elements of Community:

According to Maclver and Page, there are two main bases or essential elements on the basis
of which community is formed.

(i) Locality:

Locality implies a particular or territorial area unless a group of people live in a particular
locality; they cannot establish relations and generate the we-feeling among themselves.
Living together facilities people to develop social contacts, give protection, safety and
security. Locality continues to be a basic factor of community life. Maclver says, though due

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to the extending facilities of communication in the modern world the territorial bond has been
broken, yet ―the basic character of locality as a social classifier has never been transcended.

(ii) Community Sentiment:

Community can be formed on the basis of community sentiment. It is extremely essential. It

implies ‗a feeling of belonging together.‖ It is a ‗we-feeling‘ among the members of a
community. People living in a community lead a common life, speak the same language,
conform to the same mores, feel almost the same sentiment and therefore, they develop a
feeling of unity among themselves.

In other words, it can be said that community feeling has the four important aspects such as
we-feeling, interdependence, participation and community control. The community
sentiments are developed by we-feeling. The members of community develop we-feeling by
their mutual interdependence. They contribute to the progress of the community by
participating in its activities. Community controls the behaviour of its members. The
obedience to community rules brings uniformity among the members.

Other Elements of Community:

Some other elements of community are as follows:

(i) Group of people:

Fundamentally, a community consists of a group of people. A solitary individual cannot form

a community when a group of people share the basic conditions a common life, they form
community.

(ii) Naturality:

A community is not deliberately or purposively created. It is a spontaneous or natural growth.

An individual is born in a community. It is my virtue of community that he develops.

(iii) Permanence:

A community is generally not temporary or short-lived like a crowd or a revolutionary mob.

It is a permanent organisation or durable social group. This durability is evident from the age-
old communities existing in modern times. A community continues as long as members are
there.

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(iv) Likeness:

In a community there is a likeness or similarity in language, custom, mores, traditions etc.

among the members. So A. W. Green has rightly said, ―A community is a cluster of people
living within narrow territorial radius who share a common way of life.‖

(v) A Particular Name:

Every community is always known with a particular name, their immediate bases of origin
give such community a particular name. For example based on the linguistic condition people
living in Orissa are called Oriyas; living in Kashmiri culture are called Kashmiris.

(vi) Spontaneity:

Every community grows itself spontaneously. A community is not deliberately or purposively

created. A kind of natural force acts behind the origin and development of communities.
Various factors like customs, conventions, and religious beliefs bind the individuals together.

(vii) Common Life:

Some sociologists like Elwood says that the life of the people in a community is near about
the same. There is no epochal difference between the way of life of the individuals. Their
eating pattern, dressing style, language etc. are found to be similar. Due to their inhabitation
on a particular geographical area, they develop a kind of emotional and cultural uniformity.
Community is never formed with a particular aim. But they are the outcome of social
uniformity among the individuals.

(viii) Common Interests:

In community, all the members have common and collective interests. People live in
community and work together to fulfill these interests. Thus, Newmeyer says, community is a
group of people living in a delimited geographic area, having common interests and activities
and functioning together in their concern of life.

Distinction between Community and Society:

The constituent elements and behaviour patterns of both community and society are
dis-tinctive. We may describe the distinction between community and society as follows:

1. Society is a web social relationship. But community consists of a group of individuals. It is

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 a specific group.

2. Society is abstract. Community is concrete.

3. A definite geographical area is not necessary for society. But a definite geographical area

is essential for a community. It is bound by the territorial units.

4. There can be more than one community in a society. Most societies consist of more than

one community, varying in size, physical appearance, organization and specialized

functions.

But there cannot be more than one society in a community.

5. Society is an intangible artefact. But community is a natural entity.

6. In the society, the group is merely means to an end.

But in the community, the group has a life of its own, superior to that of its temporary

members. The group is an end in itself.

7. Community sentiment or a sense of unity is not essential in a society.

But community sentiment is indispensable for a community.

8. In a society the common objectives are extensive and coordinated.

But in a community, the common objectives are comparatively less extensive and
coordi-nated.

9. In a society, the common interests and common objectives are not necessary.

But in a community, a common agreement of interests and objectives necessary.

10. In the society, members have doctrine, public opinion, contractual solidarity and
individual will.

But in the community, members have faith, customs, natural solidarity and a common
will. A community may be big or small. A big community, such as a nation, contains within
it a number of small communities and groups with more close, numerous common qualities.

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Small communities like village or neighborhood are the examples of the primitive world.
Both the types of communities, big or small, are essential to the full development of life.

UNIT 2: Social Analysis of community:

Social analysis is the practice of systematically examining a social problem, issue or trend,
often with the aim of prompting changes in the situation being analyzed.

A social problem is a situation that is viewed by some community members as being

undesirable. In a business context, examples of social problems include outsourcing jobs to
another country, customer data privacy and wasting energy. Social analysis, which is topic-
driven, can address such issues through qualitative research or quantitative multivariate
approaches. Multivariate analysis is a field of statistical analysis and data analytics that deals
with variables and their relationships.

Social analysis frequently involves issues of equality and social justice, but the insight gained
from combining social analysis techniques and CRM analytics can also help organizations
create business strategies and policies that are sensitive to particular social issues and likely
to be perceived by customers as having a positive social impact. For example, after
discovering through analysis of a customer survey that increased efforts to develop renewable
energy would be viewed in a positive light, an oil company might decide to expand its
investments in biogas, geothermal energy and solar power research.

Social analysis should not be confused with social media analytics, which studies data
collected from social networking sites.

Social System

In sociology, media social system is the patterned network of relationships constituting a

coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions. [1] It is the
formal structure of role and status that can form in a small, stable group. [1] An individual may
belong to multiple social systems at once;[2] examples of social systems include nuclear
family units, communities, cities, nations, college campuses, corporations, and industries.

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The organization and definition of groups within a social system depend on various shared
characteristics such as location, socioeconomic status, race, religion, societal function, or
other distinguishable features.

Economic System

An economic system or economic order, is a system of production, resource

allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society or a given geographic area.
It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making
processes and patterns of consumption that comprise the economic structure of a given
community. As such, an economic system is a type of social system. The mode of
production is a related concept. All economic systems have three basic questions to ask: what
to produce, how to produce and in what quantities and who receives the output of production.

The study of economic systems includes how these various agencies and institutions are
linked to one another, how information flows between them and the social relations within
the system (including property rights and the structure of management). The analysis of
economic systems traditionally focused on the dichotomies and comparisons between market
economies and planned economies and on the distinctions
between capitalism and socialism. Subsequently, the categorization of economic systems
expanded to include other topics and models that do not conform to the traditional
dichotomy. Today the dominant form of economic organization at the world level is based on
market-oriented mixed economies.

Political System

Political system, the set of formal legal institutions that constitute a ―government‖ or a
―state.‖ This is the definition adopted by many studies of the legal
or constitutional arrangements of advanced political orders. More broadly defined, however,
the term comprehends actual as well as prescribed forms of political behaviour, not only the
legal organization of the state but also the reality of how the state functions. Still more
broadly defined, the political system is seen as a set of ―processes of interaction‖ or as a
subsystem of the social system interacting with other nonpolitical subsystems, such as

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the economic system. This points to the importance of informal sociopolitical processes and
emphasizes the study of political development.
Traditional legal or constitutional analysis, using the first definition, has produced a huge
body of literature on governmental structures, many of the specialized terms that are a part of
the traditional vocabulary of political science, and several instructive classifying schemes.
Similarly, empiricalanalysis of political processes and the effort to identify the underlying
realities of governmental forms have yielded a rich store of data and an important body of
comparative theory. The third definition has inspired much scholarly work that employs new
kinds of data, new terms, and some new concepts and categories of analysis. The discussion
that follows draws on all three approaches to the study of political systems.
Cultural System
Cultures may be understood as systems, where the term system refers to a set of interrelated
elements that form a whole.5 The various parts of sociocultural systems are interrelated and
interdependent; when one part of society changes, other parts must also change. This means
that an institution, such as the family cannot be looked at in isolation from the political,
economic, or religious institutions of a society. Cultures are likewise more than the sum of
their parts and in many ways non-reducible to them. A culture is a complex system of many
interacting beliefs, conceptual structures, social arrangements, material processes and rituals
that all interact within a temporal and spatial context.6 Sociocultural systems coevolve over
time and as a consequence specific aspects are adapted to fit together to create in some way a
unifying whole. Different aspects of the culture only really have meaning within that overall
context. We can take artifacts of a culture like, an Italian pizza, a Michael Jackson song or a
specific Chinese character, but it is only in their context within the broader culture that they
really have their proper significance, when you remove them from that context they become
an icon; a symbol of the real thing.
Legal System

Legal system refers to a procedure or process for interpreting and enforcing the law. It
elaborates the rights and responsibilities in a variety of ways. Three major legal systems of
the world consist of civil law, common law and religious law.

Jury system is a legal system for determining the facts at issue in a law suit. Tax system is a
legal system for assessing and collecting taxes. Electoral system is a legal system for making
democratic choices.

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Religious system

Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals,

worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates
humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements. However, there is no
scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.

Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacred
things, faith, a supernatural being or supernatural beings or "some sort of ultimacy and
transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life".

Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities),
sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services,
meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.
Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures,
and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may
contain symbolic stories, which are sometimes said by followers to be true, that have the side
purpose of explaining the origin of life, the universe, and other things. Traditionally, faith, in
addition to reason, has been considered a source of religious beliefs.

There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide,[9] but about 84% of the world's
population is affiliated with one of the five largest religion groups, namely Christianity,
Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or forms of folk religion. The religiously unaffiliated
demographic includes those who do not identify with any particular religion, atheists, and
agnostics. While the religiously unaffiliated have grown globally, many of the religiously
unaffiliated still have various religious beliefs.

The study of religion encompasses a wide variety of academic disciplines, including

theology, comparative religion and social scientific studies. Theories of religion offer various
explanations for the origins and workings of religion, including the ontological foundations
of religious being and belief.

Value System

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A hierarchy of values that all moral agents possess, demonstrated by their choices. Most
people's value systems differ, making the imposition of a singular value system by the state a
source of constant social warfare. This is an individualistic concept. One's value system is
molded by one's virtues or vices.

A person's standards and self-discipline set, based on the common sense and wisdom of
knowing what the proper moral rules and discipline are, and the amount of willingness to see
themselves and others abide by them.

Consciousness

Consciousness is the state or quality of sentience or awareness of internal or external

existence. It has been defined variously in terms of qualia, subjectivity, the ability to
experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood or soul, the claim that "there is
something that it is like" to 'have' or 'be' it, and the executive control system of the mind.
Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared
underlying intuition about what consciousness is. According to Max Velmans and Susan
Schneider, "Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our
consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious
aspect of our lives."

Western philosophers since the time of Descartes and Locke have struggled to comprehend
the nature of consciousness and how it fits into a larger picture of the world. These issues
remain central to both continental and analytic philosophy, in phenomenology and the
philosophy of mind, respectively. Some basic questions include: whether consciousness is the
same kind of thing as matter; whether it may ever be possible for computing machines like
computers or robots to be conscious; how consciousness relates to language; how
consciousness as Being relates to the world of experience; the role of the self in experience;
whether individual thought is possible at all; and whether the concept is fundamentally
coherent.

Social problems

Social problems are the general factors that affect and damage society. A social problem is
normally a term used to describe problems with a particular area or group of people in the

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world. Social problems often involve problems that affect the real world. It also affects how
people react to certain situations. Examples can include:

1. Anti social behavior

2. Poverty
3. Drug abuse
4. Prostitution
5. Alcohol abuse
6. Economic Deprivation
7. Unemployment
8. Sexual abuse
9. Rape
10. Early pregnancy
11. Female genital mutilation
12. Animal abuse
13. the shortage of schools
14. the lack of infrastructure social Problems

Dominations

The exercise of power or influence over someone or something, or the state of being so
controlled."the imperial domination of India

Dynamism

The quality of being characterized by vigorous activity and progress."the dynamism and
strength of the economy" The theory that phenomena of matter or mind are due to the action
of forces rather than to motion or matter.

Functions of community

A community cannot exist unless members demonstrate a concern for one another, which
results in a maturing of both the individual and the community as a whole. Asbury University
promotes a community which is characterized by three interdependent functions: Caring,
Collaborating and Challenging.

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  Caring: As we follow in the steps of Jesus Christ and His teachings, we will
demonstrate a love for those around us which is evident in our caring, ―carrying‖ and
comforting of one another. Practically speaking, our concern for others will go
beyond the obvious spiritual and physical realms into the emotional, mental and social
realms. This concern for the development of the whole person emphasizes our
commitment to develop whole people who are wholly prepared to be wholly used of
God.

 Collaborating: Any effective organization is distinguished by the way in which its

component parts work together to achieve the ultimate mission. Asbury‘s mission is
to provide students with the opportunity to learn in a Christian, liberal arts
environment and to prepare them to make a significant contribution in their world for
Jesus Christ. A team approach where there is a collegial and collaborative effort
between administration, faculty, students and staff results in a cooperating community
where the whole is greater than and more important than any of its component parts.

 Challenging: The heritage of the University has always held high expectations for its
members and expected them to maintain both their own character and the University‘s
character. Our love for one another motivates us to encourage and, when appropriate,
challenge each other as we strive together to achieve God‘s purpose for our lives.
Redemptive accountability brings one to repentance, forgiveness, accountability and
growth.

UNIT 3: Deconstructing concept of communities:

Dalit.

Dalit, meaning "broken/scattered" in Sanskrit and Hindiis a term mostly used for the ethnic
groups in India and Nepal that have been kept depressed (often termed backward castes)
Dalits were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism and were seen as forming
a fifth varna, also known by the name of Panchama. Dalits now profess various religious
beliefs, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity and various folk religions. The
2011 Census of India recorded their numbers at over 200 million people, representing 16
percent of India's population.

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The term dalits was in use as a translation for the British Raj census classification of
Depressed Classes prior to 1935. It was popularised by the economist and reformer B. R.
Ambedkar (1891–1956), who included all depressed people irrespective of their caste into the
definition of dalits.[3] Hence the first group he made was called the "Labour Party" and
included as its members all people of the society who were kept depressed, including women,
small scale farmers and people from backward castes. New leaders like Kanhaiya Kumar
subscribe to this definition of "dalits", thus a Brahmin marginal farmer trying to eke out a
living, but unable to do so also falls in the "dalit" category.[4][5] Ambedkar himself was a
Mahar, and in the 1970s the use of the word "dalit" was invigorated when it was adopted by
the Dalit Panthers activist group. Gradually, political parties used it to gain mileage.

Feminist
Feminism is a range of social movements, political movements, and ideologies that share a
common goal: to define, establish, and achieve the political, economic, personal, and social
equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that societies prioritize the male
point of view, and that women are treated unfairly within those societies. Efforts to change
that include fighting gender stereotypes and seeking to establish educational and professional
opportunities for women that are equal to those for men.

Feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights,
including the right to vote, to hold public office, to work, to earn fair wages, equal pay and
eliminate the gender pay gap, to own property, to receive education, to enter contracts, to
have equal rights within marriage, and to have maternity leave. Feminists have also worked
to ensure access to legal abortions and social integration, and to protect women and girls from
rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. Changes in dress and acceptable physical
activity have often been part of feminist movements.

Some scholars consider feminist campaigns to be a main force behind major historical
societal changes for women's rights, particularly in the West, where they are near-universally
credited with achieving women's suffrage, gender-neutral language, reproductive rights for
women (including access to contraceptives and abortion), and the right to enter into contracts
and own property. Although feminist advocacy is, and has been, mainly focused on women's
rights, some feminists, including bell hooks, argue for the inclusion of men's liberation within
its aims because they believe that men are also harmed by traditional gender roles. Feminist
theory, which emerged from feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender

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inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experience; it has developed theories
in a variety of disciplines in order to respond to issues concerning gender.

Racial connotations of communities

In sociology, racialization or ethnicization is the process of ascribing ethnic or racial

identities to a relationship, social practice, or group that did not identify itself as such.[1]
Racialization or ethnicization is often borne out of the interaction of a group with a group that
it dominates and ascribes identity for the purpose of continued domination. While it is often
borne out of domination, the racialized and ethnicized group often gradually identifies with
and even embraces the ascribed identity and thus becomes a self-ascribed race or ethnicity.
These processes have been common across the history of imperialism, nationalism, and racial
and ethnic hierarchies.

Community and identity.

Community identity means to which community one belongs to, it is based on birth and
belonging and has nothing to do with acquired qualifications and accomplishments.

It is based on what we are than what we have become.

Such identities are called ―ascriptive‖, which means they are acquired by birth and can‘t be
chosen.

Community identity provides sense of security and satisfaction to people despite of the fact
that it is accidental and not chosen or planned.

People are very emotionally attached to their community identity and tend to get violent
when there is any perceived threat against it.

The process of community integration and disintegration.

Community integration, while diversely defined, is a term encompassing the full participation
of all people in community life. It has specifically referred to the integration of people with
disabilities into US societyfrom the local to the national level and for decades was a defining
agenda in countries such as Great Britain.

Social disintegration is the tendency for society to decline or disintegrate over time,
perhaps.due to the lapse or breakdown of traditional social support systems. In this context,

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"society" refers to the social order which maintains a society, rather than the political order
that defines its boundaries. Society in the sociological sense is not the same as a country.

In the US, the Consortium of Citizens for Disabilities advocates for a national public policy
which "ensures the self-determination, independence, empowerment, integration and
inclusion of children and adults with disabilities in all parts of society".

Module 2 Leadership and Community Organization

UNIT 4: Leadership: Concept - types of community leaders and power structure (Catalyst,
connectors, civic leaders, elite, officials) of the community, Significance of leadership in the
process of community development.

Types of Leadership

1. Autocratic Leadership

Autocratic leadership style is centered on the boss. In this leadership the leader holds all
authority and responsibility. In this leadership, leaders make decisions on their own without
consulting subordinates.

They reach decisions, communicate them to subordinates and expect prompt implementation.
An autocratic work environment normally has little or no flexibility.

In this kind of leadership, guidelines, procedures and policies are all natural additions of an
autocratic leader. Statistically, there are very few situations that can actually support
autocratic leadership.

Some of the leaders that display this kind of leadership include: Albert J. Dunlap (Sunbeam
Corporation) and Donald Trump (Trump Organization), among others.

Steve Jobs is another leader who was famous for using fear to inspire people to get their work
done. This leadership style can obviously stifle the leader‘s subordinates, but can also be
useful in a crisis when important decisions need to be made without delay. You can read
leadership quotes by Steve Jobs and many other visionary leaders.

2. Democratic Leadership

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In this leadership style, subordinates are involved in making decisions. Unlike the autocratic
style, this leadership is centered on subordinates‘ contributions. The democratic leader holds
final responsibility, but he or she is known to delegate authority to other people, who
determine work projects.

The most unique feature of this leadership is that communication is active upward and
downward. With respect to statistics, democratic leadership is one of the most preferred
styles of leadership, and it entails the following: fairness, competence, creativity, courage,
intelligence and honesty.

George Washington was a leader who was famous for his democratic focus. Medical and
high-tech industries fit well with a democratic leadership style because they require a high
amount of collaboration to function.

3. Strategic Leadership Style

Strategic leadership is one that involves a leader who is essentially the head of an
organization. The strategic leader is not limited to those at the top of the organization. This
style is geared to a wider audience at all levels who want to create a high performance life,
team or organization.

The strategic leader fills the gap between the need for new possibility and the need for
practicality by providing a prescriptive set of habits. Effective strategic leadership delivers
the goods in terms of what an organization naturally expects from its leadership in times of
change. 55% of this leadership normally involves strategic thinking.

Sports is clearly an area where we can observe many leadership styles, and one in which
strategy is crucial. Hockey player and Coach Wayne Gretzky is well-known for his skill in
strategizing.

Strategic leaders anticipate future needs and make decisions in the present to meet those
needs. Gretzky famously said, ―‗I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has
been.‖

4. Transformational Leadership

Unlike other leadership styles, transformational leadership is all about initiating change in
organizations, groups, oneself and others.

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Transformational leaders motivate others to do more than they originally intended and often
even more than they thought possible. They set more challenging expectations and typically
achieve a higher performance.

Statistically, transformational leadership tends to have more committed and satisfied

followers. This is mainly so because transformational leaders empower followers.

William Edwards Deming, a statistician and engineer, is a leader who saw the best way
certain systems could operate and taught those under him how to accomplish these goals.

5. Team Leadership

Team leadership involves the creation of a vivid picture of a team‘s future, where it is
heading and what it will stand for. The vision inspires and provides a strong sense of purpose
and direction.

Team leadership is about working with the hearts and minds of all those involved. It also
recognizes that teamwork may not always involve trusting cooperative relationships.

The most challenging aspect of this leadership is whether or not it will succeed. According to
Harvard Business Review, team leadership may fail because of poor leadership qualities, as
well as other challenges. For example, an airline flight crew would be much more efficient if
the team remained consistent.

Studies have shown that teams that have worked together for a long period of time are more
effective than those that have not. But because keeping a flight crew together would be
expensive, crews change their members all the time. Situations such as this are just one
example of the challenges teams face.

6. Cross-Cultural Leadership

This form of leadership normally exists where there are various cultures in the society. This
leadership has also industrialized as a way to recognize front-runners who work in the
contemporary globalized market.

Organizations, particularly international ones, require leaders who can effectively adjust their
leadership to work in different environs. Most of the leadership environments in the United
States are cross-cultural because of the different cultures that live and work there.

20
One example of a cross-cultural leader in sports is quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner
Mariota Marcus. His Hawaiian background caused him to be an unpretentious player, in
contrast to being a more aggressive one, yet he was still successful.

7. Facilitative Leadership

Facilitative leadership is dependent on measurements and outcomes – not a skill, although it

takes much skill to master. The effectiveness of a group is directly related to the efficacy of
its process. If the group is high functioning, the facilitative leader uses a light hand on the
process.

On the other hand, if the group is low functioning, the facilitative leader will be more
directive in helping the group run its process. An effective facilitative leadership involves
monitoring group dynamics, as well as offering process suggestions and interventions to help
the group stay on track.

8. Laissez-faire Leadership

Laissez-faire leadership gives authority to employees. According to azcentral, departments or

subordinates are allowed to work as they choose with minimal or no interference. According
to research, this kind of leadership has been consistently found to be the least satisfying and
least effective management style.

But to a certain extent, delegating is necessary. Famous historical projects led by laissez-faire
leaders include the building of the Panama Canal and the Hoover Dam. With both projects,
the presidents involved had to delegate many responsibilities in order to succeed.

Completion of Panama Canal in 1904 was a complicated feat. This was only made possible
when American President of that time Theodore Roosevelt decided to lead this project. The
successful completion of Panama Canal is an engineering marvel, because of its geographical
location it came across several road blocks and incidents, but all hurdles were overcome as
authority was correctly delegated to professionals.

9. Transactional Leadership

This is a leadership style that maintains or continues the status quo. It is also the leadership
that involves an exchange process, whereby followers get immediate, tangible rewards for

21
carrying out the leader‘s orders. Transactional leadership can sound rather basic, with its
focus on exchange.

Being clear, focusing on expectations, giving feedback are all important leadership skills.
Transactional leadership behaviors can include: clarifying what is expected of followers‘
performance, explaining how to meet such expectations, and allocating rewards that are
contingent on meeting objectives.

10. Coaching Leadership

Coaching leadership involves teaching and supervising followers. A coaching leader is highly
operational in settings where results/performance requires improvement.

Basically, in this kind of leadership, followers are helped to improve their skills. Coaching
leadership does the following: motivates followers, inspires followers and encourages
followers.

Some examples of people who have led through coaching are tennis coach Nick Bollettieri
and dog behaviorist Cesar Milan.

11. Charismatic Leadership

In this type of leadership, the charismatic leader manifests his or her revolutionary power.
Charisma does not mean sheer behavioral change. It actually involves a transformation of
followers‘ values and beliefs.

Therefore, charismatic leaders are not merely simply populist leaders who affect attitudes
towards specific objects. Rather, these leaders transform the underlying normative orientation
that structures specific attitudes.

Charismatic leaders tend to have powerful personalities and attract huge followings.
Examples of such leaders are Barak Obama and Oprah Winfrey.

12. Visionary Leadership

This form of leadership involves leaders who recognize that the methods, steps and processes
of leadership are all obtained with and through people.

Most great and successful leaders have some sort of vision for where they are going.
However, there are those who are highly visionary in their leadership.

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Examples of leaders who had powerful and inspirational visions include Nelson Mandela and
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Outstanding leaders will always transform their visions into
realities

What is power in a community?

Power in a community is the ability to affect the decision-making process and the use of
resources, both public and private, within a community or watershed group. Power is simply
the capacity to bring about change. It is the energy that gets things done. All levels of The
Conservation Partnership need to know about community power structures in order to more
effectively implement and maintain locally led conservation initiatives. A community can be
defined as a watershed, region, town, county, or other geographic or geopolitical boundary.
Examining the concept of power involves looking at the sources and structures that influence
local communities and exploring the relationships that shape cooperative efforts. The
conservationist who has a basic understanding of social power and who can identify the
power actors in a community can enhance the opportunity for success in conservation
initiatives.

What Is a Power Structure?

A power structure in a community or watershed group is key leaders (power actors) acting
together to affect what gets done and how it gets done. However, the nature of the
relationships among the individual power actors can vary from one community to another.

• Some communities have a power structure centered on one person who is surrounded by
―lieutenants.‖

• Other communities have a small, tightly knit group – the power elite – that controls policy-
making for the community.

• Another structure is the ―split community.‖ Examples include RepublicanDemocrat,

Protestant-Catholic, liberal-conservative, labour-management,rural-urban, and others.

• The ―power pool‖ involves a combination of all three. Essentially, there is a

23
―pool‖ of 10 to 25 people who are the top community power actors.

• In some communities, tradition or elders are the powerful members.

• Finally, some culturally diverse communities base their power almost totally on
democratic principles and unanimity.

The ―power pool‖ may be the most common kind of power structure. The other structures are
specialcases found in communities with unique characteristics. The ―power pool‖ has at least
the following implications for conservationists and other change agents:

1. The same power actors may not be relevant to every issue, so each issue needs to identify
appropriate power actors.

2. There are communication networks within the pool. A discussion with one or more power
actors provides an indirect method for communicating a message to several other power
actors. It also provides a means for communicating to other people in the community.

3. Members of the power pool change over time. In addition, the power of one individual
relative to another may change, so the assessment of power actors cannot be viewed as a one-
time task.

Leaders are important in any form of community development because they are responsible
for shaping a Community focus, listening to the people's needs, make important decisions for
the benefit of the community have foresight, encourage fair treatment of people, and develop
partnerships that will benefit the community.

Significance of leadership in the process of community development.

• The primary focus of any community leader is to shape the peoples' needs and direct all
their actions towards it. They are a platform of voice and action whom the people can talk to,
and who will listen, making them instrumental in any progress for the community.

• Leaders are also chosen because of their capability to make important decisions on behalf of
the community and in order to do this must be good listeners. There may be small groups
within the community that have conflicting issues, and both sides must be listened to and
understood well by the leader.

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• A leader's foresight is crucial in anticipating the outcome of their decisions and
community's actions for the rest of the groups. Good foresight means understanding the past
and assessing the present to produce a good future.

• People in communities can be extremely diverse, and a good leader is essential in

promoting fair treatment of everyone no matter what their stand or position is. Each of their
values and heritage plays an important role in shaping the community, which a leader can
take to mould them for development and progress.

• Leaders also play an important role in fostering partnerships beyond their circle that will
contribute to the betterment of their community. These partnerships should allow for more
diverse services and products that the community can enjoy as a whole.

Leadership in community development is an important role that can make or break the
progress of the people involved. They should be chosen well, and a good leader will bring
paramount success in helping their communities enjoy more services and a better life

UNIT 5: Theories of leadership.

1. Great Man Theory

According to the Great Man Theory (which should perhaps be called the
Great Person Theory), leaders are born with just the right traits and abilities for leading –
charisma, intellect, confidence, communication skills, and social skills.

The theory suggests that the ability to lead is inherent – that the best leaders are born, not
made. It defines leaders as valiant, mythic, and ordained to rise to leadership when the

25
situation arises. The term ―Great Man‖ was adopted at the time because leadership was
reserved for males, particularly in military leadership.

2. Trait Theory

The Trait Theory is very similar to the Great Man Theory. It is founded on the characteristics
of different leaders – both the successful and unsuccessful ones. The theory is used to predict
effective leadership. Usually, the identified characteristics are compared to those of potential
leaders to determine their likelihood of leading effectively.

Scholars researching the trait theory try to identify leadership characteristics from different
perspectives. They focus on the physiological attributes such as appearance, weight, and
height; demographics such as age, education, and familial background; and intelligence,
which encompasses decisiveness, judgment, and knowledge.

3. Contingency Theory

The Contingency Theory emphasizes different variables in a specific setting that determine
the style of leadership best suited for the said situation. It is founded on the principle that no
one leadership style is applicable to all situations.

Renowned leadership researchers Hodgson and White believe that the best form of leadership
is one that finds the perfect balance between behaviors, needs, and context. Good leaders not
only possess the right qualities but they‘re also able to evaluate the needs of their followers
and the situation at hand. In summary, the contingency theory suggests that great leadership
is a combination of many key variables.

4. Situational Theory

The Situational Theory is similar to the Contingency Theory as it also proposes that no one
leadership style supersedes others. As its name suggests, the theory implies that leadership
depends on the situation at hand. Put simply, leaders should always correspond their
leadership to the respective situation by assessing certain variables such as the type of task,
nature of followers, and more.

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As proposed by US professor Paul Hersey and leadership guru Ken Blanchard, the situational
theory blends two key elements: the leadership style and the followers‘ maturity levels.
Hersey and Blanchard classified maturity into four different degrees:

 M1 – Team members do not possess the motivation or tactical skills to complete

necessary jobs.
 M2 – Team members are willing and ambitious to achieve something, but they lack
the necessary ability.
 M3 – Team members possess the skills and capacity to accomplish tasks, but they‘re
not willing to take accountability.
 M4 – Team members possess all the right talents and are motivated to complete
projects.

According to situational theory, a leader exercises a particular form of leadership based on

the maturity level of his or her team.

5. Behavioral Theory

In Behavioral Theory, the focus is on the specific behaviors and actions of leaders rather than
their traits or characteristics. The theory suggests that effective leadership is the result of
many learned skills.

Individuals need three primary skills to lead their followers – technical, human, and
conceptual skills. Technical skills refer to a leader‘s knowledge of the process or technique;
human skills means that one is able to interact with other individuals; while conceptual skills
enable the leader to come up with ideas for running the organization or society smoothly.

UNIT 6: Community organization as a para-political process, Leadership, Concept of power,

sources of power, Understanding community power structure, Powerlessness and
empowerment, Cycle of empowerment, Challenges in participation.

Module 3 Community Organization

UNIT 7: Community organization - definition, objectives and a brief historical development

of community organization in India, Community Organization as a method of social work.

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Community organization refers to organizing aimed at making desired improvements to a
community's social health, well-being, and overall functioning. Community organization
occurs in geographically, psychosocially, culturally, spiritually, and/or digitally bounded
communities.

Community organization includes community work, community projects, community

development, community empowerment, community building, and community mobilization.
It is a commonly used model for organizing community within community projects,
neighborhoods, organizations, voluntary associations, localities, and social networks, which
may operate as ways to mobilize around geography, shared space, shared experience, interest,
need, and/or concern.

Community organization is a process by which a community identifies needs or objectives,

takes action, and through this process, develops cooperative and collaborative attitudes and
practices within a community. (Murray G. Ross, 1967).

Community organization is differentiated from conflict-oriented community organizing which

focuses on short-term change through appeals to authority (i.e., pressuring established power
structures for desired change), by focusing on long-term and short-term change through
direct action and the organizing of community (i.e., the creation of alternative systems outside
of established power structures). This often includes inclusive networking, interpersonal
organizing, listening, reflexivity, non-violent communication, cooperation, mutual aid and
social care, prefiguration, popular education, and direct democracy.

Within organizations, variations exist in terms of size and structure. Some are formally
incorporated, with codified bylaws and Boards of Directors (also known as a committee),
while others are much smaller, more informal, and grassroots.

Community organization may be more effective in addressing need as well as in achieving

short-term and long-term goals than larger, more bureaucratic organizations. Contemporary
community organization, known as "The New Community Organizing,"
includes glocalized perspectives and organizing methods. The multiplicity of institutions,
groups, and activities do not necessarily define community organization. However, factors
such as the interaction, integration, and coordination of, existing groups, assets, activities, as
well as the relationships, the evolution of new structures and communities, are characteristics
unique to community organization.

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Community organization leads to greater understanding of community contexts. It is
characterized by community building, community planning, direct action and mobilization,
the promotion of community change, and, ultimately, changes within larger social systems
and power structures along with localized ones. [

Definitions

The United Nations in 1955 considered community organization as complementary to

community development. The United Nations assumed that community development is
operative in marginalized communities and community organization is operative in areas in
where levels of living are relatively high and social services relatively well developed, but in
where a greater degree of integration and community initiative is recognized as desirable.

In 1955, Murray G. Ross defined community organization as a process by which a

community identifies its needs or objectives, orders (or ranks) these needs or objectives,
develops the confidence and will to work at these needs or objectives, finds the resources
(internal and/or external) to deal with these needs or objectives, takes action in respect to
them, and in so doing, extends and develops co-operative and collaborative attitudes and
practices within the community.

In 1921, Eduard C. Lindeman defined community organization as "that phase of social

organization which constitutes a conscious effort on the part of a community to control its
affairs democratically and to secure the highest services from its specialists, organizations,
agencies, and institutions by means of recognized interrelations."

In 1925, Walter W. Pettit stated that "Community organization is perhaps best defined as
assisting a group of people to recognize their common needs and helping them to meet these
needs."[

In 1940, Russell H. Kurtz defined community organization as "a process dealing primarily
with program relationships and thus to be distinguished in its social work setting from those
other basic processes, such as casework and group work. Those relationships of agency to
agency, of agency to community and of community to agency reach in all directions from any
focal point in the social work picture. Community organization may be thought of as the
process by which these relationships are initiated, altered or terminated to meet changing
conditions, and it is thus basic to all social work..."

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In 1947, Wayne McMillen defined community organization as "in its generic sense in
deliberately directed effort to assist groups in attaining unity of purpose and action. It is
practiced, though often without recognition of its character, wherever the objective is to
achieve or maintain a pooling of the talents and resources of two or more groups in behalf of
either general or specific objectives.”

OBJECTIVES OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION

Community organisation is essentially concerned to bring social change in the community
through critically analyzing their social conditions and developing relations with outside
world/resources for their development. It has three main objectives-
1) To involve the people democratically in thinking deciding, planning
2) Playing an active part in the development
3) Operation of services that affect their daily lives.
Other objectives
1. Value for personal fulfilment of belonging to a community.
2. Concerned with the need in community planning to think of actual people in relation
to other people and meeting their needs as persons, instead off, on a series of separate
needs and problems.
3. To organize the community scientifically.
4. To help the community to identify its needs and to work on it.
5. To empower the community to identify the resources within and outside
the community for development.
6. To facilitate the development of leadership in the community.
7. To foster social capital generation in the community.
8. To equip the community to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate
development initiatives.
9)To enhance self-reliance of the community for sustainable development.

While studying the concept of community organization Ross (1955) identified three
approaches and described this method very well.

(1) The ‗specific content’ approach, where by a worker or an agency or organisation

identifies problem and launches a program to meet them
(2) The ‘general content’ approach whereby a group, association or council, such state social

30
welfare board, attempts a coordinated and orderly development of service in a particular area.
(3) The ‗process approach’ where the objective is not the content i.e. facilities or services of
some kind.

History of Community organisation

Historical development of community organization in the U.K is divided into 4 phases by

Baldock in 1974.

1. First Phase (1880-1920): During this period the community work was mainly seen as
a method of social work. It was considered as a process of helping the individuals to
enhance their social adjustments. It acted as major player to co-ordinate the work of
voluntary agencies.
2. Second phase (1920-1950): This period saw the emergence of new ways of dealing
with social issues and problems. The community organization was closely associated
with central and state Govt.'s program for urban development. The important
development in this period was its association with community association
movement.
3. Third phase (1950 onwards): it emerged as a reaction to the neighborhood idea,
which provided an ideological phase for the second phase. It was period were the
professional development of social work took place. Understanding the shortcomings
in the existing system, it was a period where the social workers sought for a
professional identity.
4. Fourth phase: It is the ongoing period that has marked a significant involvement of
the community action. It questioned the very relationship of the community work and
social work. It was thus seen as period of radical social movement and we could see
the conflicts of community with authority. The association of social workers and the
community are deprofessionalized during this period. Thus it was during this period
the conflictual strategies that were introduced in the community work.

History of Community Organisation in India

A historical account of community organisation is not available in India, as there has been
only limited documentation on social work literature in general and on community
organisation in particular. Community organisation has its roots in the Charity organisations

31
in the United States. They realized the need of the people and tried to organise the people to
co-ordinate their work. The main activities were social welfare, raising funds, seeking
enactment for social legislation and co-ordination of welfare activities. The spirit behind all
these activities was charity. In India, the very concept of charity is deeprooted in the religious
philosophy.

Even before the commencement of the social work education in India in 1936, the
community work was in place, already in existence. But in the first phase from 1936 to 1952
the community work was in a dormant stage. During this period social work was in its
infancy and not many were employed in the community settings because there were hardly
any jobs that provided an opening for community organisation. Professionals preferred to
work in casework settings.

It was in 1952 that the community development project was launched by the government of
India and with this we find the emergence of a new era of community work. The basic
objective of community development in India was to awaken the rural people of their needs,
instilling in them a sense of ambition for better life and making them aware of their right and
power to find a solution for their problems. According to Mukerji (1961) ―Community
development is a movement designed to promote better living for the whole community with
the active participation, and if possible, with the initiative of community‖. According to him
community development can be divided into two process. 1) Extension education, 2)
Community organisation. Extension education was expected to improve the quality of human
beings by improving his/her knowledge and skills. By community organisation Mukerji had
in mind the setting up of three institutions in the village.

1) Village Panchayat
2) The village co-operative
3) The village school

During this period the thrust of the community work remained in rural areas whereas social
work remained mostly urban in character. From 1970 onwards we could see a new trend in
the community work practice. The social workers expanded their scope and operational area
from their traditional approach of casework to other development fields. For example, people
working with school children started working with the community. The NGOs and voluntary
organisations adopted community approach. This shift has in-fact led to the use of process of

32
community work. By and large the community work has remained welfare-oriented. The
current phase of community work in India is experiencing a growing dissatisfaction with its
own practice or rather the outcome of its practice. So efforts are on to create alternate ways of
working with communities. In-spite of these, the professionals are involved in a variety of
projects in both rural and urban areas, to promote better living for the community. Another
trend in the community work is the involvement of the Business houses in promoting welfare
in their neighbourhood. This is commonly known as CSR. (Corporate Social
Responsibilities) The business houses i.e. Tata‘s, Escorts, and some of the multinational
companies too have joined in this venture.

This trend has attracted many professionals in this field. The main objective of community
development is to develop village communities by methods, which will stimulate, encourage
and aid villagers themselves to do much of the work necessary to accomplish the desired
goals. The changes conceived and promoted should have the involvement of the people and
should be acceptable to them and put into practice by them.

There is a common philosophical link between community organisation and community

development. Both aim to enable people to live happily and a fully developed life. Both have
basic faith in the common man and his right to self-determination within the framework of
the society. Both give emphasis to self-help and help the people to help themselves to solve
their own problems. However, community organisation and community development should
not be considered as synonymous. CD is concerned with the promotion of all aspects of life
including social, economic and cultural; both in rural and urban areas. While CO is concerned
with adjustment of social welfare needs and resources in cities, states, nations as well as in
villages. CO is practiced in the USA on a voluntary basis, while in almost all the developing
countries CD is a government-sponsored programme. CO is a product of urbanization and
industrialization. Here the main concern is problems of the population mobility, problems of
the family, problems of the aged, problems of juvenile delinquency, of unemployment and
provision of social security. But CD is concerned with how to induce people to meet their
basic human needs. CO tends to be more process oriented while CD.

Models of Community organisation

In 1979, Jack Rothman, formulated three basic models of community organization.

33
 Locality Development - A method of working with community organizations. Initially
used by the Settlement House Movement, the primary focus was community building and
community empowerment. Leadership development, mutual aid, and popular education
were considered essential components to this participatory process. Locality development
is aimed at meeting the needs of target populations in a defined area (e.g.,
neighbourhood, housing block, tenement housing, school, etc).
 Social Planning- A method of working with a large populations. The focus is in
evaluating welfare needs and existing services in the area and planning a possible blue
print for a more efficient delivery of services to the social problems. It is a responsive
model to the needs and attitudes of the community. E.g. Housing, Health Insurance,
Affordable education...etc.
 Social Action - It is a strategy used by groups or sub communities or even national
organisations that feel that they have inadequate power and resources to meet their needs.
So they confront with the power structure using conflict as a method to solve their issues
related to inequalities and deprivation. E.g. A structural systems change in social policies
that brings disparities between people of different socio-economic condition in social
rights like educational policies, employment policies...etc.

In the late-1990s, Rothman revisited the three community organization typologies of locality
development, social planning, and social action, and reflected that they were too rigid as
"community processes had become more complex and variegated, and problems had to be
approached differently, more subtly, and with greater penetrability."This led to a broadened
view of the models as more expansive, nuanced, situational, and interconnected. According to
Rothman, the reframing of the typologies as overlapping and integrated ensured that
"practitioners of any stripe [have] a greater range in selecting, then mixing and phasing,
components of intervention.

Rothman's three basic models of community organization have been critiqued and expanded
upon. Feminist community organization scholar, Cheryl Hyde, criticized Rothman's "mixing
and phasing" as unable to transcend rigid categorical organizing typologies, as they lacked
"dimensions of ideology, longitudinal development commitment within community
intervention and incorporate [on] [of] social movement literature."[

We are trying to interpret some of the principles from the available sets of principles for
guiding our practice community organisation in Indian context.

34
1) Community Organisation is means and not an end: As discussed earlier the community
organisation is a process by which the capacity of the community to function as an integrated
unit is being enhanced. In this sense it is a method or a means to enable people to live a
happy and fully developed life. It refers to a method of intervention whereby a community
consisting of individuals, groups or organisations are helped to engage in planned collective
action in order to deal with their needs and problems.

2) Community Organisation is to promote community solidarity and the practice of

democracy: It should seek to overcome disruptive influences, which threaten the wellbeing
of the community and the vitality of democratic institutions. In community organisation
discrimination and segregation or exclusion should be avoided and integration and mutual
acceptance should be promoted.

3) The clear identification of the Community: Since the community is the client of the
community organisation worker, it must be clearly identified. It is likely that there are several
communities with which he/she deals at the same time. Further it is important that once the
community is identified the entire community must be the concern of the practitioner. No
programme can be isolated from the social welfare needs and resources of the community as
a whole. The welfare of the whole community is always more important than the interest or
the wellbeing of any one agency/group in the community.

4) Fact-finding and needs assessment: Community organisation programmes should have

its roots in the community. Proper fact-finding and assessment of the community needs is the
prerequisite for starting any programme in the It is generally desirable for local community
services to be indigenous, grass-roots developments rather than imported from outside.
Whenever possible, then, community organisation should have its origin in a need felt by the
community or by substantial number of persons in the community. There should be vital
community participation, and essential community control, of its development. While
facilitating the process of community organisation, the programmes should be initiated,
developed, modified, and terminated on the basis of the needs of the community and on the
basis of the availability of other comparable services. When the particular need for a service
is met, the programme should be modified or terminated.

5) Identification, mobilization and utilization of the available resources: The fullest

possible use should be made of existing social welfare resources, before creating new
resources or services. In the absence of resources/services the worker has to mobilize the

35
resources from various sources such as community, government, non-government agencies,
etc. While utilizing the indigenous resources it must be recognised that these resources may
sometimes need extensive overhauling before they will meet certain needs. Apart from
mobilizing physical resources, indigenous human resources should be put to optimum use.

6) Participatory planning: The community organisation worker must accept the need for
participatory planning throughout the process of community organisation. It is important that
the practitioner prepares a blue print in the beginning of what he/she intends to do with the
community. This is done with the community taking into consideration the needs of the
community, available resources, agency objectives, etc. Planning in community organisation
is a continuous process as it follows the cycle of implementation and evaluation.

7) Active and vital participation: The concept of self-help is the core of community
organisation. The community members‘ participation throughout the process of community
organisation should be encouraged from the standpoint both of democratic principle and of
feasibility— that is, the direct involvement in the programme of those who have the primary
stake in it‘s results. ―Selfhelp‖ by citizen or clientele groups should be encouraged and
fostered.

8) Community right of self-determination should be respected: The Role of the

community organisation worker is to provide professional skill, assistance, and creative
leadership in enabling people‘s groups and organisations to achieve social welfare objectives.
The community members should make basic decisions regarding programme and policy.
While the community organisation worker plays a variety of roles in different situations, he is
basically concerned with enabling people‘s expression and leadership to achieve community
organisation goals, and not try to have control, domination, or manipulation.

9) Voluntary cooperation: Community organisation must be based upon mutual

understanding, voluntary acceptance, and mutual agreement. Community organisation, if it is
to be in harmony with democratic principles, cannot be through regimentation. It should not
be imposed from above or outside, but must be derived from the inner freedom and will to
unite all those who practice it.

10)The spirit of cooperation rather than competition, and the practice of coordination
of effort: Community organisation practice should be based on the spirit of cooperation
rather than competition. The community organisation practice has proved that the most
effective advances are made through cooperative effort. It is by the coordinated and sustained

36
programmes attacking major problems rather than through sporadic efforts by different
groups. The emphasis on collaborative and cooperative attitudes and practices does not imply
elimination of differences, of tension, or of conflict.

11) Recognition and involvement of indigenous leadership: Community organisation as it

has been described requires the participation of the people belonging to the community.
However everyone in the community cannot be involved in face-to-face contact with all
others in the community; therefore it is important to identify and recognize the leaders (both
formal and informal) accepted by various groups and subgroups in the community. Inclusion
of the respected and accepted leaders with whom the major subgroups identify provides a
major step in integrating the community. This further makes possible initiation of a process
of communication which, if it becomes effective, will nourish and sustain the process of
community organisation.

12)Limited use of authority or compulsion: Invoking the application of authority or

compulsion may sometimes be necessary in community organisation. But it should be used as
little as possible, for as short a time as possible and only as a last resort. When compulsion
must be applied, it should be followed as soon as possible, by resumption of the cooperative
process.

13)The dynamic and flexible nature of programmes and services: This principle is basic
to sound Community Organisation: Concept and Principles 1 7 community organisation.
Social welfare agencies and programmes must be responsive to the changing conditions,
problems, and needs of community life. Community is a dynamic phenomenon, which
constantly changes and thus the needs and problems also keep changing. Therefore it is
necessary that the programmes and services are flexible enough.

14)Continuing participatory evaluation: As programmes are developed to meet community

needs, sometime must be set aside for evaluation of the process. Regular feedback from the
community is important. Criteria must be set up for evaluation of the programmes, to see how
effective the action has been and what has been accomplished.

Community Organisation as a Method of Social Work

Introduction

37
Community Organisation is one of the primary methods of social work. It deals with
intervention in the communities to solve the community problems. As a method of social
work community organisation can solve the problems of many people in the community
through their collective involvement. Community organisation and community development
are inter-related as two sides of same coin.

The community organisation includes other methods of social work, that is, group work, and
casework. The power structure plays a role in community organisation. The social workers
need to know the community power structure to practice community organisation method,
which is used for empowering people for their development. The details are provided for
social work students to understand and practice community organisation effectively.

Community Organisation as Macro Method

Community organisation is considered as a Macro method of practice in social work. (Arthur

E. Fink) It is used for solving community problems. The term Macro is used because of its
ability to involve a large number of people in solving the social problems. Community
organisation is a macro method because this method can be successfully implemented at local
level of community or at state level and at regional levels of the community or even at the
international level.

For example, community organisation can help in pollution control at local, state, regional,
national and international levels. It is a macro method because unlike casework which deals
with only one person at a time or group work which deals with limited number of
participants, community organisation deals with large number of people at any given time.

For example, Poverty cannot be solved by using individual approach like casework as there
are many people affected by poverty. Individual approach is not practical where the
magnitude of the problem is alarming. In such cases we have to use a method, which can help
a large number of people. While comparing other methods of social work community
organisation as macro method is useful for solving widespread economic and social problems
like poverty.

Community Organisation as a Problem Solving Method In community organisation method

the community is the client. Community organisation solves the community problems and
fulfils the needs of the community. Many of the community problems like social injustice,
poverty, inadequate housing, poor nutrition, lack of health, lack of medical services,
unemployment, pollution, exploitation, bonded labour system, illicit arrack, dowry, female

38
infanticide, women and children trafficking, drug trafficking etc. can be solved by using
community organisation method. In problem solving generally there are three basic aspects.

These are study, diagnosis, and treatment. First the problem has to be studied. For this, we
have to collect information regarding the problem. From the information collected we have to
identify the main causes. This is called diagnosis. Based on the findings, or diagnosis, a
solution is evolved that is called treatment. We consider this model as medical model because
doctors study the patient to find out the causes for illness and based on findings, treatment or
medicines are prescribed.

Such a model can be used in community organisation method. Problems can be solved only
with involvement of people due to which resources are mobilized to solve the problems. This
method is especially applicable in Indian situations, because in India a large number of
people are affected by poverty or other poverty related problems which need speedy
solutions. For this community organisation as a problem solving method is most effective to
solve community problems.

For example people in certain area suffer due to lack of water for their cultivation. With the
help of the community organiser and people‘s participation, watersheds can be made and
ground water level is increased. Water stored during rainy season can help the people to
continue cultivation. Here the whole village problem is related with water for irrigation and
drinking purpose, which can be solved by using community organisation method.

Community Organisation method is used for the following:

a) To meet the needs and bring about and maintain adjustment between needs and resources
in a community.

b) Helping people effectively to work with their problems and plan to realize their objectives
by helping them to develop, strengthen, and maintain qualities of participation, self-direction
and cooperation.

c) Bringing about changes in community and group relationships and in the distribution of
decisionmaking power.

d) The resources of the community are identified and tapped for solving the community
problems

Conclusion

39
The aim of this chapter was to provide you guidelines to understand the basic concept of
community organisation as a method of social work practice. We have discussed in detail the
meaning of community organisation and also provided the definitions with explanations.
Now you will be able to explain the meaning and definition of community organisation.
Being aware that community work and community organisation is integral part of social
work, you will be able to situate them in the context of social work.

UNIT 8: Principles of Community Organization

Principles

Principles are expressions of value judgments. It is the generalized guiding rules for a sound
practice. Arthur Dunham in 1958 formulated a statement of 28 principles of community
organisation and grouped those under seven headings. They are:

1. Democracy and social welfare;

2. Community roots for community programs;
3. Citizen understanding, support, and participation and professional service;
4. Co-operation;
5. Social Welfare Programs;
6. Adequacy, distribution, and organisation of social welfare services; and
7. Prevention.

In India, Siddiqui in 1997 worked out a set of principles based on the existing evidence based
indigenous community organization practices.

1. Objective movement
2. Specific planning
3. Active peoples participation
4. Inter-group approach
5. Democratic functioning
6. Flexible organisation
7. Utilisation of available resources
8. Cultural orientation
Ross (1967) outlined specific principles – the elementary or fundamental ideas regarding
initiation and continuation of community organisation processes. These principles have been

40
discussed in terms of the nature of the organisation or association and the role of the
professional worker. The twelve principles identified by Ross are:

1) Discontent with existing conditions in the community must initiate and/or

nourish development of the association.

2) Discontent must be focussed and channelled into organisation, planning, and

action in respect to specific problems.

3) Discontent which initiates or sustains community organisation must be widely

shared in the community

4) The association must involve leaders (both formal and informal) identified with,
and accepted by, major sub-groups in the community.

5) The association must have goals and methods and procedures of high
acceptability.

6) The programmes of the association should include some activities with an

emotional content.

7) The association should seek to utilize the manifest and latent goodwill which
exists in the community.

8) The association must develop active and effective lines of communication both
within the association and between the association and the community.

9) The association should seek to support and strengthen groups which it brings
together in cooperative work.

10) The association should develop a pace of work in line with existing conditions in
the community.

11) The association should seek to develop effective leaders.

12) The association must develop strength, stability and prestige in the community.

UNIT 9: Phases of Community Organisation: Study, analysis, assessment,discussion,

organization, action, Evaluation, modification and continuation.

41
STUDY: carry out survey or initiate the members of community to collect the base line
information about the community.

ANALYSIS: information collected is classified according to common characteristics and

quantified for its magnitude and severity.

ASSESMENT: the needs and problems that are widely felt by the community are identified
and given priority according to urgency and severity.

DISCUSSION: it is essential to invite the attention of the community & initiate a discussion
to highlight the issues & find out the ways & means to solve the issues & also to prioritize the
issues. It is further discussed about the resources required & the plan of action for meeting
the problem.

ACTION: Locate the capable individuals and groups suitable to carry out the task.
Committees are formed, roles and responsibilities allotted. The members of the community
are encouraged to take part actively and accept responsibility so that the action plan can be
implemented smoothly. Implementation has to take place with the active participation of the
people. The action plan has to be monitored by the members of the community ensure that
the activities carried out within the time frame and the resources allocated.

EVALUVATION: The community makes an assessment of the whole process, the outcome
and the successes and identifies the deviations of failure. While reflecting on outcome of
process the reasons for failure are identified and assessed so that they are avoided in the
future.

MODIFICATION: In case the task has to be continued, the modifications, which are needed
as identified in the evaluation& reflection, are incorporated in this stage and continued.

CONTINUATION: From the list of issues, the other issues are taken up & community
organization process is continued. If the task undertaken is not successfully completed, the
strategy is modified and implemented.

UNIT 10. Methods of Community Organisation: Methods (Arthur Dunham‘s classification

of CO methods- method of planning and related activities, group decision making and co-
operative action, communication, promotion and social action, financing and fund raising,
method of administration)

42
Methods of Community organization

1. Methods of Planning and Related Activities

1. Fact finding 2. Analysis 3.Evaluation 4. Planning

2. Methods of Group Decision Making and Co-operative Action

5. Meeting practice 6. Conference 7.Committee Practice 8. Negotiation

9. Organization including Mass organization

3. Methods of Communication:

10. Education. 11. Consultation 12. Public Relations 13.Formal Written

Communication.14.Formal oral communication 15.The interview.

4. Methods of promotion and social action:

16. Promotion.17.Legislative promotion. 18. Non-Legislative procedural social action

19. Direct action 20. Exerting or invoking authoritative action

5. Methods of financing and fund raising

21. Fund procurement by governmental agencies 22. Fund raising by voluntary

agencies23.Federated financial campaigning 24. Joint budgeting

6. Methods of administration:

25. Administrative activities of agencies concerned with social planning.26.

Administration of common services or community organization. 27. Recording

UNIT 11. Characteristics of a Good Community Organiser, Skills needed for community
organization, Role of Community organizer

Characteristics of a good Community Organiser

1) Curiosity – The function of an organiser is to raise questions that agitate, and challenge
the accepted pattern. He goes forth with the questions and suspects that there are no answers
but only further questions.

43
2) Irreverence – Curiosity and irreverence go together. He is challenging, stimulating,
agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest. In other words he is creating discontentment among
the people by highlighting the given situation or making the people to understand the
dimensions and possible solution of their social situation.

3) Imagination – To the organiser, imagination is not only a mental faculty but something
deeper. It ignites and feeds the force that drives him to organise for change. To realistically
appraise and anticipate the probable reactions of the resisting forces, he must be able to
identify with them too, in his imagination, and foresee their reactions to his action.

4) A Sense of humour – Humour is essential to successful tactician, for the most potent
weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule. It enables him to maintain his perspective
and see himself for what he really is and helps to have friendly relationship with one and all.

5) An organised personality – He should be able to accept and work with irrationalities for
the purpose of change. He should recognize that each person or community has a hierarchy of
values. He must become sensitive to every thing that is happening around him. He is always
learning and every incident teaches him something. He must also accept without fear or
worry that the odds are always against him and be prepared to accept both positive and
negative reactions

6) Free and open mind – He must have a flexible personality, not a rigid structure that
breaks down when something unexpected happens. The organiser while working with the
community does not have any hidden agenda or preconceived ideas

7) Discerning and critical eye – The organiser should be able to look at the situation and
differentiate it critically. Any situation has to be viewed through the eyes of the people
carefully and find out its magnitude, symptoms and causes.

8) Receptive ear – The organiser has to be a good and an attentive listener, listening to the
people and to their problem. The organiser while working with the community has to be
person having capacity patient listening, and does not give orders to the people. The
difference between a leader and an organiser is – the leader goes on to build power to fulfill
his desires to hold and wield the power for purposes both social and personal. He wants
power to himself. The organiser finds his goal in creation of power for others to use.

44
Problem Analysis – One of the major tasks of the community organiser is to assist the
people in arriving at a solution to the problem. The organiser is capable of identifying the
problem and making the people also to identify, analyse, give priorities, select an appropriate
priority, mobilize resources, make a plan of action, implement, monitor, evaluate, modify and
continue.

Resource Mobilization – Any problem of the community while working out the solution
requires resources. The resources may be in terms of manpower, money material and time.
On the one hand the organiser is aware of the availability of the resources within the
community or outside the community and on the other makes the people to identify the
sources of resources and the way to tap such resources.

Conflict Resolution – Problems of the community involves the people affected by the
problem and the Institutions others who are the causes for the problem. Therefore there could
be a conflict between these two groups or between the people and the system. The organiser
is equipped with the skill for identifying the conflicting situation and making the people to
understand the conflict and then work out the ways and means to find solutions to the
conflict.

Organising Meeting – Communication within the community and between the community
and the organiser is most important. There needs to be transparency in the dealings for which
formal and informal meetings have to be organised and information shared. The sharing of
information enables sharing of responsibility and decision making.

Writing Reports – Documentation of the events for future reference and follow up is
absolutely essential. Any communication or any written representation and the report of the
dealings have to be recorded. This task is either done by the community organiser or
delegated the task to someone else.

Networking – In a community while working with the people the participation of the people
strengthens or increases the power of the people. At times support from likeminded people or
organisation has to elicited so that a pressure is built against the oppressive force. This helps
to create pressure and increase the bargaining power for which networking with other people
and organisations is done by the community organiser.

Training – Capacity building of the people and the personnel of an organisation is important
while working with the community. In the process of capacity building the community

45
organiser has to be a good trainer. The community organiser has to use his training ability
and skills in this regard. Role of Community Organiser in Different Settings having the
required characteristics and skills and the knowledge about the process and steps of
community organisation, will be able to apply the same in different settings by playing
appropriate roles. The different roles of a community organiser are discussed here.

Role of an effective community organiser

1) Communicator – The community organiser transfers or transmits information, thought,

knowledge etc. to the members of the community. Sharing of information enables the
community to be better prepared and empowered with information. The communication
between the organiser and the community and within the community is essential. The people
have to be prepared and informed about the various effects or consequences of the
community organisation process. The communication takes place by individual contact,
group meetings, group discussions, public meetings etc. At times the community organiser
takes an upper hand and considers that the people are illiterate and ignorant and hence the
dealings with the people become a master slave relationship. In order to avoid any such
undesired relationship the community organiser has transparency and communicates with the
people.

2) Enabler – The community organiser facilitates the process in the community for a change.
He does not carry out any work by himself but he enables the community to do the work. The
organiser gives importance to the process than the product. Therefore the people learn the
process rather than get worried about the results or consequences of the process. By the role
of enabler the organiser would create independence among the people by which they avoid
the dependency syndrome. The community organiser is present with the people and
encourages and gives different suggestions so that the people are able to decide what they
would like to do and how they would like to do.

3) Animator – In any process of community organisation the organiser encourages, provides

direction and guidelines to proceed in carrying out different activities. Many people because
their culture, tend to depend on others and do not want to decide anything on their own. In
such situation the organiser as an animator helps the people to come forward and have active
participation. Any further corrections or modifications in the works of the community are
being done by the animator. The animator plays a vital role in eliciting the active

46
participation of the people from planning till evaluation, especially ensuring involvement of
people in all the dealings of the issues and problems.

4) Guide – The community organiser instead of doing anything on his own guides the
members of the community in the process of community organisation. The community
organiser is not a person to shoulder the responsibility or solve problems of the people.
Instead he has to make the people to respond for which the organiser provides the various
avenues and shows different routes while dealing with the community problems. As a guide,
the organiser provides the needed information. He has to be a person with lots of information
and ideas. Once the community organiser is able to provide information which is useful to the
people, the youth from the neighbouring areas may also approach in getting some guidance
from the community organiser. This would surely fetch credit to the community organiser as
well as helps gain the goodwill of the people.

5) Counsellor – The community organiser understands the community and enables the
community to understand itself. At the time of difficulty the individuals or the groups are
given the required counselling to help them proceed in the correct direction. One of the very
basic dimensions of counselling is to be a patient listener. Usually everyone likes others to
listen to them and hesitate to listen to others. Moreover as a counsellor he has to step into the
shoes of others, understand and respond.

6) Collaborator – The community organiser joins hands in performing his task with his
colleagues with other likeminded people and organisations. The organiser has to have
interpersonal relationships and public relations skills. Nowadays organisations approach a
problem not with their personal capacity as they also depend upon neighbouring organisation.
Similarly other organisations may also look for cooperation and collaboration with different
organisations. There are also organisation working towards a similar problem, wherein a
collaborative effort will strengthen both the organisations. Therefore the role of collaborator
is very much needed for networking with similar and likeminded organisations working for a
common cause.

7) Consultant – The community organiser enjoys the confidence of the people and advises
them in matters of vital interest. The community organiser becomes a person with knowledge
and information which is being shared with the people. As a consultant the community

47
organiser makes he available to the people who are in need, because the community organiser
has information and expertise which could be availed of by those who are in need of it. The
community organiser instead of working in the field in one area, will be able to contribute his
expertise through many individuals and groups by performing the role of a consultant.

8) Innovator – The community organiser innovates, performs, and improves upon the
techniques, through in the process of community organisation. This gives a lead to the people
of the community and enables them to try out new ways and means to find solutions to their
needs and problems. The community organisation should not be merely for solving problem.
On the other hand it has to function in the areas of capacity building of the individuals and
community where the organiser can be an innovator by introducing new ways to improve the
capacity of the people. Community organiser is not a person to maintain the system that
exists, but he should be a person to introduce new ways and means to climb up the
development ladder.

9) Model – The community organiser commands perfection as a community organiser and

serves as a source of inspiration. The role of the organiser 100 Social Work Intervention with
Communities and Institutions is to become an example while working with the people. This
should further become a model which could be applied in other areas with similar problems.
By proper planning in approaching a problem and executing the plan and documenting the
whole process will be of great help to others. The problem solving process becomes a model
to others.

10) Motivator – The community organiser stimulates and sustains active interest among the
people for reaching a solution to the needs and problems. The community organiser
encourages the community to take up a minor task and complete it successfully which would
enable the people to take up more difficult tasks. In such a process the people at times may
not take any initiative or content to live with the existing situation. Therefore the organiser
motivates the people by making them observe, analyse, understand and respond to the
situation.

11) Catalyst – In the process of community organisation the community organiser retains his
identity, at the same time enables the people to be empowered. The people gain accessibility
and control over resources and acquire skills in decision making. The community organiser

48
accelerates the actions and reactions so that people are able to achieve the desired results. As
a catalyst the organiser is able to increase the response level of the people. The catalyst role
further enables the people to become independent and become expert in responding to their
own needs.

12) Advocate – The role of the advocate is to a represent or persuades the members of the
community and prepares them to be representatives so as to represent the issues to the
concerned authorities to bring about solution to the unmet needs. The advocacy role is an
important one in the present context. The needs and problems of the people have to be
represented and the required support and networking obtained in order to increase the
pressure on the oppressive forces. In the role of advocate the community organiser champions
the rights of others.

13) Facilitator – The community organiser helps the community to articulate their needs,
clarify and identify their problems, explore appropriate strategies, select and apply
intervention strategies, and develop the people‘s capacities to deal with their own problems
more effectively. A facilitator provides support, encouragement, and suggestions to the
community so that they may proceed more easily and skilfully in completing tasks or solving
problem. A facilitator assists the community to find coping strategies, strengths and resources
to produce changes necessary for realizing goals and objectives. A facilitator helps client
systems to alter their environment.

14) Mediator – The community organiser intervenes in disputes between parties to help them
find compromises, reconcile differences, or reach 102 Social Work Intervention with
Communities and Institutions mutually satisfying agreements. The mediator takes a neutral
stance between the involved parties. A mediator is involved in resolving disputes between
members or between the community and other persons in the broader environment.

15) Educator – The community organiser as educator conveys information to the community
and those in the broader environment. Organiser provides information necessary for coping
with problem situations, assists the community in practicing new behaviour patterns or skills,
and teaches through presentation of role models. The community organiser provides
information necessary for decision making. Community organisation is a macro method in
social work. The community organiser with the required qualities and skills will be able to
work with the people. While working with the people of different background or from

49
different geographical set up the different roles can be applied. All the roles need not be, or
cannot be, applied in all the settings or in dealing with all the problems.

Conclusion

This chapter has described the settings in which community organisation can be applied and
the skills and characteristics of a community organiser. The community organisation process
involves the community in taking the initiative in identifying, analyzing, selecting the
different needs and problems of the community.. In the process of community organisation
the organiser plays different roles like communicator, counsellor, consultant, motivator,
innovator, guide, advocate etc. in different settings depending on the situation and needs and
problems in the area.

Module 4 Approaches, Models and Strategies of Community Organization

UNIT 12: Approaches - The social work approach, the political activist approach,
neighbourhood maintenance approach/community development approach, and system change
approach, structural change approach.

1. The Social Work Approach: In this approach, the society is viewed as a social organism
and therefore the efforts are oriented towards building a sense of community. The community
organizer whose role is of an "enabler or an advocate‖ helps the community identify a
problem in the neighborhood and strives to achieve the needed social resources by gathering
the existing the social services and by lobbying with some in power to meet the needs of the
neighborhood. This method is more consensual and the neighborhood is seen as a collective
client.

2. The political Activists Approach: Saul Alinsky, the Godfather of community organizing
is the founder of this approach. The basic philosophy of this approach is based on his
thinking that " more representative the organization the stronger the organization." In this
approach the community is seen as a political entity and not as a social organism. Here, the

50
neighborhood is viewed as a potential power base capable of getting power. The role of the
community organizer is to help the community understand the problem in terms of power and
necessary steps are taken to mobilize the community. The problem of the neighborhood is
always identified as absence of power and in the interest of gaining power for the
neighborhood the organizers are faced with conflicts with groups, interests and elites. Since
most of the community organizers come from outside the community, it has faced the
problems of equality of power relations and leadership in the community.

3. Neighborhood Maintenance/Community development Approach: This approach has

emerged out of both the previous approaches namely within the same neighborhood
movements. It is seen in the form of civic associations. This association uses peer group
pressure to provide services in the community. They use this strategy to pressurize the
officials to deliver services to the community but sometimes this approach takes the form of
political activists approach as they realize that their goals can be only achieved only through
confrontations. In this approach we see the characteristics of de-emphasis on dissent and
confrontation and these organizations view themselves as more proactive and development
minded.

Some of the steps in Neighborhood Development Approach are:

• Identifying the geographical area for your intervention

• Making our way to the community
• Understand the community and identify the felt needs
• Making an appropriate program
• Planning for resource mobilization
• Developing a strong net-work in the community
• Planning for withdrawal from the community
 Some of the tasks in System Change Approach are:
• Understanding the deficiencies in the system.
• Communicating the findings with the community
• Making strategies to influence the decision making bodies.
• Mobilizing peoples‘ participation and seeking out-side support to translate the
plan in to concrete action.
• Making alliances and partnerships with other NGOS and comminute to
demand a change

51
4. Neighborhood Development Approach: Neighborhood Model is the oldest model of
community organization. This model has been practiced in India and in some of the
underdeveloped countries. It has been used in the developmental activities. In general it is
believed that people living in a neighborhood have the capacity to meet the problems they
come across in their day to day life through their own efforts and resources. The main aspect
here is that the community realizes its needs and takes appropriate steps to meet the needs of
the community, which will bring greater satisfaction to all its members both individually and
collectively.

The role of the worker in this model is to induce a process that will sensitize the community
and make the community realize its needs. Based on the value of self-sustenance the worker
energizes the community and makes the community self-reliant, and not merely depending on
the help form outside. So rather than providing services in the community, the communities
are energized to meet its own needs. This model encourages the people to think for
themselves rather than doing things for them.

5. System Change Approach: As the name suggests, the system change model aims at
developing strategies to either restructure or modify the system. Thus it is termed as "System
Change approach to community work‖. Although we find glimpses of this model gaining
more acceptances, this has not become very popular. We know of various mechanisms that
cater to the needs of the society. Such as education, health services housing, women
empowerment, and employment.

All these services are rooted through various systems and all these systems do have sub-
systems. The fundamental aspect in this model is that the due to various reasons the systems
become dysfunctional. For example the system of education as we have it today, reveals that
the cities have better educational faculties as compared to the rural areas. This system
(education policy) of education has generated disparities in the society. i.e. access to
education, lack of basic facilities, trained staff, etc. The system instead of becoming a tool of
empowering mechanism brings disparities between people of different socio-economic
condition. So the system has failed to achieve its objectives. Thus the worker on observing
this dysfunction in the community finds it important to develop strategies to restructure or
modify the system.

6. Structural Change Approach : One of the most difficult and rarely practiced models of
community work is structural change model. The society consists of small communities and it

52
is nothing but "a web of relationships". These relationships of the people are formally
structured by the respective countries' state

The special tasks involved in Structural Change Approach:

• Understanding the relationships between macro- and micro social realities.

• Adopting an alternative political ideology.

• Sharing with the family members/faculty members

• Helping the communities

• Helping the communities to identify a course of action. Policies, law and constitutions and
informally by its customs, traditions etc. that determines the social rights of the individuals.
The social structure in some of the societies is controlled by the state. Understanding the
macro- structure of social relationship and its impact on the micro realities, the worker tries to
mobilize the public opinion to radically change the macro-structure. Thus the structural
change model aims to bring a new social order, an alternative form of society which will
transform the existing conditions at the micro-level. This can happen only if an alternative
form of political ideology is adopted. This form of community work may originate from a
community itself but it has wider coverage i.e. the entire society or nation. Sometimes this
takes the shape of social action, which is another method of social work profession. Since the
general situation in the developing countries is very peculiar, it is very difficult for the
community worker to actually practice this model. A social worker may initiate this model.
But it is very difficult to predict the success. However, he makes attempt to saw the seeds of
social change by adopting a political ideology .It might take decades to actually perceive any
transformation in the society nevertheless one can be proud of being the agent of social
change. To prepare the community to sustain its interests, enthusiasm and capacity to meet
the strains that may arise out of the conflict with the existing power structure.

UNIT 13: Models of Community Organisation – Locality Development Model, Social

Planning Model, Social Action Model.

Rothman (1979) suggested three models for community organization i.e. locality
development model, social planning model and social action model.
 The locality development model refers to the popular notion of community
organization practice whereby a worker or an agency attempts to develop various

53
 services or program to meet the need of target population in a defined area. This may
also include the coordination of various agencies providing services in the area and the
generation of new program and services as well.

 The social planning model refers to community work where a worker or an agency
undertakes an exercise evaluating the welfare needs and existing services in a town,
village or municipal area or may be in a state and suggest a possible blueprint for more
efficient delivery of social services. Generally such attempts are confined to a particular
field such as housing, education, health, child care or women‘s development.

 The social action model refers to community work which is issue oriented and attempts
to generate a social movement. The worker or agency attempts to mobilize public
opinion on a particular issue by educating people. The issue may range reorganizing
relief during natural calamity, or combating problems like dowry or wife battering to a
more radical change in society or in social institution.

UNIT 14: Strategies and techniques in community organization: formation and capacity
building of CBOs, capacity building of community level institutions (PRI, SHG), strategies
for capacity building of the marginalized groups,

Organizational Capacity Building

Now that we have discussed organizational capacity and how, over time and with changing
circumstances, organizations must develop new capacities, we can shift our focus to
organizational capacity building. Backer (2001) writes that capacity building involves
―strengthening nonprofits so they can better achieve their mission‖ (p. 38). Blumenthal
(2003) defines capacity building as any ―actions that improve nonprofit effectiveness‖ (p. 5).
Typically, building organizational capacity is an ongoing, often complex developmental
process: There is no final destination. At its most basic level, organizational capacity building
is the process of identifying what organizational capacities to target for strengthening and
applying targeted strategies most likely to build those capacities.

Strategies for Organizational Capacity Building

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While the three levels described above help us identify what areas to target for change in
organizations, how to go about building capacity is another question worth exploring.
Whether focusing on incremental change or deeper transformative change, when people think
of organizational capacity building, the activities that generally come to mind are training
workshops and technical assistance. However, in practice, there is a wide range of actions
that can be taken to build organizational capacity. In addition to the assessment of
organizational needs, strengths, and readiness for change described above, capacity-building
practices and processes can be grouped into two major categories:

(1) Technical assistance and organization development consultation (e.g., training,

coaching, peer networking, provision of resource materials, and convening); and

(2) Direct financial support (Backer, Bleeg, & Groves, 2004). We‘ll discuss the former
briefly below. After assessing the organization to determine capacity-building needs, we can
apply the activities or strategies most likely to affect the change needed. Given the diversity
of capacity-building needs, a ―one size fits all‖ approach is believed to be less effective.

Thus, individualization, that is, customization of capacity building activities to align with
organizational needs and circumstances, is important (Backer, et al., 2010; De Vita, Fleming,
& Twombly, 2001; Innovation Network, 2001; Light, 2004; Sobeck, 2008). When developing
CHAPTER 7 Organizational and Community Capacity Building 195 capacity-building
efforts, capacity builders should take into account: identified nonprofit capacity-building
needs and strengths; nonprofit staff members‘ learning styles; and nonprofit history, culture,
life stage, and environment. This individualization should also include flexibility to alter an
initial capacity-building plan as needed (Backer et al., 2010; Blumenthal, 2003). Technical
assistance and organization development consultation in the form of training, coaching, and
peer networking are common capacity-building strategies. Often an assessment will reveal
that an organization‘s capacity needs are interrelated, which means a combination of
approaches may be warranted. For example, a consultant may be brought in to help an
executive with board development and strategic planning while managers attend training on
developing logic models and theories of change for programs. While narrowly defined

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strategies can work, the most impactful capacity-building activities include a comprehensive
range of approaches (Backer, 2001). Strategies that include opportunities for peer-to-peer
learning have been cited as an important capacity building success factor (Backer et al., 2010;
Connolly & Lukas, 2002; Innovation Network, 2001; Joffres et al., 2004).

This collaborative capacity-building approach had its challenges, but they found that over
time that:

(1) participants acquire specific knowledge and skills to increase organizational and
community capacity

(2) participants broaden their community connections;

(3) participants are able to translate learning into plans and activities at their agencies

For the capacity building process to actually happen, there is need for facilitation. And this
has to begin with understanding the language of the target population. To do this are required
a good set of facilitators who not only understand the community and its dynamics but have
an understanding of the new institutions and institutional dynamics that the project aims to
introduce. More often than not the institutional expectations are also new to the facilitators
and therefore before they can begin to interact and facilitate the community processes, they
need to understand the issues themselves.

Community Capacity Building

Community capacity building efforts can encompass a wide range of activities, from formal
leadership development efforts to community-wide planning to a wide variety of less formal
activities that build trust and social capital among citizens. The purpose of community
capacity building is to create opportunities for people in a community to work together,
develop a vision and strategies for the future, make collaborative decisions, and take action
while building the individual skills and capabilities of a range of participants and
organizations within the community (Aspen Institute, 1996). Community capacity-building
efforts to improve marginalized communities face two related but different tasks: building
common purposes, useful relationships, and capacities within the community; and connecting
the community to external resources and influence (Saegert, 2005). Building capacity in a
community is about developing common purpose, relationships, resources, and skills.

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The Aspen Institute suggests there are eight outcomes to consider as goals for community
capacity building:

(1) Expanded diverse and inclusive citizen participation;

(2) expanded leadership base;

(3) strengthened individual skills;

(4) widely shared understanding and vision;

(5) strategic community agenda;

(6) consistent, tangible progress toward goals;

(7) more effective community organizations and institutions; and

(8) better resource utilization by the community

Leadership development.

Neighborhoods and communities need local leaders who are willing and able to assume
some responsibility for community betterment by being out front to ignite and facilitate
action (Chaskin et al., 2001). Building the capacity of local leaders involves enhancing the
skills, knowledge, commitment, and access to information and resources of individual
residents in the community and providing opportunities to increase their active participation
in community-improving activities (Chaskin, 2001). The best leadership development
initiative is not a stand-alone activity but rather embedded in the development of
organizations and networks. Embedding leadership development in these activities provides
practical opportunities for individuals to try out and hone various skills (Chaskin et al., 2001

Finally, Chaskin et al. (2001) remind us that whatever approach is utilized, developing
individual leaders does not automatically translate into stronger community capacity. New
leaders must be willing to use their skills to benefit others and the community at large and be
committed to engaging others to play an active role in community betterment, gaining
strength from solidarity.

Community organizing.

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The second strategy for community capacity building—organizational capacity building—
was covered at length in the first part of this chapter, so we will not review it here. The third
strategy for building community capacity is community organizing. Community organizing is
―the process of bringing people together to solve community problems and address goals‖
(Chaskin et al., 2001, p. 93). Community organizing seeks to alter the relations of power
between the groups that have traditionally controlled decisions and the residents of
marginalized communities.

Community organizing involves putting relationship building, social capital development,

and partnerships at the core of community building (Gittell & Vidal, 1998) and capitalizes on
individual, organizational, and community strengths. Drawing again on the excellent book on
this topic by Chaskin and his colleagues (2001), we know that employing a community
organizing strategy for community capacity building forces us to confront several choices for
how we go about it. We‘ll highlight two of these: (1) whether to use a conflict or consensus
approach; and (2) whether to focus on single or multiple issues.

Conflict versus consensus strategies.

Conflict approaches utilize oppositional tactics to bring about desired ends. Examples include
marches, sit-ins, and mass protests or ―actions.‖ The rationale for using a conflict strategy is
the understanding that powerful people and institutions will not work to reduce injustice
unless direct pressure is applied (Chaskin et al., 2001). This method seeks to build social
power capable of leveraging resources and negotiating improvements for a community
(Speer, Hughey, Gensheimer, & Adams-Leavitt, 1995). Consensus-based strategies on the
other hand do not presume that conflict is required to stimulate change. Rather, change is
sought by promoting mutual respect and positive interaction among residents, organizations,
and other stakeholders by focusing on opportunities for mutual benefit in order to get things
done (Chaskin et al., 2001). Cooperation is the operating principle instead of confrontation.
The current trend in community capacity building is to rely more on consensus strategies, as
they are more useful in building the capacity of individuals, networks, and communities to
seek common ground and develop solutions that benefit communities.

Single versus multiple issues.

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Community organizing efforts can focus on a single issue (e.g., vacant lots) through targeted
strategies or take on a wider range of concerns over time. Single-issue strategies bring people
together and promote unified action around a specific concern. Unfortunately, some single-
issue campaigns can be highly targeted and shortlived. When the issue is resolved, the
capacity generated may dissipate (Chaskin et al., 2001). However, single-issue efforts can
also become a starting point for building capacity for sustained efforts on multiple issues.
Multiple-issue strategies attempt to build a membership base and local capacity to address
issues of concern noted by residents over time. If done well, these actions provide the
opportunity for enhancing collective problemsolving capacities while strengthening
community bonds and commitment. The best organizing efforts are not just about winning
one victory, they are about building power and winning in ways that enhance a community‘s
capacities for winning again in the future. This means that how communities organize around
particular issues is just as important as what they win

Capacity Building is not just training and everything cannot be done through formal training
processes. An important aspect of Capacity Building is the continuity of support, space for
clarification of ideas, working together, learning from mistakes and access to people who can
help resolve the mistakes..

Capacity for Participatory Processes - which would mean the availability of a cadre of
facilitators sensitive to the special approach for development those tribal communities, will
require which would be more inclusive and participatory iv. Capacity for Participant
Learning - which would mean systems which allow for feedback and analysis and can impact
attitudes, and behaviours and promote sharing, trust, responsiveness and openness.

Tools for Community Capacity Building

There are specific technologies that can be used to further the strategies mentioned above.
For example, Internet-based resources, such as the Community Tool Box (http://ctb .ku.edu/),
provide an effective means for transmitting skills, information, and other resources widely
and inexpensively (Francisco et al., 2001). Community capacity-building efforts that can be
enhanced through such web supports include community needs/assets assessment, resource
development, project planning, community recruitment organizing and mobilization,
intervention strategies, implementation and marketing, advocacy, and evaluation.
Community-based participatory research, when done well, can also help build community
capacity to engage with research as both consumers and participants.

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For example, Cashman et al. (2008) illustrate how the roles and skills of community and
academic partners are complementary and that meaningfully involving community members
in data analysis and interpretation, while it may lengthen project time, can strengthen
community capacity in various ways as well as provide unique and valuable insights into the
research results, which can lead to better outcomes for all. Asset-based community
development (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993) is another specific approach that starts with the
capacities of the residents, organizations, local culture, and physical features of an area and
engage in a process of connecting, organizing, and orchestrating instrumental links among
them to build local definition, investment, creativity, hope, and control.

Guiding Principles

Every capacity building process must have a set of guiding principles which will guide the
process. The guiding principles for the proposed strategy will be the following:

 It will be motivational and learner centric

 It will be customised for different stakeholders
 It will have a regular capacity building needs assessment mechanism
 It will be dynamic and able to develop curricula to match the training needs
assessments
 It will involve continuous learning support and extension including
counselling and hand holding
 It will be (as much as possible) in a location that promotes learning vii. It will
be practical and more grounded and not be expounding theory
 It will be empowering in nature, through creation of an environment that
sustains the essential values, attitudes, and operational changes that are being
proposed by the OTELP, particularly the concept of empowerment.

How to form a committee

The following information is intended to help you in the process of forming an association, to
understand the functions of the committee and its members. Committees help spread the
workload. At its simplest, a committee is simply a group of motivated people who meet
regularly, at least one of whom acts as a convenor.

What is a committee?

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A committee is elected by the members of a community association to continue the work of
the association between general meetings. It is the committee members' responsibility to
make sure that decisions taken at its association's general meeting are acted on during their
year in office.

1) Find a location for regular meetings. Community or neighbourhood centres are usually free
and good to work with.

2) Call a public meeting on the issue and, at the conclusion, ask for individuals to nominate to
form a committee to carry forward the issue. This is the most effective method, as people are
often highly focused and motivated at public meetings.

3) Do the rounds. Talk to people or groups with similar interests, let them know about the
new group, and let them know you‘re looking for people who really want to make a
difference for children and parents.

4) Personally ask individuals who you think have the skills you need. (Be persuasive: First
say

you‘ve been looking for individuals who are recognized as having extraordinary skills and
commitment in this area (or similar words), then ask them to join!)

5) At the first committee meeting, elect the following positions:

Chair, deputy chair, secretary, and treasurer. You may also want to have other positions, like
a publicity officer, an entertainment officer, a membership officer, or a fundraising officer.

What size should a committee be?

Most committees have between 12 and 15 members. Committees with more than 15 members
tend to be unwieldy and difficult to operate. Committees with less than 6 people tend to be
representative.

Who and what are the office bearers or honorary officers?

Every member of a committee has an important role to play and contribution to make.
However, there are 3 posts or offices which need to be filled in order that the committee can
operate effectively.

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 s and acting as spokesperson on
behalf of the community association when necessary.

association's income and expenditure.

arranging meetings and taking minutes.

The Chairperson's role and responsibilities

The chairperson of a committee is responsible for the smooth running of meetings, allowing
all members to have their say, and for guiding the committee's work towards the aims set by
the community association. This is a vital position in any community association and a good
chairperson will do the following:

At committee meetings

k and be heard

about all matters that may arise at committee meetings

th other committee members and how their work is coming along, which

means supporting people, not ordering them about

ensure minutes are properly drafted and issued prior to the next meeting.

The deputy chair roles and responsibilities

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Stands in if the chair is absent.

The Treasurer's role and responsibilities

Your treasurer should be happy to handle petty cash and pay bills ,It is most important that a
community association is not spending money that it does not have, and that good records are
kept of its income and expenditure.

A treasurer should

ank
staff can explain how to do so.

small sum of cash, say about £5, which should be kept at hand as 'petty cash'

hat it is. Any remaining petty cash at the

end of the year should be added to the present balance in the accounts for the Annual General
Meeting.

association has spent and still has in its account.

The secretary's role and responsibilities

Your secretary should be well organised and good at maintaining records. The secretary is the
community association's point of contact with its members and the wider public in line with
the direction given by the committee and its chairperson. The work involves writing letters on
the association's behalf, and organising and keeping records of committee meetings.

A secretary is expected to do the following

1. Find a room for the meeting.

2. Meet the chairperson and agree an agenda.

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 3. Send out a notice to committee members of where and when the meeting will take
place and the agreed agenda.
4. Prepare all papers needed for the meeting at least a week beforehand. The papers
should include correspondence since the last meeting and minutes, which are a record
of the last meeting.

During committee meetings

1. Take a note of everyone present at the meeting and everyone who could not be there
but has sent an apology.
2. Circulate or read out the minutes of the previous meeting, take questions about the
minutes and change the minutes if necessary.
3. Take notes of what members say when they are reporting on action taken and of the
4. decisions that are taken by the committee.
5. Report to the committee any letters written by the secretary and any replies that have
been received so that action can be taken on them.

After committee meetings

1. Write up formal minutes from the notes taken during the meeting in time for issue to
the nextcommittee meeting.
2. Write and send off any letter that the committee has asked to be dealt with.
3. The secretary should maintain up-to-date records of Committee members' names,
addresses andtelephone numbers

Organising conferences

How to Organise a Conference?

You should start planning the conference at least six months prior to the date. (For larger
conference, the planning might start a year in advance.) You‘ll be keeping track of a lot of
moving parts.

You must have a million questions on your mind. Where do you start? How do you find the
right speakers to invite? Which venue will best suit your needs?

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The truth is, even though organising a conference is a demanding endeavour, you‘re not the
first one to face it. There‘s no need to reinvent the wheel. It‘s all about following a few
specific steps.
We‘ve prepared this top-level guide on how to organise a conference. It‘ll walk you through
the main steps involved and link you over to valuable tools and articles that will make your
job a lot easier. The steps aren‘t strictly chronological---you may well start contacting
potential speakers before you‘ve secured a venue---but they give you a rough idea of what to
focus on first.

Step 1: Decide on a theme

Every great conference needs a theme. What‘s the unifying message that your speakers will
deliver and what‘s the key takeaway for conference attendees?

The best themes are catchy, relatable, and trigger an emotional response. You want the
conference to inspire and stimulate conversation. Your theme has to enable that.

For instance, ―Stronger as a team‖ is probably a better theme than ―Achieving improved
efficiencies through increased cross-functional collaboration.‖

The theme is more than just a rallying cry for all participants; it will also guide your branding
and promotion, from designing a logo to coming up with social media hashtags to printing
your posters, brochures, and other collateral.
Step 2: Assemble your A-team

Chances are, you won‘t be organising a whole conference all by yourself. (In fact, we‘d be
shocked if that were the case.)

You‘ll need a dedicated team of people to assume responsibility for different aspects of the
planning, negotiations, and promotion. Your core team will likely include:

1. Planning team: Conference venue, accommodation, activities, catering.

2. Administration team: Budgeting, attendee registration, ticket sales. This team/person

will also be the main point of contact for questions related to the conference.

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 3. Marketing team: Contacting the media, creating promotional material, managing
your website, blog, and social media activities.

4. Sponsorships team: In charge of securing sponsors, applying for grants, and

fundraising. (Only relevant for conferences that rely on external sources of finance.
Obviously)

5. Volunteers: Helping with all on-site activities on the day of the conference: door
management, ticket scanning, keeping track of the guest list, manning the wardrobe,
guiding people, etc.

Your main job will be to coordinate the team, set priorities, and delegate tasks.

Step 3: Prepare a budget & business plan

Whether your conference is funded by sponsors or not, you‘ll have to put together a budget.
You need to know where your money is being earned and spent. Having a budget will also
help you set the price for participating in the conference. Here are the most common items
you‘ll want to budget for:

 Venue

 Accommodation

 Transportation

 Catering

 Speaker fees

 Activities

 Marketing

 Team members

Preparing a budget with realistic estimates will also come in handy when searching for
venues and negotiating contracts.

Step 4: Find sponsors & grants [optional]

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If you‘re financing the conference on your own and are not looking for external sources of
revenue, you can safely skip this step.

If not, you‘ll want to go out looking for sponsors or arrange fundraisers. The key thing to
keep in mind is that the sponsors and their values should align with the theme of your
conference. (Would you want McDonald‘s to sponsor your ―Let‘s Get Fit‖ conference?)

Start by finding sponsors that fund similar events or are generally associated with your
conference‘s main themes.

Decide how much say the sponsors should have in how the conference is run. Will you allow
their branding and logo on every piece of equipment? Will they be able to bring in their own
speakers?

Remember: It‘s a fine balance between getting funded and sacrificing the integrity of your
conference. You‘re the judge of where to draw that line.

Step 5: Settle on a date

Now it‘s time to decide when your conference will take place. As discussed, that date should
be anywhere from six months to a year ahead.

You also need to find out how long the conference will last. Industry consensus suggests that
a conference with around 300 participants calls for two full days. Larger, more in-depth
conferences may stretch for even longer.

Here are some great rules of thumb to keep in mind:

1. Pick a date that doesn‘t conflict with other major events like festivals. City-wide
events make booking flights more expensive and generally hinder transportation to
and from the conference. Besides, you don‘t want your conference to compete for
attention with big events.

2. Avoid summer and winter holiday periods when people tend to go on vacation. It‘s
best to aim for a date between the middle of March and end of June or from early
September to late November.

3. Never plan a conference during the weekend. For most participants, attending a
conference is a part of their job, so schedule it during the workweek.

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 4. Try to aim for the end of the week, so that travelling attendees get the chance to stay
behind and sightsee during their time off. The best days for a conference are Thursday
and Friday.

Step 6: Book the venue

Once you know the date, you can start looking for available venues that match your
requirements.

In general, venues might fall into three categories:

1. University campuses: These are best suited for smaller, academic events and are
relatively cheap to hire.

2. Hotels: These typically have dedicated conference facilities and own catering.
They‘re the best all-in-one choice since they offer both accommodation and
conference space. They also tend to be the most expensive option.

3. Independent venues: This category includes all other types of venues that can host
conferences. Many of these specialise in specific types of events.

But the cost of the venue is just one part of the puzzle. Here are a few other factors to
consider when looking for the right venue:

 Size: Booking a too-small venue where everybody has to squeeze into a tiny room is
clearly a bad idea. Similarly, securing a giant venue for a relatively modest crowd will
not only hurt your wallet but also make the conference feel empty and poorly
attended.

 Location: It‘s best to pick a somewhat secluded location so that participants are better
able to focus on the conference itself. Even better if the venue has calming,
picturesque surroundings to help people relax.

 Atmosphere: It‘s crucial that the vibe of the venue suits your target audience and
theme. You don‘t want to host a business conference inside a giant gym, for instance.

 Facilities: Does the venue have the proper layout and the right conference room
styles for your needs? Does it have the necessary facilities like e.g. smaller rooms for
breakout sessions?

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  Accommodation: Does the venue provide accommodation or are there hotels nearby?

 Catering: Is catering included or can external catering companies easily get to and
work inside the venue? If not, are there suitable restaurants and cafes in the area?
(Keep in mind any special dietary requirements: vegan, kosher, nut-free, etc.)

 Transportation: How easy is it for participants to travel to the venue by public

transport? Are there enough parking spots for those who drive?

 Technical aspects: Does the venue have the right IT, audio, and video equipment?
You‘ll need projection screens, microphones, plenty of charging spots for
participants, and---of course---solid WiFi access.

Step 7: Arrange catering & other vendors [optional]

Typically, a dedicated conference venue will also provide on-site catering. If that‘s not the
case, you‘ll need to bring in external vendors.

Decide on what type of refreshments you want to offer and how many breaks there‘ll be for
food. Reserve up to an hour for lunch and a few 15-20 minute breaks for coffee and snacks.
Remember: If there‘s room in your budget, it‘s always best to go for proper hot meals instead
of sandwiches when it comes to lunch.

You want to be sure that the catering company can handle the logistics on the day of the
event. Your best bet is to find a local company close to the conference venue to avoid
potential traffic-related issues and delays.

Module 5 Application of Community Organization in the various fields of Social Work

UNIT 15: Social Audit, Social Impact assessment studies, PRA /PLA techniques

Social Audit

Basis of social audit

Social audit as a term was used as far back as the 1950s. There has been a flurry of activity
and interest in the last seven to eight years in India and neighboring countries. Voluntary
development organizations are also actively concerned.

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Social audit is based on the principle that democratic local governance should be carried out,
as far as possible, with the consent and understanding of all concerned. It is thus a process
and not an event.

What is a social audit?

A social audit is a way of measuring, understanding, reporting and ultimately improving an

organization‘s social and ethical performance. A social audit helps to narrow gaps between
vision/goal and reality, between efficiency and effectiveness. It is a technique to understand,
measure, verify, report on and to improve the social performance of the organization.

Social auditing creates an impact upon governance. It values the voice of stakeholders,
including marginalized/poor groups whose voices are rarely heard. Social auditing is taken up
for the purpose of enhancing local governance, particularly for strengthening accountability
and transparency in local bodies.

The key difference between development and social audit is that a social audit focuses on the
neglected issue of social impacts, while a development audit has a broader focus including
environment and economic issues, such as the efficiency of a project or programme.

Objectives of social audit

1. Assessing the physical and financial gaps between needs and resources available for
local development.
2. Creating awareness among beneficiaries and providers of local social and productive
services.
3. Increasing efficacy and effectiveness of local development programmes.
4. Scrutiny of various policy decisions, keeping in view stakeholder interests and
priorities, particularly of rural poor.
5. Estimation of the opportunity cost for stakeholders of not getting timely access to
public services.

Advantages of social audit

(a) Trains the community on participatory local planning.

(b) Encourages local democracy.

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(c) Encourages community participation.
(d) Benefits disadvantaged groups.
(e) Promotes collective decision making and sharing responsibilities.
(f) Develops human resources and social capital

To be effective, the social auditor must have the right to:

1. seek clarifications from the implementing agency about any decision-making,

activity, scheme, income and expenditure incurred by the agency;
2. consider and scrutinize existing schemes and local activities of the agency; and
3. access registers and documents relating to all development activities undertaken by
the implementing agency or by any other government department.

This requires transparency in the decision-making and activities of the implementing

agencies. In a way, social audit includes measures for enhancing transparency by enforcing
the right to information in the planning and implementation of local development activities.

1 Public documents for social audit

(a) All budget allocations, beneficiary lists, muster rolls, bills, vouchers, accounts, etc. must be
available for public scrutiny.

(b) All applications for licenses/permits and certificates issued by local self-government
institutions must have a serial number. Registers indicating date of application and date of
clearance in each case should be available for reference by any applicant. If possible, copies
should be publicly displayed.

(c) Public assessment of tax, exemptions, grants, etc., to ensure there are no complaints of undue
preferential treatment.

Several states have declared all Gram Panchayat plan documents related to beneficiary selection,
budget cost estimates, etc. to be public documents. A daily notice to be posted at the site of all
development works, lists names of workers, wages paid, cost and quantities of material, transport
charges, etc.

However, social audit arrangements have mostly been ineffective because there is no legal

71
provision for punitive action. States should enact legislation to facilitate social audit by the Gram
Sabha.

Appropriate institutional level for social audit

The most appropriate institutional level for social audit is the Gram Sabha, which has been
given ‗watchdog‘ powers and responsibilities by the Panchayati Raj Acts in most States to
supervise and monitor the functioning of panchayat elected representatives and government
functionaries, and examine the annual statement of accounts and audit reports. These are
implied powers indirectly empowering Gram Sabhas to carry out social audits in addition to
other functions. Members of the Gram Sabha and the village panchayat,
intermediate panchayat and district panchayat through their representatives, can raise issues
of social concern and public interest and demand an explanation.

2 Right to information for members of Gram Sabha

Some States have already passed Right to Information Acts. Notwithstanding some weaknesses,
the Acts have opened the way for transparency in administration from the State to
the panchayat level.

The Right to Information Acts specify the modalities for obtaining information and provide
penalties or failing to furnish or supplying false information. The Acts facilitate social legislation
such as on minimum wages and gender rights and, more importantly, pave the way for public
debate on government development projects.

However, none of the Acts have defined the right to information to include inspection of works
and documents, and the taking of notes and extracts. This is needed to make the social audit by
the Gram Sabha more effective.

The Gram Sabha should have the mandate to: inspect all public documents related to budget
allocations, list of beneficiaries, assistance under each scheme, muster rolls, bills, vouchers,
accounts, etc., for scrutiny; examine annual statements of accounts and audit reports; discuss
the report on the local administration of the preceding year; review local development for the
year or any new activity programme; establish accountability of functionaries found guilty of
violating established norms/rules; suggest measures for promoting transparency in

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identifying, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating relevant local development
programmes; and ensure opportunity for rural poor to voice their concerns while participating
in social audit meetings.

Social audit committees

Social audit can also be used for auditing the performance of all three PRI tiers with a social
audit committee at each level. These committees should not be permanent, but can be set up
depending on the nature of programmes/schemes to be audited.

Social audit committee members can be drawn from among programme stakeholders. It is
advisable to use the services of retired functionaries of different organizations, teachers or
persons of impeccable integrity living in the Zilla Panchayat/Block Panchayat/Gram
Panchayat jurisdiction. Both facilitators and social audit committee members can be trained
by social audit experts.

Steps in social audit in local bodies

1. Clarity of purpose and goal of the local elected body.

2. Identify stakeholders with a focus on their specific roles and duties. Social auditing
aims to ensure a say for all stakeholders. It is particularly important that marginalized
social groups, which are normally excluded, have a say on local development issues
and activities and have their views on the actual performance of local elected bodies.

3. Definition of performance indicators which must be understood and accepted by all.

Indicator data must be collected by stakeholders on a regular basis.

4. Regular meetings to review and discuss data/information on performance indicators.

5. Follow-up of social audit meeting with the panchayat body reviewing stakeholders‘
actions, activities and viewpoints, making commitments on changes and agreeing on
future action as recommended by the stakeholders.

6. Establishment of a group of trusted local people including elderly people, teachers

and others who are committed and independent, to be involved in the verification and
to judge if the decisions based upon social audit have been implemented.

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 7. The findings of the social audit should be shared with all local stakeholders. This
encourages transparency and accountability. A report of the social audit meeting
should be distributed for Gram Panchayat auditing. In addition, key decisions should
be written on walls and boards and communicated orally.

Key factors for successful social audit

 Level of information shared with and involvement of stakeholders, particularly of the

rural poor, women, and other marginalized sections.
 Commitment, seriousness and clear responsibilities for follow-up actions by elected
members of the Gram Panchayat.
 Involvement of key facilitators in the process.

How to enhance local capacities for social audit

 Organization of a mass campaign to increase public awareness about the meaning,

scope, purpose and objectives of social audit.
 Establishment of a team of social audit experts in each district who are responsible for
training social audit committee members (stakeholders).
 Implementation of training programmes on social auditing methods - conducting and
preparing social audit reports, and presentation at Gram Sabha meetings.

Social development monitoring (SDM): a social audit process

SDM is a periodic observation activity by socially disadvantaged groups as local citizens who
are project participants or target beneficiaries. It could also take the form of action intended
to enhance participation, ensure inclusiveness, articulation of accountability, responsiveness
and transparency by implementing agencies or local institutions, with a declared purpose of
making an impact on their socio-economic status.

Conclusion

To sum up, the following proposals can be made to make social audit a regular and effective
institution to promote the culture of transparency and accountability through the Gram
Sabha.

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 1. States should enhance Gram Sabha powers to make them effective instruments of
participatory decision-making and ensuring accountability of PRIs in local
development planning.
2. An agency like the Ombudsman can be set up to look into complaints of local
maladministration.
3. Development functionaries found guilty of violating established norms for local
development planning should be punished.
4. It is important to ensure that rural poor are given due protection when they wish to
stand up to speak against any misconduct.

GRAM PANCHAYAT STAKEHOLDERS

Examples of social audit

1. Social audit in Jharnipalli Panchayat, Agaipur block, Bolangir district, Orissa

In October 2001, the gram sabha members of Jharnipalli Panchayat conducted a one-day
social audit of development works carried out in the panchayat over the preceding three
years. This audit took place with the active participation of many individuals and agencies,
including block and district administration officials, MKSS [Mazdoor Kisan Shakti

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Sanghatan], NCPRI [National Campaign for People’s Right to Information] and Action Aid
India.

The audit found that:

 Although the works were not carried out, the sanctioned funds were shown in the
records as having been utilized.
 Contractors were banned under government guidelines, but 31 contractors were
working on the project.
 Muster rolls were not maintained by the contractors.
 Instead of the target of 100 man-days of employment for families below the poverty
line (BPL), only 12 half days of work were generated.
 The BPL families could not buy subsidized food from the public distribution system
(PDS) shops as partial wages because they did not possess the needed ration cards.

2. Micro-development planning as part of social audit

A voluntary development organization Samarthan and PRIA (Society for Participatory

Research in Asia) collaborated in a participatory micro-planning exercise with local
officials, panchayat members, members of different castes, etc. The process was a way to
bring resources to the local community and to increase its involvement in Gram Sabha
meetings which took place four times a year.

This led to the identification of several goals. One was to construct a drain. Inspired by the
participatory local planning process, the community contributed half the cost of the drain (Rs
50 000). Those who could not give money offered their labour. The rest of the money came
from the district office and was mobilized by the Gram Panchayat and its pro-active woman
president, the Sarpanch.

Every member of the Gram Sabha developed a sense of ownership of the project. The Gram
Sabha monitors the work. Gram Panchayat representatives also hold regular ward-level
meetings. The relationship between people and their local representatives developed quickly
into one of mutual support.

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3. SDM of schools for ‘rehabilitated’ child workers, Jamtara district, Jharkhand State,
India

In 1995, the non-governmental Child Labour Elimination Society (CLES) initiated a project
to set up 40 Vidyalayas (schools) in three blocks with a high incidence of child labour in
Jamtara district. The funds for the project were provided by the Ministry of Labour,
Government of India.

To supervise the schools, three-tier committees were formed at the district, block and
panchayat/village levels, with the district-level committee having the Deputy Commissioner
as its ex-officio chairperson. At the block level, the circle officer (CO) is the nodal officer
entrusted with the responsibility for smooth functioning of the schools. The committee at the
panchayat and village level includes members who were active during the mass literacy
campaigns in the district. However, most committees at the lowest level are either defunct
and not functional or not properly constituted. Visibly, this particular weakness has resulted
in the diminution of an important forum of citizen interaction, reflection and action.

Programme activities

1. A series of block and village level meetings with parents were followed by meetings
with local civil society groups/activists and schoolteachers and generated a lot of
optimism. Some parents showed keen interest in monitoring the school.

2. Parents formed a committee of five to eight members, decided on indicators and

modalities of monitoring and the role and responsibilities of monitors. Committee
membership was kept small to ensure easy consensus and spontaneity. Women
showed remarkable interest and had a strong presence on the committee.

3. After much argument and discussion, the parents finally decided on three indicators
for the purpose of monitoring, viz. - the presence or absence of two teachers; serving
of midday meals to the children; and routine health checks for children by the local
health department.

4. The committee was entrusted with the task of monitoring the first two indicators four
to five days a month and the health check, once a month, usually on the last working
day of each month. It was also agreed to devise a suitable format to record data,

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 keeping in view the limited ability of parents in recording detailed observations. Data
was to be recorded on simply designed but ingenious worksheets with suitable
pictures/drawings depicting the three broad indicators.

5. An important aspect of the indicator development exercise was the clarity in the
minds of parents about the larger objectives of the monitoring i.e. to ensure
responsiveness, efficiency and accountability in teachers, doctors and block level
government officials. Parents who were initially concerned that monitoring would be
seen by other stakeholders as ‘encroaching on their territory’, gradually began to
realize that building an atmosphere of trust holds the key to realizing their long-term
objective.

6. The very process of engaging themselves in monitoring the working of the schools not
only helped build confidence in the parents, but also imparted the necessary basic
skills of negotiating with government officials. Committee members met the medical
officer and circle officer armed with reliable data from their monitoring and apprised
them of the working of the schools along with their concerns and suggestions. They
also held regular discussions with the teachers on school functioning to understand
their perspective and problems and suggest remedial measures. The schoolteachers
extended complete support to the parents based on a shared perception that the future
of the school lies in working closely with other stakeholders.
7. Impact

The parents met the circle officer and apprised him of their findings, concerns and
suggestions for improved school functioning, such as slackness on the part of doctors in
conducting routine health checks, difficulties in the running of one school due to a vacant
teacher’s post, need for roof construction/repair in another school and sports equipment for
all schools. The district official accepted some of the demands. This and other such meetings
helped citizens to understand the way government business is conducted and the skills of
negotiating with officials.

(Contributed by K. B. Srivastava, former Professor and Head, Centre for Panchayati Raj,
National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), Hyderabad, India & Chandan Datta, PRIA,
New Delhi.)

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Social Impact Assessment

Social Impact Assessment includes the processes of analysing, monitoring and managing the
intended and unintended social consequences, both positive and negative, of planned
interventions (policies, programs, plans, projects) and any social change processes invoked
by those interventions. Its primary purpose is to bring about a more sustainable and equitable
biophysical and human environment.
The important features of this definition are that:

1. The goal of impact assessment is to bring about a more ecologically, socio-culturally

and economically sustainable and equitable environment. Impact assessment,
therefore, promotes community development and empowerment, builds capacity, and
develops social capital (social networks and trust).
2. The focus of concern of SIA is a proactive stance to development and better
development outcomes, not just the identification or amelioration of negative or
unintended outcomes. Assisting communities and other stakeholders to identify
development goals, and ensuring that positive outcomes are maximised, can be more
important than minimising harm from negative impacts.
3. The methodology of SIA can be applied to a wide range of planned interventions, and
can be undertaken on behalf of a wide range of actors, and not just within a regulatory
framework.
4. SIA contributes to the process of adaptive management of policies, programs, plans
and projects, and therefore needs to inform the design and operation of the planned
intervention.
5. SIA builds on local knowledge and utilises participatory processes to analyse the
concerns of interested and affected parties. It involves stakeholders in the assessment
of social impacts, the analysis of alternatives, and monitoring of the planned
intervention.
6. The good practice of SIA accepts that social, economic and biophysical impacts are
inherently and inextricably interconnected. Change in any of these domains will lead
to changes in the other domains. SIA must, therefore, develop an understanding of the
impact pathways that are created when change in one domain triggers impacts across
other domains, as well as the iterative or flow-on consequences within each domain.

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 In other words, there must be consideration of the second and higher order impacts
and of cumulative impacts.
7. In order for the discipline of SIA to learn and grow, there must be analysis of the
impacts that occurred as a result of past activities. SIA must be reflexive and
evaluative of its theoretical bases and of its practice.
8. While SIA is typically applied to planned interventions, the techniques of SIA can
also be used to consider the social impacts that derive from other types of events, such
as disasters, demographic change and epidemics.

SIA is best understood as an umbrella or overarching framework that embodies the

evaluation of all impacts on humans and on all the ways in which people and communities
interact with their socio-cultural, economic and biophysical surroundings. SIA thus has
strong links with a wide range of specialist sub-fields involved in the assessment of areas
such as: aesthetic impacts (landscape analysis); archaeological and cultural heritage impacts
(both tangible and non-tangible); community impacts; cultural impacts; demographic
impacts; development impacts; economic and fiscal impacts; gender impacts; health and
mental health impacts; impacts on indigenous rights; infrastructural impacts, institutional
impacts; leisure and tourism impacts; political impacts (human rights, governance,
democratisation etc); poverty; psychological impacts; resource issues (access and ownership
of resources); impacts on social and human capital; and other impacts on societies. As such,
comprehensive SIA cannot normally be undertaken by a single person, but requires a team
approach.

The Nature of SIA In An International Context

The objective of SIA is to ensure that development maximises its benefits and minimises its
costs, especially those costs borne by people (including those in other places and in the
future). Costs and benefits may not be measurable or quantifiable and are often not
adequately taken into account by decision-makers, regulatory authorities and developers. By
identifying impacts in advance:

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(1) better decisions can be made about which interventions should proceed and how they
should proceed; and

(2) mitigation measures can be implemented to minimise the harm and maximise the benefits
from a specific planned intervention or related activity.

An important feature of SIA is the professional value system held by its practitioners. In
addition to a commitment to sustainability and to scientific integrity, such a value system
includes an ethic that advocates openness and accountability, fairness and equity, and defends
human rights. The role of SIA goes far beyond the ex-ante (in advance) prediction of adverse
impacts and the determination of who wins and who loses. SIA also encompasses:
empowerment of local people; enhancement of the position of women, minority groups and
other disadvantaged or marginalised members of society; development of capacity building;
alleviation of all forms of dependency; increase in equity; and a focus on poverty reduction.

SIA complements the economic and technical models that characterise the thinking of many
development professionals and agencies. SIA can be undertaken in different contexts and for
different purposes. This creates difficulties in defining or evaluating it. The nature of an SIA
done on behalf of a multinational corporation as part of that company‘s internal procedures
may be very different to an SIA undertaken by a consultant in compliance with regulatory or
funding agency requirements, or an SIA undertaken by a development agency interested in
ensuring best value for their country‘s development assistance. These, in turn, may be very
different to an SIA undertaken by staff or students at a local university on behalf of the local
community, or an SIA undertaken by the local community itself. Each of these applications
of SIA is worthwhile, and none should pretend to be the definitive statement. Evaluation of
an SIA needs to consider its intended purpose.

SIA should also focus on reconstruction of livelihoods. The improvement of social wellbeing
of the wider community should be explicitly recognised as an objective of planned
interventions, and as such should be an indicator considered by any form of assessment.
However, awareness of the differential distribution of impacts among different groups in
society, and particularly the impact burden experienced by vulnerable groups in the
community should always be of prime concern.

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What Are Social Impacts?

SIA is much more than the prediction step within an environmental assessment framework.
Social impacts are much broader than the limited issues often considered in EIAs (such as
demographic changes, job issues, financial security, and impacts on family life). A limited
view of SIA creates demarcation problems about what are the social impacts to be identified
by SIA, versus what is considered by related fields such as health impact assessment, cultural
impact assessment, heritage impact assessment, aesthetic impact assessment, or gender
impact assessment. The SIA community of practitioners considers that all issues that affect
people, directly or indirectly, are pertinent to social impact assessment.

A convenient way of conceptualising social impacts is as changes to one or more of the

following:

 people‘s way of life – that is, how they live, work, play and interact with one another
on a day-to-day basis;
 their culture – that is, their shared beliefs, customs, values and language or dialect;
 their community – its cohesion, stability, character, services and facilities;
 their political systems – the extent to which people are able to participate in decisions
that affect their lives, the level of democratisation that is taking place, and the
resources provided for this purpose;
 their environment – the quality of the air and water people use; the availability and
quality of the food they eat; the level of hazard or risk, dust and noise they are
exposed to; the adequacy of sanitation, their physical safety, and their access to and
control over resources;
 their health and wellbeing – health is a state of complete physical, mental, social and
spiritual wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity;

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  their personal and property rights – particularly whether people are economically
affected, or experience personal disadvantage which may include a violation of their
civil liberties;
 their fears and aspirations – their perceptions about their safety, their fears about the
future of their community, and their aspirations for their future and the future of their
children.

Activities Comprising SIA

SIA comprises most of the following activities. It:

 participates in the environmental design of the planned intervention;

 identifies interested and affected peoples;
 facilitates and coordinates the participation of stakeholders;
 documents and analyses the local historical setting of the planned intervention so as to
be able to interpret responses to the intervention, and to assess cumulative impacts;
 collects baseline data (social profiling) to allow evaluation and audit of the impact
assessment process and the planned intervention itself;
 gives a rich picture of the local cultural context, and develops an understanding of
local community values, particularly how they relate to the planned intervention;
 identifies and describes the activities which are likely to cause impacts (scoping);
 predicts (or analyses) likely impacts and how different stakeholders are likely to
respond;
 assists evaluating and selecting alternatives (including a no development option);
 assists in site selection;
 recommends mitigation measures;
 assists in the valuation process and provides suggestions about compensation (non-
financial as well as financial);
 describes potential conflicts between stakeholders and advises on resolution
processes;
 develops coping strategies for dealing with residual or non-mitigatable impacts;
 contributes to skill development and capacity building in the community;
 advises on appropriate institutional and coordination arrangements for all parties;
 assists in devising and implementing monitoring and management programs.

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CORE VALUES

In the IAIA-endorsed ―International Principles for Social Impact Assessment, the SIA
community of practice believes that:

1. There are fundamental human rights that are shared equally across cultures, and by
males and females alike.
2. There is a right to have those fundamental human rights protected by the rule of law,
with justice applied equally and fairly to all, and available to all.
3. People have a right to live and work in an environment which is conducive to good
health and to a good quality of life and which enables the development of human and
social potential.
4. Social dimensions of the environment – specifically but not exclusively peace, the
quality of social relationships, freedom from fear, and belongingness – are important
aspects of people‘s health and quality of life.
5. People have a right to be involved in the decision making about the planned
interventions that will affect their lives.
6. Local knowledge and experience are valuable and can be used to enhance planned
interventions.
PRINCIPLES SPECIFIC TO SIA PRACTICE

1. Equity considerations should be a fundamental element of impact assessment and of

development planning.
2. Many of the social impacts of planned interventions can be predicted.
3. Planned interventions can be modified to reduce their negative social impacts and
enhance their positive impacts.
4. SIA should be an integral part of the development process, involved in all stages from
inception to follow-up audit.
5. There should be a focus on socially sustainable development, with SIA contributing to
the determination of best development alternative(s) – SIA (and EIA) have more to
offer than just being an arbiter between economic benefit and social cost.
6. In all planned interventions and their assessments, avenues should be developed to
build the social and human capital of local communities and to strengthen democratic
processes.

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 7. In all planned interventions, but especially where there are unavoidable impacts, ways
to turn impacted peoples into beneficiaries should be investigated.
8. The SIA must give due consideration to the alternatives of any planned intervention,
but especially in cases when there are likely to be unavoidable impacts.
9. Full consideration should be given to the potential mitigation measures of social and
environmental impacts, even where impacted communities may approve the planned
intervention and where they may be regarded as beneficiaries.
10. Local knowledge and experience and acknowledgment of different local cultural
values should be incorporated in any assessment.
11. There should be no use of violence, harassment, intimidation or undue force in
connection with the assessment or implementation of a planned intervention.
12. Developmental processes that infringe the human rights of any section of society
should not be accepted.

HISTORY

The legal basis of SIA (and thereby increasing standing and public awareness) first emerged
in 1969/1970 when the US National Environment Policy Act (NEPA) introduced a
requirement to ensure that major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the
human environment were incorporated into a balanced and publicly available assessment of
the likely impact of such actions (Burdge and Vanclay 1995). The inquiry into the proposed
Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline from Yukon Territory to Alberta (1974-1978) was the first
major EIA case which was overturned for social reasons, due to a failure to consider the
impacts on a local tribe. Since then, SIA has been progressively introduced to many countries
around the world.

PRA and PLA techniques

Participatory techniques emphasize on the importance of involving people i.e., people

participation for the betterment of society through their involvement in implementation,
execution, monitoring and evaluation of various developmental programs set by the
government.

DEFINITIONS OF PRA/PLA: PRA (Participatory rural appraisal)

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It is a methodology to involve rural community by interacting with them and understanding
them along with their locality. PLA (Participatory learning and action) PLA is a one of the
recent terminology in the field of participatory technique. It is learning from community,
collection of data and carrying actions.

HISTORY OF RRA/PRA/PLA Farming system research (FSR)

Development in 1960s Objective of FSR was to further research in the field of farming
system, analyse problem and plan research. Rapid rural appraisal (RRA)

Began in the late 1970s (Rapid collection of data by outsiders to achieve a more
comprehensive understanding of the complexity of rural societies)

Rapid rural appraisal (RRA) Participatory rural appraisal (PRA)

DEVELOPED IN1980s (Development of tools that helped farmers to collect, analyze, and
present their own data and information) Participatory learning and action (PLA)
(Participation should not only be limited to rural appraisals and the approach has learning for
action as its basic essence)

CONCEPT OF PRA/PLAA PRA/PLA

Field exercise is not only for information and idea generation, but it is about analysis and
learning by local people. It is about building a process of participation, discussion,
communication, and conflict resolution. The outsider‘s role is that of a catalyst, a facilitator,
and convenor of that process within a community. RRA/PRA/PLA therefore basically aims at
a process that empowers local people to change their own conditions and situations. It is
intended to enable them to conduct their own analysis to plan and to take action.

PRA/PLA CAN BE USED FOR:

1) General analysis of a specific topic, question, or problem;

2) Needs assessment;
3) Identification and establishment of priorities for development or research activities;
Monitoring and evaluation of development or research activities; and
4) Identification of conflicting interests between groups.

BENEFITS OF PRA METHODS :

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 1. Empowerment of the local people
2. Securing active involvement of the community
3. Creating a culture of open learning with each other and with community members
4. Setting research priorities
5. Setting participatory extension program policy review

DANGERS AND LIMITATIONS OF PRA/PLA

 Difficulty in getting exact information
 Difficulty in finding the right questions to ask
 Not enough time to spend in the village
 Danger of ‗rural development tourism
 Difficulty in finding the right interdisciplinary team
 Lack of experience of team members, particularly lack of skills in the field of
communication, facilitation, and conflict negotiation
 Team members do not show the right attitude, fail to listen, and lack respect
DANGERS AND LIMITATIONS OF PRA/PLA

 Overlooking opinions and demands of women, particularly by male team members

 Lack of institutional support and an open learning environment within organizations
(centres, departments)
 PRA becoming a fashionable label to satisfy public, institutional, or donor
expectations for ‗participatory‘ approaches
 Villagers are occupied with farm work
 Villagers give unrealistic answers to receive more support (sometimes be the village
headman)
 Actors involved in PRA research for action activities are not neutral

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UNIT 16: Ongoing community programmes at the grass root level
Historically, international development has been characterised by top down processes, where
contemporary business models have been applied to the art of development.
International agencies enter foreign communities aiming to improve the lives of vulnerable
and impoverished people. This is based upon the premise that objectively beneficial technical
processes exist that may assist any community.

This is absolutely true. These processes have been outlined by the United Nations in both the
Millennium and Sustainable Development Goal frameworks. Indeed, agricultural
infrastructure, maternal health clinics, sanitation systems and access to fresh water can all be
viewed as objectively beneficial to any community. These are the broad, universal goals that
international NGOs have set themselves, and in many ways, they are very good at achieving
them.

At the local level however, on-going community development requires a very different
approach. Rather than merely providing infrastructure, healthcare clinics or emergency relief,
truly sustainable programs at the local level must be a reflection of the community‘s real
needs and values. If not, it cannot succeed. However objectively beneficial a resource may
be, if nobody uses it, it is worthless. This is the cornerstone of neoliberal development
philosophy. In rejecting the notion of indisputable ‗best practice‘, neoliberal development
embraces community needs, values and knowledge in solving local problems.

This is grassroots development. Community members working together to improve their

collective livelihoods. It is bottom-up and locally accountable, acknowledging that the
process of development is just as important as the results. By focusing primarily upon
capacity building, grassroots development promotes inclusiveness and resilience. It provides
a space for communities to address local issues, find common ground and balance competing
interests. Instead of technically skilled foreign agencies bringing a service to a community
and then leaving, grassroots development aims to build their own capacity so that they may
go on to solve problems into the future.

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INTRODUCTION

The process of social planning largely denotes sketching of the blueprint of predetermined
social and economic goals, in both spatial and temporal context. It involves prioritizing needs
and setting up of clearly defined goals. It also includescritical analysis of the existing and to
be acquired resources in terms of men, money, materials, organisations and technologies, so
as to obtain maximum results at minimum costs. Social planning is done with the inherent
goal of obtaining economic growth with social justice, maximizing work opportunities, self-
reliance, enhancing income, removing regional and caste-class disparities, alleviating
poverty, and in sum, to improve the quality of life of the nation as a whole. India, with almost
three-fourths of the rural population, is predominantly an agrarian society.

Meaning and scope of grassroots

LEVEL PLANNING

As we already know, rural development bears a special significance in the development of

the country. Keeping these considerations in mind, a lot of planning and programme
initiations have been done for rural development. Many steps have been taken for agricultural
growth, employment of rural youth, water supply, infrastructure development, housing,
health and education sectors. Planners at the higher level would formulate programmes and
schemes for the development of rural areas without being fully aware of the ground realities.
In the post independence period, systematic efforts were made from time to time for the
overall development of rural areas. Community Development Programmes (CDP) were
launched in the first five year plan period. Agricultural development was one of the core
issues of CDP. People‘s participation through certain grassroots level institutions like the
block level institutions, village panchayats, gram sabhas, mahila mandali, youth clubs, krishi
charcha mandali, was tried. But these grass roots level institutions were largely voluntary,
without any statutory back-up. A vast sum of money was spent on rural development through
different sectoral departments trying to reach the rural people directly with skeletal field level
functionaries. Several new programmes and schemes were launched every now and then

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without paying any attention to the ground realities and needs and priorities of the rural
masses.

Weak planning capabilities at the block level and absence of effective village based
institutions of the people‘s participation compounded the problems of grass roots level
planning.

It must be emphasized that grass roots level planning is decentralized planning where the
people at the grass roots not only have the authority to plan for their own community, but also
the power to use resources for effective implementation and to supervise the whole process. It
also involves sharing of responsibility and accountability among themselves for the socio-
economic development of their own community as well as that of the nation.

 Centre
 State
 District
 Block
 Village
 Grassroots Level

The decentralization of powers from Centre to States, States to districts, and areas within
districts and villages can be one of the best ways of radically restructuring an over-centralized
system of planning. Centralization has had made the common man over-dependent and
apathetic towards the government programmes meant for his own welfare and development.
Decentralization, on the other hand, results in empowering people, promoting public
participation and increasing efficiency. Under the system of democratic decentralization,
which is popularly termed as Panchayati Raj in the context of rural areas, the rural people
elect village Panchayat members, who are responsible for executing the plans and
programmes for rural development. The village members participate in the planning of rural
development programmes and its monitoring, supervision and evaluation through gram
sabhas. One of the unique features of this democratic decentralization is the involvement of
all sections of the society in the planning and execution process.

The scope of grass roots level planning is too vast. It also includes other crucial areas like
animal husbandry and dairy farming, minor irrigation, fishing, social forestry, small scale

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industries, rural housing, water supply, electricity and energy, education, public works, public
health and sanitation, social welfare, poverty alleviation, development and welfare of
scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, promotion of sports and cultural affairs, public
distribution system, relief work during natural calamities, etc. Apart from all these areas of
intervention, it is the duty of the Panchayat to ensure people‘s participation in all theactivities
for the development of the village and to maintain transparency in their work. Thus, it may be
implied that decentralization has been seen as necessary and desirable for the participation of
the people in the process of planned development. With the 73rd and 74th Constitutional
Amendments of 1993, Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) and urban local bodies have taken
root all over the country. Though teething problems are natural, the success stories of PRIs
functioning have been reported, more or less, across the length and breadth of the country. In
the next subsection, role of Panchayati Raj in grass roots level planning is discussed in
somewhat more detail.

THE PANCHAYATI RAJ SYSTEM AND GRASSROOTS LEVEL PLANNING

The matters relating to decentralized planning are gaining wide interest among the social
planners and social researchers. It is universally agreed that ‗local problems have local
solutions‘ and a blanket strategy cannot be effective even within a district.

A brief look at the institutions of democratic decentralization would be beneficial in

understanding its significance. Community Development programmes were introduced in
1952 in order to transform the social and economic life of the rural community. These
programmes could not elicit effective people‘s participation. To understand the reasons,
Balvantrai Mehta Committee was set up, which recommended institutionalization of local
participation and democratic decentralization through Panchayati Raj system. It suggested
three tier-system of Panchayati Raj : zilla parishads at the district level, block samiti at the
intermediate level and village

Panchayat at the lowest level.

Many states adopted the recommendations of the committee, but the Panchayati Raj system
in these states was not uniform. There were feelings of general apathy or indifference or even
hostility among the officials and state level politicians. Powers of the Panchayat members
were very limited. The institution itself could be dissolved by the district authorities.
Elections for Panchayats were very irregular. Consequently Panchayati Raj system started

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fading away after 1965. From 1977 to 1988, many committees and sub-committees were set
up to look into the institution, its strengths and weaknesses and to suggest modalities to make
it effective.

Now, there are nearly 594 district Panchayats, about 6000 block/tehsil/mandal Panchayats at
the intermediate level and about 250,000 gram (village) Panchayats in the country. As a result
of these structural changes, in the current context, in every five years, about 34 lakh
representatives are elected by the people of whom more than one million are women. Even
though the institution of Panchayati Raj existed before this landmark constitutional
amendment, they were not having the real powers to take decisions, nor did they have any
financial or legal powers to execute their plans. This Act ensures provision of rights and
responsibilities to the elected members of the Panchayat to play a much larger role in the
development.

Now the Panchayat bodies are empowered institutions executing regulatory, administrative
and developmental functions. This act entrusts the village Panchayat to plan and execute
programmes on subjects like agriculture, land improvement, animal husbandry, small scale
industries, safe drinking water, health and sanitation, poverty alleviation programmes, family
welfare, social welfare and the like.

Salient Features of Panchayati Raj Institution

Before understanding how grass roots level planning is done, it would be importantto
understand the basic features of the existing Panchayati Raj system. It is a

three-tier structure of local self-governance where, at the village level, Village Panchayat
takes care of the civic and developmental administration. Block level body or Block
Panchayats assist Village Panchayats and give technical advice and guidance for execution of
developmental programmes. Here, it may be noted that smaller states with population below
20 lakhs will have the option of not to have the intermediate level Panchayat. At the district
level, Zilla Parishad is mainly supervisory and coordinating institution and functions as a
bridge between state and people below district.

One of the mandatory provisions that shape the structure of the new PR administration is the
establishment of Gram sabha comprising all the voters in a village. It is the ‗Gram sabha‘ or
‗village assembly‘, which comprises all adult members registered as voters in the Panchayat
area. Gram sabha is the basic unit of the democratic system. Every adult citizen of that area

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can take part in the grass roots level planning through the gram sabha. The gram sabha has
the right to take part in the planning, supervision of the activities as well as financial status of
the programmes being implemented in its respective area. The village Panchayat is
accountable to gram sabha for all its activities.

Gram sabha acts as a watchdog over the functioning of lower level Panchayat. All the states
have provided for the constitution of gram sabha, but in terms of meetings, there are
variations among the states ranging from once in a year in Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal
to four times in a year in Assam. Some states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have integrated
Gram sabha into the process of selecting the beneficiaries that make them more active in the
process of development. It also makes the process of selection of beneficiaries, crucial in
many developmental programmes, more transparent.

The present constitutional amendment ensures to fulfill, both structurally and financially, the
responsibilities of the PRIs, through reservations for the oppressed sections, including women
and other backward castes. This has enabled these sections to occupy seats of decision-
making. Due recognition has been given to the citizens belonging to weaker section, like
women, SCs/STs, to take active part in the functioning of the PRIs. Seats and posts of
chairpersons of the Panchayats at all levels were reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and
Scheduled Tribes (STs) in proportion to their population in that area. One-third of these must
be women. As a result, women are chairpersons of about 200 district Panchayats, more than
2000 block/tehsil/mandal Panchayats at the intermediate level and about 85,000 gram
Panchayats. Also, there are about 700,000 elected members belonging to the SCs/ STs
categories. A large number of hitherto excluded groups and communities are now included in
the decision-making bodies.

Another important feature of Panchayati Raj institution is that seats at all levels are to be
filled by direct election. The tenure of the panchayat bodies is of fiveyears duration. Election
to constitute new Panchayat members should be completed before the expiry of the term. In
the event of dissolution, elections should be held compulsorily within six months. Also, for
each state, an independent Election Commission has been constituted for superintendence,
direction and control of the electoral process. Direct elections make the members of the
Panchayats at all levels directly accountable to their respective constituency, resulting in
greater pressure to perform effectively for village development.

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Module 6 Social action

UNIT 17: Concept of social action, objectives - principles, methods of social action.

What is Social Action in Sociology

According to Max Weber sociology is the science of social action. Obviously it means any
action in relation to other action and its important characteristic is the nature of being social.
Max Weber himself differentiated such actions by giving examples. A driver driving a car is
doing social activity and a student reading a book is not. From the former example it is learnt
that the car driver affects others by his driving while the student has no social effect or
relation with others. That is why car driving is social activity while book reading is not.

Definition of Social Action

According to Duncan Mitchel "Action is social when the actor behaves in such a manner that
his action is intended to influence the action of one or more other persons."

Here the actor acts in presence of some social situation. While it is a continuously occurring
group event spread in time and space and invites the attention of the actor towards action.
When one or more persons perform an action in presence of this situation it is called social
action. From this discussion we can conclude that ii

1.can be done by one or more persons

2.influences others
3.is performed in face of some social situation
4.has its relationship with some social system the way that the actors are interdependent
upon one another
Elements of Social Actions
Following are Talcott Parsons five elements

1. The actor. It is that individual who performs an act. The actor can be one or more
persons.
2. The goal. It is the aim or objective for which the action was done. Without goal, an
action is futile and baseless.

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 3. Social situation. The actor performs his role in presence of some situation. While this
situation is a continuously occurring group event spread in space and time and this
situation instigates the actor to action. To control the situation he does an act.
Therefore, a situation is an agent of social action. There are two types of situation
controllable and uncontrollable situation.
4. Formative orientation. It is performed on some social pattern, custom. All these
forms are called norms of society. The pattern on which it is done is called norm.
5. Energy. These require energy for its performance. Physical energy and training are
essential for an act.
4 Types of Social Action
According to Max Weber there are four types

1) The rational orientation to a system of discrete individual ends. It means that for
the achievement of an individual objective, the logic of cause and effect is applied.
Without cause an aim cannot be attained. The logic that every event has its cause is
the main idea. Such actions have ends and objective for the Individual.
2) The rational orientation to an absolute value. Such action is done for the pursuit of
a value of highest dignity. Real truth can be named as absolute value. Truth, faith,
sacrifice and beliefs are its examples in religion. Service of humanity is general value.
Social actions for such alts also require logical performance.
3) Traditionally oriented action: In such action. Logical orientation is not counted.
The established patterns of behaviour in terms of customs, rituals, conventions and
beliefs ate adopted. These patterns are taken for granted and no question of how, why
and what is asked. In such actions, cultural values play important roles because they
are diverted towards such values,
4) The effectual orientation. Here the feelings of the people are considered. Such action
is neither rational nor traditional. Such action is unplanned. It is done according to the
feelings of an effect upon the actor.

Examples of Social Action in Sociology

1. When the passengers collectively push the bus to get it started it is called social action.

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 2. A big log needs a number of persons for its removal from one place to another. The
persons applying force collectively perform it.
3. The people build a dam around a village to save it from floods.
4. A leader of a village gets the people motivated towards building a mosque. The people
collect contribution and the mosque is built.
5. The farmers help one another in farming.
6. You help a needy student in his studies.
7. You help the patients.
8. Canvassing during elections and casting vote
9. A teacher teaching his students in class
10. Delivering speech, raising slogans, leading a procession and holding out banners.
Social Work Intervention with Communities and Institutions

Social Action: Concept and Principles

Introduction

In professional social work, six methods of working with people have been identified.
Among them three are basic or primary methods. They are: casework, group work and
community organisation. In day-today practice, social workers use these three methods of
working with people – casework with individual clients, group work with small groups and
community organisation with sociologically definable communities. In addition, there are
three secondary or allied methods of social work. They are: social action, social work
research and social welfare administration. Social action seeks the betterment of masses
through social legislation, propaganda and appropriate action programmes. When there is a
need to bring about some change in the social structure or to prevent the negative change
from happening, which may influence the general population or a large number of people,
social action comes into play. Narmada Bachao Andolan is one of the finest examples of
social action carried out for the betterment of the masses. Let us look into the concept of
social action in some detail.

Concept of Social Action

Social action is considered an auxiliary method of professional social work. As one of the
methods ofbworking with people, it has remained a debatable issue among the social work

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professionals. Social action is a method of social work used for mobilizing masses in order to
bring about structural changes in the social system or to prevent adverse changes. It is an
organised effort to change or improve social and economic institutions. Some of the social
problems like dowry system, destruction of natural resources, alcoholism, poor housing,
health, etc. can be tackled through social action. As a method of professional social work,
social action has remained an issue with wide ranging of opinions regarding its scope,
strategies and tactics to be used, its status as a method and its relevance tosocial work
practice. Mary Richmond was the first social worker to use the word ‗social action‘ in 1922.

She defines social action as ―mass betterment through propaganda and social legislation‖.
However, Sydney Maslin (1947) limits the scope of social action by considering it as a
process of social work mainly concerned with securing legislation to meet mass problems.
Baldwin broadens the scope of social action by emphasizing on bringing about structural
changes in the social system through social action. Baldwin (1966) defines social action as
―an organised effort to change social and economic institutions as distinguished from social
work or social service, the fields which do not characteristically cover essential changes in
established institutions.

The objective of social action is the proper shaping and development of socio-cultural
environment in which a richer and fuller life may be possible for all the citizens. Mishra
(1992) has identified following goals of social action:

1) Prevention of needs;
2) Solution of mass problems;
3) Improvement in mass conditions;
4) Influencing institutions, policies and practices;
5) Introduction of new mechanisms or programmes;
6) Redistribution of power and resources (human, material and moral);
7) Decision-making;
8) Effect on thought and action structure; and
9) Improvement in health, education and welfare.

Principles of Social Action

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Considering Gandhian principle of mobilisation as a typical example of the direct
mobilisation model of social action Britto (1984) brings out the following principles of social
action:

The principle of Credibility Building: It is the task of creating public image of leadership,
the organisation and the participants of the movement as champions of justice, rectitude and
truth. It helps in securing due recognition from the opponent, the referencepublic and the
peripheral participants of the movement. Credibility can be built through one or many of the
following ways:

1) Gestures of goodwill towards the opponent: To exemplify, when Gandhiji was

in England, World War I broke out. He recruited students for service in a British
Ambulance Corps on the Western Front. These gestures of goodwill towards the
opponents projected the image of Gandhiji as a true humanitarian personality. His
philosophy of non-violence facilitated the credibility-building process among his
opponents, the British.
2) Example setting: Dr. Rajendra Singh, the Magsaysay award winner of 2001,
had set examples of water conservation in many villages of Rajasthan, by making
check-dams, through mobilisation of village resources (manpower, cash and kind)
before starting water-conservation movement at a much larger scale.
3) Selection of typical, urgently felt problems for struggles:
The leaders gain credibility if they stress on the felt-needs of the people. Scarcity
of water has remained one of the pressing problems of the people of Rajasthan.
When Dr. R. Singh initiated his intervention on this issue, his credibility was
automatically established.
4) Success: Successful efforts help in setting up credibility of the leader and the
philosophy he/she is preaching. Seeing the successful work of Singh in certain
villages of Rajasthan, State government also came forward to extend its support.
Local leaders from various other villages and NGO professionals also approached
him for help.
Principle of Legitimisation: Legitimisation is the process of convincing the target group and
the general public that the movement-objectives are morally right. The ideal would be
making a case for the movement as a moral imperative. Leaders of the movement might use
theological, philosophical, legal-technical, public opinion paths to establish the tenability of
the movement‘s objectives. Legitimisation is a continuous process. Before launching the

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programme, the leaders justify their action. Subsequently, as the conflict exhilarates to higher
stages and as the leader adds new dimension to their programme, further justification is added
and fresh arguments are put forth. Such justification is not done by leaders alone. In the
course of their participation, followers too, contribute to the legitimisation process. Following
are the three approaches to legitimisation:
1) Theological and religious approach to legitimisation: Gandhiji, used this
approach during freedom movement. He appealed to serve dharma by
revolting against injustice of Britishers.

2) Moral approach to legitimisation: People associated in the Campaign

Against Child Labour, through peaceful rallies, persuasive speeches, use of
media, organising, drawing competition among school children, have
helped to create an environment against child abuse in the country. As a
result employing children in any occupation is considered morally wrong
and it becomes moral obligation to all conscious citizens to make sure that
all children below the age of 14 years go to school instead of earning a
livelihood.

3) Legal-technical approach to legitimization: People engaged with the

‗Campaign for People‘s Right to Health‘ have based their argument on the
human rights issues, fundamental rights and government‘s commitment to
‗Health for All‘. It gives credibility to the movement.

Principle of Dramatisation:
Dramatisation is the principle of mass mobilisation by which the leaders
of a movement galvanize the population into action by emotional appeals to heroism,
sensational news management, novel procedures, pungent slogans and such other techniques.
Almost every leader mobilising the masses, uses this principle of dramatisation. Tilak, Marx,
Guevara, Periyar and the Assam agitation leaders, resorted to this principle. Some of the
mechanisms of dramatisation could be:
1) Use of songs: Catchy songs, which put forth the cause of a movement, create a
dramatic effect. During freedom struggle, at Bardoli, local talent was tapped to
compose songs to stimulate the enthusiasm of the people. Several choirs were
trained and they travelled from village to village in a bullock cart to sing
satyagrahic hymns at numerous meetings.

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 2) Powerful speeches: This is also a crucial way of motivating the masses and
creating drama-effect.Gandhiji‘s appeal to sacrifice and martyrdom wasthrilling
and it had a special appeal for the youth to work for this cause.

3) Role of women: Making prominent women lead marchers was a technique

which gave a dramatic effect to the movement. At Rajkot, Kasturba Gandhi
herself inaugurated the civil disobedience movement by courting arrest first.

4) Boycott: Boycott is also an effective way of influencing public opinion both

when the effort is successful and when it is crushed. Picketing and ‗hartals‘–
voluntary closure of shops and other organisations, were used by Gandhiji to
dramatise the issue.

5) Slogans: Bharat chodo, Jal hi Jeevan, Say no to Drugs, HIV/AIDS– knowledge

is prevention, etc. are some of the slogans used to give dramatic effect to various
social movements.

Principle of Multiple Strategies: There are two basic approaches to development:

conflictual and nonconflictual. Taking the main thrust of a programme, one can classify it as
political, economic or social. The basket principle indicates the adoption of a multiple
strategy, using combined approaches and also a combination of different types of
programmes. Zeltman and Duncan have identified four development strategies from their
experience of community development. These have been framed for use in ocial action. They
are:

1) Educational strategy: In this strategy, the prospective\ participants are educated

at the individual, group and mass level. This is one of the basic requirements of
social action. People or target groups are given necessary information about the
issue. By creating awareness people are motivated and persuaded to participate in
the movement. During campaign against child labour, a network of NGOs working
with children was developed and these NGOs in tune created awareness in their
respective areas through educational strategy. Education by demonstration is an
important aspect of this principle. Demonstration has deep impact on the knowledge
retention of the target population.

2) Persuasive strategy: Persuasive strategy is the adoption of a set of

actions/procedures to bring about changes by reasoning, urging and inducing others

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 to accept a particular viewpoint. Gandhiji used this strategy by constantly seeking
opportunities for dialogue with his opponents. At every rally, stress was laid on
winning new converts by oratory and gentle presentation of arguments.

3) Facilitative strategy: This refers to a set of procedures and activities to facilitate

the participation of all sections of society in the mass movement. The programme
Gandhians devised was often so simple and devoid of any risk that even illiterate
children could imitate them and participate in the National Liberation Movement. In
salt- satyagraha, Gandhiji did not go into thetechnicalities of salt making. He simply
askedthe followers to make consumable salt by boilingthe sea-water. Its simplicity
did facilitate greaterparticipation.

4) Power strategy: It involves the use of coercion to obtain the desired objectives.
The forms of coercion may vary. Gandhiji used social ostracism as one of the
techniques of power strategy.

Principle of Dual Approach: Any activist has to buildb counter-systems or revive some
unused system, which is thought to be beneficial to the mobilised publicbon a self-help basis
without involving the opponent.This is a natural requirement consequent upon the attempt to
destroy the system established/maintained by the opponents.

1) Gandhian constructive work programme performed such a function, in a small

measure, together with conflictual programmes of satyagrahis. This
cooperative effort indicates that Gandhians adopted or attempted to a dual
approach in their mobilization.

Principle of Manifold Programmes: It means developing a variety of programmes with the

ultimate objective of mass mobilization. These can be broadly categorized into three parts:
Social, Economic and Political programme. Dr. Rajendra Singh has taken up the issue of
water conservation as a composite of manifold programmes. His water conservation helped
the villagers, particularly women, who had to go miles to fetch water. It helped in better
development of crops, better animal husbandry, implying more economic benefits. During the
movement, there were direct and indirect conflict resolutions with the local eaders, panchayat
bodies and state government.

Skills Involved in Social Action

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After understanding the concept and principles of by social workers for social action. These
skills are no different from the general skills; professional social worker uses these skills by
combining the ethics and principles of professional social work. However, a social worker
using social action, as a method of social work, requires certain skills; the more important
among these are briefly described below.

Relational Skills:

The social worker should have skills for building rapport with individuals and groups and
skills for maintaining these relations. He/she should be able to develop and maintain
professional relationship with the clients. The social worker should have the ability to
identify the leadership qualities among the clientele and should be skilful to harness these
qualities for social action. Along with this working harmoniously with the established local
leaders is also needed. He/she should be able to deal with intra-group and inter-group
conflicts effectively. The ability to diagnose problematic behaviour among the clients and
providing counselling is needed to develop and maintain integration within the community.
The social worker should identify tension-producing situations and diffuse them before they
become serious. Developing and maintaining cordial relations with other agencies and NGOs
working in the same geographical area and those working for similar causes is also required.

Analytical and Research Skills:

The social worker should have the ability to objectively study the sociocultural and
economic characteristics of the community. He/she should be able to find out the pressing
problems and needs of the clientele. He/ she should be able to analyze the social
problems, the factors contributing to the social problems and its ramifications on the
social, economic, political, ideological, cultural, ecological aspects of life. He/ she should be
able to conduct research and/or understand the likely impact of research studies in a
functional sense. Added to this, the social worker should be able to facilitate the community
people to speak out their own felt needs and prioritize them. The social worker should
never try to impose his/her own understanding of the social situation and problems on the
community.

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Intervention Skills:

After need identification, the social worker should have the ability to help the clientele
chalk out practical intervention strategiesto deal with the problem. The social worker
should provide various options to the clientele and help them in analyzing pros and cons
of each option for taking up proper steps. Social action may require ‗confrontation‘ with
authorities. The social worker must inform the community about the consequences of
taking up hard steps like sit-ins, boycotts, strikes, etc. The social worker should be able to
maintain the desired level of feeling of discontent and emotional surcharge to bring about the
necessary change, enthusiasm and courage among the community people for a fairly long
time so as to minimize the possibility of failure of mass mobilization before the set objectives
are achieved. The social worker should be able to maintain patience and composed
behaviour as he/ she has to deal with emotional balance of the clientele in a rational way.
Added to this, the social worker should have the ability to create the environment wherein
individuals and groups can actively participate. The interventions should be developed
keeping in mind the pressing need, resources (human and material) and sociocultural milieu
of the community. He/she should be able to improvise situations for targeted interventions.

Managerial Skills:

The social worker also needs the knowledge and ability to handle organisation, which may
be the outcome of the institutionalization of people’s participation. He/she should be able
to coordinate and collaborate with various groups and local leaders so as to unite the clientele
for the required intervention. He/she should be skilful enough to make policies and
programmes, programme planning, coordinating, recording, budgeting and elementary
accounting and maintenance of various records. He/she should be able to mobilize internal/
external resources in terms of money, men, materials, equipment, etc. The social worker also
requires the skills of supervising human and material resources and its effective utilization
for the welfare and development of the targeted community.

Communication Skills:

These skills are highly crucial for social action. The social worker should have the ability to
develop effective public relations with local organisations and leaders. He/she should be
able to effectively communicate verbally (including public speaking) and in writing as well.
The social worker should be able to deliver or identify people who can deliver powerful

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speeches. He/she should be able to devise indoor/outdoor media for effectively
communicating with the target audiences. The social worker should be able to evaluate and
use folk and mass media suited to diverse groups. These skills are used for developing
slogans and motivational songs, speeches and IEC materials for mass mobilization. The
social worker should have skills to educate, facilitate, negotiate and persuade for necessary
actions at needed places.

Training Skills:

The social worker should be able to train local leaders and identified leaders for taking up
the charge of mass mobilization and confrontation with the authorities. He/she should be able
to train selected people at the local level aimed at imparting knowledge about the social
issue taken up for action and the modalities of carrying out the intervention including the
‗confrontation process‘. These people should be trained for creating public opinion for or
against the social issue taken up and identify and involve people in social action. They should
also be trained to utilize social action strategies and tactics (confrontation, persuasion,
negotiation, boycott, etc.) without the use of violence.

Means of Social Action:

Research and Collection of Data –

 Survey, Analysis and Assessment,

 Planning Solution,
 Meeting Key Persons, Groups and Agencies,
 Public Meetings, Discussions,
 Create Public Opinion, Awareness, education,
 Use of Mass Media and Press Meeting for Propaganda,
 Use of Legislation and Enforcement of Legislation,
 Representation to the Authorities,
 Proposal to the Authorities,
 Coordinating the work of different groups and agencies,
 Implementing the Action and Reflection,
 Modification and Continuation.

UNIT 18: Strategies of Social Action: Campaign / Promotional Strategy, Collaborative

Strategy, Pressure / Advocacy Strategy, Negotiate Strategy, Legal Suasion / Litigation

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Strategy, Conscientization Strategy, Human Relation Strategy, Political Organisation
Strategy, Economic Organisation Strategy, Conflict Management Strategy, Situation
Modification Strategy

Campaign / Promotional Strategy

A promotional plan is a valuable marketing tool when it comes to launching a new service or
product or expanding your market reach into new verticals or demographics. When planning
a promotional campaign, keep in mind that a successful campaign achieves all of the
following desired outcomes and goals:

1. Your promotional message reaches your intended and targeted audience.

2. Your audience understands your message.
3. Your message stimulates the recipients, and they take action.

The question is how you achieve these outcomes with your campaign. The process is natural,
but it takes "planning" time. Here are seven steps that will get your campaign off to the right
start.

Assess Marketing Communication Opportunities: It's essential to examine and understand

the needs of your target market. Who is your message going out to? Current users,
influencers among individuals, decision-makers, groups, or the general public?

What Communication Channels Will You Use?: In the first step of planning, you should have
defined the markets, products, and environments. This information will assist you in deciding
which communication channels will be most beneficial. Will you use personal
communication channels such as face to face meeting, telephone contact, or perhaps a
personal sales presentation? Or will the nonpersonal communication such as newspapers,
magazines, or direct mail work better?

Determine Your Objectives: Keep in mind that your objectives in a promotional campaign
are slightly different from your marketing campaign. Promotional objectives should be stated
regarding long or short-term behaviors by people who have been exposed to your
promotional communication. These objectives must be stated, measurable, and appropriate to
the phase of market development.

Determine Your Promotion Mix: This is where you will need to allocate resources to sales
promotion, advertising, publicity, and, of course, personal selling. Don't skimp on either of

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these areas. You must create awareness among your buyers for your promotional campaign to
succeed. A well-rounded promotion will use all these methods in some capacity.

Develop Your Promotional Message: You will need to sit down with your team and focus
on the content, appeal, structure, format, and source of the message. Keep in mind that appeal
and execution always work together in promotional campaigns.

Develop the Promotion Budget: You must now determine the total promotion budget. This
involves determining cost breakdowns per territory and promotional mix elements. Take
some time to break down allocations and determine the affordability, percent of sales, and
competitive parity. By breaking down these costs, you will get a better idea of gauging the
success potential of your campaign.

Determine Campaign Effectiveness: After marketing communications are assigned, the

promotional plan must be formally defined in a written document. In this document, you
should include situation analysis, copy platform, timetables for effective integration of
promotional elements with elements in your marketing mix. You will also need to determine
how you will measure the effectiveness once it is implemented.

Collaborative Strategy

"Collaborative Strategy is the synergy between the strategy of a Business and the Strategy of
its Partners to realise the objectives through collaboration." This concept is being evolved as
the new way to grow a Business. Companies collaborate with their partners, vendors and
customers to build synergy at strategic level to grow their business.

Pressure / Advocacy Strategy,

Advocacy is the active support of an idea or cause expressed through strategies and methods
that influence the opinions and decisions of people and organisations.

In the social and economic development context the aims of advocacy are to create or change
policies, laws, regulations, distribution of resources or other decisions that affect people‘s
lives and to ensure that such decisions lead to implementation. Such advocacy is generally
directed at policy makers including politicians, government officials and public servants, but
also private sector leaders whose decisions impact upon peoples lives, as well as those whose
opinions and actions influence policy makers, such as journalists and the media, development
agencies and large NGOs.

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Negotiate Strategy

It is a pre-determined approach or prepared plan of action to achieve a specific goal or

objective to potentially find and make an agreement or contract in a negotiation with another
party or parties. (also see Negotiation Tactics)

Legal Suasion / Litigation Strategy

Litigation strategy is the process by which counsel for one party to a lawsuit intends to
integrate their actions with anticipated events and reactions to achieve the overarching goal of
the litigation. The strategic goal may be the verdict, or the damages or sentence awarded in
the case

Conscientization Strategy,

The development of understanding and awareness of one's position in social, political,

economic, cultural, and historical contexts, with a particular emphasis on a critical
understanding of one's position in power, privilege, and oppression.

Human Relation Strategy

Relationships between employees and management are of substantial value in any workplace.
Human relations is the process of training employees, addressing their needs, fostering a
workplace culture and resolving conflicts between different employees or between employees
and management.

Political Organisation Strategy,

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Economic Organisation Strategy

Economic strategy is a relatively new and rapidly developing area of economic consulting,
involving the application of economic principles and methods to provide clients with unique
insights aimed at addressing specific issues/problems and/or enhancing their long-term
performance. PMCA‘s comparative strengths in economic strategy consulting can add real
value and provide clients with new insights beyond those provided by traditional
management consulting. Economic strategy consulting often involves combining the other
areas of economic consulting, such as competition and public policy, imaginatively and
innovatively

Conflict Management Strategy

With a basic understanding of the five conflict management strategies, small business owners
can better deal with conflicts before they escalate beyond repair.

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 Strategy One: Accommodating. ...
 Strategy Two: Avoiding. ...
 Strategy Three: Collaborating. ...
 Strategy Four: Compromising. ...
 Strategy Five: Competing.

Situation Modification Strategy

Situation modification involves efforts to modify a situation so as to change its emotional

impact. Situation modification refers specifically to altering one's external, physical
environment. Altering one's "internal" environment to regulate emotion is called cognitive
change.

UNIT 19: Social Problems and Social Action, Role of Social Worker in Social Action, Social
Activists and Social Action Groups in India.

SOCIAL ACTION IN INDIA

India has been the place of many social action movements. Let us briefly Satyagraha is a
uniquely Indian concept and mode of social action shaped into a formidable tool by Mahatma
Gandhi. Although based on non-violence (since Gandhi believed and practiced ahimsa and
considered it a powerful tool), satyagraha meant exerting moral pressure, through mass
mobilization, mass courting of arrests, and long protest marches to achieve the goal. We
mention here some examples.

The Rowlatt Act Satyagraha: What is popularly known as the Rowlatt Act (1918)
represented an attempt to put war time restrictions on civil rights and detentions without trial
for a maximum period of two years. All sections of Indian political opinion vehemently
opposed the Rowlatt Act but it was left to Mahatma Gandhi to work out a practicable all-
India mass protest. The intention was to go beyond petitions but at the same time to stop it
from being unrestrained or violent. Initially, the volunteers merely courted arrest by publicly
selling prohibited literature. It was then extended by Mahatma Gandhi to include the idea of
an all India Hartal (strike).

The Salt Satyagraha: Mahatma Gandhi‘s famous Dandi march symbolized protest against
the government monopoly of salt and the claim to salt tax. The march which started from
Sabarmati to the sea through the heartland of Gujarat attracted considerable attention both

109
within India and outside. Mahatma Gandhi propagated manufacture and auctioning of salt by
the people violating the unjust law. This action was accompanied by boycott of foreign cloth
and liquor.

The Nagpur Flag Satyagraha: This was started in mid-1923 against a local order banning
the use of the Congress flag in some areas of the city.

The Borsad (Kheda district, Gujarat) Satyagraha: This was directed against a poll tax
imposed to be paid by every adult for the police required to suppress a wave of dacoities. The
movement took the form of total non-payment of thenew levy by all the 104 affected villages
and the tax had to be withdrawn.

The Vaikom Satyagraha: This was the first temple entry movement. It was essentially an
attempt on Gandhian lines to assert the right of low caste Ezhavas and untouchables to use
roads near a Tranvancore temple. Gandhian social action has to be understood in the context
of the Gandhian philosophy of work which aimed at building a social and economic order
based on non-violence, and building the strength of the people and the moral fabric.

It included not only activities like relief work in emergencies but also setting up basis
education schools, the promotion of khadi and other cottage crafts, anti -liquor propaganda,
uplift of the lower castes and untouchables.

‘Chetna’ march in Panchmahal and Sabrakantha districts of Gujarat:

This was organised by DISHA (a voluntary organisation) which, on analysis of its

programmes, came to the conclusion that unless awareness is created among the forest
labourers, minor forest produce collectors, small community action groups and other agencies
working in the area, the injustices and exploitation would continue and the affected people
would not come forward to lodge their complaints, narrate their grievances

Narmada Bachao Andholan is a social action movement which has brought together several
organisations engaged in developmental issues, for the environmental problems caused by the
construction of the Narmada Dam. The movement today enjoys widespread support, cutting
across different segments of the population, apart from people directly affected by the
construction of the dam. The movement is spearheaded by eminent social workers, scientists,
intellectuals, students and the local villagers.

110
Huge protest marches have been organised in which villagers from far and near, from
different states, have participated with banners, shouting slogans, sporting badges forming a
human chain on the banks of the Narmada in protest, taking pledges, organising
demonstrations at the dam site, and often violating prohibitory orders. Its defiant message
from the people to decision makers and planners is for full participation at all the levels of
planning and that the people are no longer prepared to watch in mute desperation, as projects
after projects are approved without ensuring that the benefits accrue mainly to the people and
are not cornered by the vested interests like the ‗contractor and the rich‘.

UNIT 20: Social action for social reform and social development - scope of social action in
India.

Scope of social action depends on how its aims are formulated. Its aim is dependent on the
aim of social work profession. If social work profession is concerned with providing
wholesome, rich and abundant life for everyone, then it is logical for social workers to try to
probe beyond end results, to uncover causes and to seek prevention rather than that of merely
cure or treatment. It also depends on how the causative factors for human problems are
understood. Also if the aim of social action is modification of earlier legislation, bringing in
new legislation or the bringing about a revolution, then the social action centers on these
activities.

However if the liberal tradition informs the democratic systems, and there is focus on
generating more economic growth and develop more social services to meet those problems –
then social action will focus on the inadequacy of social services, social legislation and other
similar issues. But if there are questions regarding whether growth is justified at the cost of
equality, or whether it is required at all, and whether there are alternatives available to the
development model proposed, then the scope of social action is linked to these questions and
seeking solutions for these.

Then it also goes beyond existing legal norms as the concept of legality in itself is a relative
concept. The desirability of elitist and western led social goals and other questions related to
who decides that these goals as desirable, legal and required by people and by what eans
become the focus of social action.

Constitutional and Welfare Provisions

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Thus the scope of the method has to be seen in the light of the constitutional and other
welfare provisions of the state as also the existing disparities and social concerns, emanating
from the social context. These may include such areas as poverty, unemployment and
livelihood issues – the NREGP and the social auditing of such programme, watershed
management and public health, ecological disasters, displacement and relocation issues of
both rural and urban population, SEZ issues and land acquisition issues, equity in
educational provisions the right to development and the right to livelihood and the reduced
space for the marginalized in the increasingly favorable climate for privatization of resources
and services, demanding equity and access in energy resources are all areas which call for a
mass, intermediate and micro level social action. There is a need to demand not only what is
due but also prevent what is threatened in terms of loss of livelihoods, in the light of
increasing spending on mega infrastructure projects, which may take away land of the poor
and the marginalized in the urban fringes. Expansion and development of urbanization with
Master Plans favoring the rich and the resourceful which at the same time reduce urban
livelihood options for the self-employed such as vendors. Such issues are fertile grounds for
social action. There are many Nandigrams and Singurs in the making in the light of India‘s
urbanizing spree and the spiralling economic growth rates.

The right to information act that was the result of social action has to be carefully protected
because of many attempts to dilute it by vested interests. The use of such instruments for
ensuring satisfactory and quality service provision, ensuring transparency in governance
issues and decision making and empowering communities in its use is something that can fall
in the genre of social action.

Discrimination by state and other vested interests, showing outright prejudice towards certain
sections of population such as the religious minorities or the politically marginalized are yet
another area for social action to alleviate distress and injustice.

UNIT 21: Social Legislation through social action - Role of social worker In social action.
SOCIAL LEGISLATION. Laws that seek to promote the common good, generally by
protecting and assisting the weaker members of society, are considered to be social
legislation. Such legislation includes laws assisting the unemployed, the infirm, the disabled,
and the elderly. The social welfare system consists of hundreds of state and federal programs
of two general types. Some programs, including Social Security, Medicare, unemployment
insurance, and Workers' Compensation, are called social insurance programs because they are

112
designed to protect citizens against hardship due to old age, unemployment, or injury.
Because people receiving benefits from these programs generally have contributed toward
their benefits by paying payroll taxes during the years that they worked, these social
insurance programs are usually thought of as earned rewards for work. Programs of a second
type, often cumulatively called the Welfare System, provide government assistance to those
already poor. These social programs have maximum income requirements and include Aid to
Families with Dependent Children, the Food Stamp Program, Medicaid, and Supplemental
Security Insurance.

Although the United States has had social welfare legislation since colonial times, its nature
and extent has changed over the years. For much of U.S. history, Americans preferred to rely
on the marketplace to distribute goods and services equitably among the population. In cases
where the market clearly failed to provide for categories of people such as widows, orphans,
or the elderly, families were expected to take responsibility for the care of their members.
When family members lacked the ability to do so, private, religious, or charitable
organizations often played that role. Help from the town, county, or local government was
rarely provided, and even then only in those cases where the need arose due to conditions
beyond the individual's control, such as sickness, old age, mental incapacity, or widowhood.

Role of a social worker in social action

The role of the social action worker is to facilitate the group through a five-stage process. The
intention is to change the traditional relationship between service users and the professionals
employed to work with them. A social action worker is a facilitator, not a provider

Social Action Groups.

India has been the place of many social action movements. Let us briefly
mention some of them.

Satyagraha is a uniquely Indian concept and mode of social action shaped into a formidable
tool by Mahatma Gandhi. Although based on non-violence (since Gandhi believed and
practiced ahimsa and considered it a powerful tool), satyagraha meant exerting moral

113
pressure, through mass mobilization, mass courting of arrests, and long protest marches to
achieve the goal. We mention here some examples.
The Rowlatt Act Satyagraha: What is popularly known as the Rowlatt Act (1918)
represented an attempt to put war time restrictions on civil rights and detentions without trial
for a maximum period of two years. All sections of Indian political opinion vehemently
opposed the Rowlatt Act but it was left to Mahatma Gandhi to work out a practicable all-
India mass protest. The intention was to go beyond petitions but at the same time to stop it
from being unrestrained or violent. Initially, the volunteers merely courted arrest by publicly
selling prohibited literature. It was then extended by Mahatma Gandhi to include the idea of
an all India Hartal (strike).

The Salt Satyagraha: Mahatma Gandhi‘s famous Dandi march symbolized protest against
the government monopoly of salt and the claim to salt tax. The march which started from
Sabarmati to the sea through the heartland of Gujarat attracted considerable attention both
within India and outside. Mahatma Gandhi propagated manufacture and auctioning of salt by
the people violating the unjust law. This action was accompanied by boycott of foreign cloth
and liquor.

The Nagpur Flag Satyagraha: This was started in mid 1923 against a local order banning
the use of the Congress flag in some areas of the city.

The Borsad (Kheda district, Gujarat) Satyagraha: This was directed against a poll tax
imposed to be paid by every adult for the police required to suppress a wave of dacoities. The
movement took the form of total non-payment of the new levy by all the 104 affected villages
and the tax had to be withdrawn.

The Vaikom Satyagraha: This was the first temple entry movement. It was essentially an
attempt on Gandhian lines to assert the right of low caste Ezhavas and untouchables to use
roads near a Tranvancore temple. Gandhian social action has to be understood in the context
of the Gandhian philosophy of work which aimed at building a social and economic order
based on non-violence, and building the strength of the people and the moral fabric. It
included not only activities like relief work in emergencies but also setting up basis education
schools, the promotion of khadi and other cottage crafts, anti -liquor propaganda, uplift of the
lower castes and untouchables.

‘Chetna’ march in Panchmahal and Sabrakantha districts of Gujarat:

114
This was organised by DISHA (a voluntary organisation) which, on analysis of its
programmes, came to the conclusion that unless awareness is created among the forest
labourers, minor forest produce collectors, small community action groups and other agencies
working in the area, the injustices and exploitation would continue and the affected people
would not come forward to lodge their complaints, narrate their grievances and seek
redressal. One of the methods Social Action devised by DISHA to generate awareness was to
organise a foot march in the area which covered nearly 1000 km through the most backward
districts.

Mahila Mukti Morcha – Dalli Rajhara: Dalli Rajhara is an iron ore mining town in the
southern Durg district in Madhya Pradesh. The mines here are largely worked manually
through contractors. Contract labourers are mainly members of Adivasi, landless and small
peasant households from the seven districts of Chattisgarh in eastern Madhya Pradesh.

The women took a leading role in organising social action struggles. For example, in 1979-
80, the wages of the workers improved after a successful struggle. A successful anti-
alcoholism campaign was carried out on the ground that it drained hard won benefits back
into the pockets of the contractors and liquor merchants. The mass mobilization achieved
among the households was a rare example of mobilization on a social issue. Women played a
leading role in propagating the philosophy of this campaign, and in organising mohalla
committees, for detection and punishment. In 1982 the women started their own forum called
Mahila Mukti Morcha (MMM). The forum concentrated on three broad areas of concern –
women and work, women and health and women‘s struggles. Action arising out of MMM
platform was largely issue-based. Awareness and mobilization were effected through a
variety of methods including plays and songs, and through annual observation of martyrdom
of those who had struggled for the rights of the poor.

Narmada Bachao Andholan is a social action movement which has brought together several
organisations engaged in developmental issues, for the environmental problems caused by the
construction of the Narmada Dam. The movement today enjoys widespread support, cutting
across different segments of the population, apart from people directly affected by the
construction of the dam. The movement is spearheaded by eminent social workers, scientists,
intellectuals, students and the local villagers. Huge protest marches have been organised in
which villagers from far and near, from different states, have participated with banners,
shouting slogans, sporting badges forming a human chain on the banks of the Narmada in

115
protest, taking pledges, organising demonstrations at the dam site, and often violating
prohibitory orders. Its defiant message from the people to decision makers and planners is for
full participation at all the levels of planning and that the people are no longer prepared to
watch in mute desperation, as projects after projects are approved without ensuring that the
benefits accrue mainly to the people and are not cornered by the vested interests like the
‗contractor and the rich‘

UNIT 22: Paulo Freire and Saul Alinsky in working with community Approaches by Paulo
Fraire, Saul Alinsky, Mahatma Gandhi, Ambedkar, Medha Patkar and Other National and
Regional Social Activists.

Paulo Freire

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator whose revolutionary pedagogical theory
influenced educational and social movements throughout the world and whose philosophical
writings influenced academic disciplines that include theology, sociology, anthropology,
applied linguistics, pedagogy, and cultural studies. He was born to a middle-class family in
Recife, in the state of Pernambuco in the northeast of Brazil. His early work in adult literacy–
the most famous being his literacy experiments in the town of Angicos in Rio Grande do
Norte–was terminated after the military coup in 1964. That year he went into exile, during
which time he lived in Bolivia; then Chile where he worked for the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Chilean Institute for
Agrarian Reform, and where he wrote his most important work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
(1970); Mexico; the United States where he held a brief appointment at Harvard University's
Center for Studies in Development and Social Change; and Switzerland where he worked for
the World Council of Churches as the director of their education program.

He also served as an adviser for various governments, most notably the government of
Guinea-Bissau. In 1980 he returned to Brazil to teach and later to serve as secretary of
education for Sāo Paulo. He worked as a consultant for revolutionary governments such as
the New Jewel Movement in Grenada, the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and the
government of Julius K. Nyerere in Tanzania. From 1985 until his death in 1997, Freire
served as the honorary president of the International Council for Adult Education. Freire's
conception of education as a deeply political project oriented toward the transformation of
society has been crucial to the education of revolutionary societies and societies undergoing
civil war, as well as established Western democracies. Freire's work has exercised

116
considerable influence among progressive educators in the West, especially in the context of
emerging traditions of critical pedagogy, bilingual education, and multicultural education.

Freire's revolutionary pedagogy starts from a deep love for, and humility before, poor and
oppressed people and a respect for their "common sense," which constitutes knowledge no
less important than the scientific knowledge of the professional. This humility makes possible
a condition of reciprocal trust and communication between the educator, who also learns, and
the student, who also teaches. Thus, education becomes a "communion" between participants
in a dialogue characterized by a reflexive, reciprocal, and socially relevant exchange, rather
than the unilateral action of one individual agent for the benefit of the other. Nevertheless,
this does not amount to a celebration of the untrammeled core of consciousness of the
oppressed, in which the educator recedes into the background as a mere facilitator.

Freire conceived of authentic teaching as enacting a clear authority, rather than being
authoritarian. The teacher, in his conception, is not neutral, but intervenes in the educational
situation in order to help the student to overcome those aspects of his or her social constructs
that are paralyzing, and to learn to think critically. In a similar fashion, Freire validated and
affirmed the experiences of the oppressed without automatically legitimizing or validating
their content. All experiences–including those of the teacher–had to be interrogated in order
to lay bare their ideological assumptions and presuppositions. The benchmark that Freire
used for evaluating experiences grew out of a Christianized Marxist humanism. From this
position, Freire urged both students and teachers to unlearn their race, class, and gender
privileges and to engage in a dialogue with those whose experiences are very different from
their own. Thus, he did not uncritically affirm student or teacher experiences but provided the
conceptual tools with which to critically interrogate them so as to minimize their politically
domesticating influences.

Conceptual Tools

Banking education. Freire criticized prevailing forms of education as reducing students to

the status of passive objects to be acted upon by the teacher. In this traditional form of
education it is the job of the teacher to deposit in the minds of the students, considered to be
empty in an absolute ignorance, the bits of information that constitute knowledge. Freire
called this banking education. The goal of banking education is to immobilize the people
within existing frameworks of power by conditioning them to accept that meaning and
historical agency are the sole property of the oppressor. Educators within the dominant

117
culture and class fractions often characterize the oppressed as marginal, pathological, and
helpless. In the banking model, knowledge is taken to be a gift that is bestowed upon the
student by the teacher. Freire viewed this false generosity on the part of the oppressor–which
ostensibly aims to incorporate and improve the oppressed–as a crucial means of domination
by the capitalist class. The indispensable soil of good teaching consists of creating the
pedagogical conditions for genuine dialogue, which maintains that teachers should not
impose their views on students, but neither should they camouflage them nor drain them of
political and ethical import.

Problem-posing method. Against the banking model, Freire proposed a dialogical problem-
posing method of education. In this model, the teacher and student become co-investigators
of knowledge and of the world. Instead of suggesting to students that their situation in society
has been transcendentally fixed by nature or reason, as the banking model does, Freire's
problem-posing education invites the oppressed to explore their reality as a "problem" to be
transformed. The content of this education cannot be determined necessarily in advance,
through the expertise of the educator, but must instead arise from the lived experiences or
reality of the students. It is not the task of the educator to provide the answer to the problems
that these situations present, but to help students to achieve a form of critical thinking (or
conscientization) that will make possible an awareness of society as mutable and potentially
open to transformation. Once they are able to see the world as a transformable situation,
rather than an unthinkable and inescapable stasis, it becomes possible for students to imagine
a new and different reality.

In order, however, to undertake this process, the oppressed must challenge their own
internalization of the oppressor. The oppressed are accustomed to thinking of themselves as
"less than." They have been conditioned to view as complete and human only the dominating
practices of the oppressor, so that to fully become human means to simulate these practices.
Against a "fear of freedom" that protects them from a cataclysmic reorganization of their
being, the oppressed in dialogue engage in an existential process of dis-identifying with "the
oppressor housed within." This dis-identification allows them to begin the process of
imagining a new being and a new life as subjects of their own history.

Culture circle. The concrete basis for Freire's dialogical system of education is the culture
circle, in which students and coordinator together discuss generative themes that have
significance within the context of students' lives. These themes, which are related to nature,

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culture, work, and relationships, are discovered through the cooperative research of educators
and students. They express, in an open rather than propagandistic fashion, the principle
contradictions that confront the students in their world. These themes are then represented in
the form of codifications (usually visual representations) that are taken as the basis for
dialogue within the circle. As students decode these representations, they recognize them as
situations in which they themselves are involved as subjects. The process of critical
consciousness formation is initiated when students learn to read the codifications in their
situationality, rather than simply experiencing them, and this makes possible the intervention
by students in society. As the culture circle comes to recognize the need for print literacy, the
visual codifications are accompanied by words to which they correspond. Students learn to
read these words in the process of reading the aspects of the world with which they are
linked.

Although this system of codifications has been very successful in promoting print literacy
among adult students, Freire always emphasized that it should not be approached
mechanically, but rather as a process of creation and awakening of consciousness. For Freire,
it is a mistake to speak of reading as solely the decoding of text. Rather, reading is a process
of apprehending power and causality in society and one's location in it. Awareness of the
historicity of social life makes it possible for students to imagine its re-creation. Literacy is
thus a "self-transformation producing a stance of intervention" (Freire 1988, p. 404). Literacy
programs that appropriate parts of Freire's method while ignoring the essential politicization
of the process of reading the world as a limit situation to be overcome distort and subvert the
process of literacy education. For Freire, authentic education is always a "practice of
freedom" rather than an alienating inculcation of skills.

Philosophy of Education

Freire's philosophy of education is not a simple method but rather an organic political
consciousness. The domination of some by others must be overcome, in his view, so that the
humanization of all can take place. Authoritarian forms of education, in serving to reinforce
the oppressors' view of the world, and their material privilege in it, constitute an obstacle to
the liberation of human beings. The means of this liberation is a praxis, or process of action
and reflection, which simultaneously names reality and acts to change it. Freire criticized
views that emphasized either the objective or subjective aspect of social transformation, and
insisted that revolutionary change takes place precisely through the consistency of a critical

119
commitment in both word and deed. This dialectical unity is expressed in his formulation,
"To speak a true word is to transform the world" (Freire 1996, p. 68).

Freire's educational project was conceived in solidarity with anticapitalist and anti-imperialist
movements throughout the world. It calls upon the more privileged educational and
revolutionary leaders to commit "class suicide" and to struggle in partnership with the
oppressed. Though this appeal is firmly grounded in a Marxist political analysis, which calls
for the reconfiguring of systems of production and distribution, Freire rejected elitist and
sectarian versions of socialism in favor of a vision of revolution from "below" based on the
work of autonomous popular organizations. Not only does Freire's project involve a material
reorganization of society, but a cultural reorganization as well. Given the history of European
imperialism, an emancipatory education of the oppressed involves a dismantling of colonial
structures and ideologies. The literacy projects he undertook in former Portuguese colonies in
Africa included an emphasis on the reaffirmation of the people's indigenous cultures against
their negation by the legacy of the metropolitan invaders.

Freire's work constitutes a rejection of voluntarism and idealism as well as determinism and
objectivism. The originality of Freire's thought consists in his synthesis of a number of
philosophical and political traditions and his application of them to the pedagogical
encounter. Thus, the Hegelian dialectic of master and slave informs his vision of liberation
from authoritarian forms of education; the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre and Martin
Buber makes possible his description of the self-transformation of the oppressed into a space
of radical intersubjectivity; the historical materialism of Karl Marx influences his conception
of the historicity of social relations; his emphasis on love as a necessary precondition of
authentic education has an affinity with radical Christian liberation theology; and the anti-
imperialist revolutionism of Ernesto Che Guevara and Frantz Fanon undergird his notion of
the "oppressor housed within" as well as his commitment to a praxis of militant
anticolonialism.

Freire's pedagogy implies an important emphasis on the imagination, though this is not an
aspect that has been emphasized enough in writings about him. The transformation of social
conditions involves a rethinking of the world as a particular world, capable of being changed.
But the reframing proposed here depends upon the power of the imagination to see outside,
beyond, and against what is. More than a cognitive or emotional potential, the human
imagination, in Freire's view, is capable of a radical and productive envisioning that exceeds

120
the limits of the given. It is in this capacity that everyone's humanity consists, and for this
reason it can never be the gift of the teacher to the student.

Rather, educator-student and student-educator work together to mobilize the imagination in

the service of creating a vision of a new society. It is here that Freire's notion of education as
an ontological vocation for bringing about social justice becomes most clear. For Freire, this
vocation is an endless struggle because critical awareness itself can only be a necessary
precondition for it. Because liberation as a goal is always underburdened of a necessary
assurance that critical awareness will propel the subject into the world of concrete praxis, the
critical education must constantly be engaged in attempts to undress social structures and
formations of oppression within the social universe of capital without a guarantee that such a
struggle will bring about the desired results.

Saul Alinsky

Saul Alinsky, community organizing and rules for radicals

Saul Alinsky, community organizing and rules for radicals. Saul Alinsky’s work is an
important reference point for thinking about community organizing and community
development. His books Reveille for Radicals (1946) and Rules for Radicals (1971) were both
classic explorations of organizing and remain popular today. Mike Seal examines Alinsky’s
continuing relevance to the activities of informal educators, community organizers and
animateurs.

Only two kinds of people can afford the luxury of acting on principle, those with absolute
power and those with none and no desire to get any…everyone else who wants to be effective
in politics has to learn to be ‘unprincipled’ enough to compromise in order to see their
principles succeed. (Rogers 1990: 12)

Liberals in their meetings utter bold words; they strut, grimace belligerently, and then issue a
weasel-worded statement ‘which has tremendous implications, if read between the lines.’
They sit calmly, dispassionately, studying the issue; judging both sides; they sit and still
sit. (Alinsky 1971: 4)

The Radical may resort to the sword but when he does he is not filled with hatred against
those individuals whom he attacks. He hates these individuals not as persons but as symbols

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representing ideas or interests which he believes to be inimical to the welfare of the people.
(Alinsky 1946: 23)

Saul David Alinsky (1909-1972) was both a committed organizer and activist (founding the
Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago) and an influential writer. His books Reveille for
Radicals (1946) and Rules for Radicals (1972) were, and remain, important statements
of community organizing. Alinsky‘s ideas bear careful exploration and have a continuing
relevance for informal educators and all those whose role involves trying to effect change
in communities. They are particularly useful for those who have to engage with local or
national power structures and workers who wish to engage alienated or disparate
communities and seek common cause between them.

His thoughts on the nature of work with communities are challenging, and yet relevant. In
this article I want to expand on three areas. On:

 the place of principles and morality in community work;

 what it is to be a liberal or a radical; and

 rules for how to engage with power structures effectively.

The three quotes above are meant to encapsulate his thinking on these subjects. I will go on to
expand on the ideas that stem from them.

Saul Alinsky’s life and work

Saul Alinsky was born in Chicago on 30 January 1909, the child of Russian-Jewish
immigrant parents. Saul Alinsky‘s parents divorced when he was 13 years old, and he went to
live with his father who had moved to Los Angeles. At an early age he was interested in the
dynamics of power and the interaction between those who are denied resources and those
who deny. ‗I never thought of walking on the grass,‘ he recalls, ‗until I saw a sign saying
‗Keep off the grass.‘ Then I would stomp all over it.‘

He earned a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Chicago in 1930. However, it

was spending a summer helping dissident miners in their revolt against John L. Lewis‘s
United Mine Workers that influenced his future direction. Upon graduation he won a
fellowship from the university‘s sociology department which enabled him to study
criminology. He went to work for Clifford Shaw at the Institute for Juvenile Research and

122
soon found himself working at the State Penitentiary (at which he stayed for three years). At
this time he married Helene Simon, with whom he had a son and a daughter. He had met
Helene while studying at the University and they married in 1932. As Horwitt (1989: 17) has
commented, the Depression and the growing turbulence of the 1930s politicized both of
them. Helene, a social worker, was a strong organizer and gained a considerable reputation in
the labour movement.

In 1936 Saul Alinsky left his work at the Penitentiary to return to the Institute in Chicago. He
appeared set for a career as a criminologist, however a growing concern to counter the threat
of Fascism, and the development of more militant labour organizing (especially that linked to
the development of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) grew in their appeal.
Alinsky was particularly struck by the way in which John L. Lewis led the CIO (Horwitt
1989: 17). Clifford Shaw and Saul Alinsky were both convinced that it was the ‗social
milieu‘ that caused delinquency rather than some particular quality of individuals. It was the
study of this – and in particular gang life – that took Alinsky to South Chicago and then to the
Back-of-the-Yards (the slum area that Upton Sinclair had earlier written so movingly about
in The Jungle). There Saul Alinsky found a number of people who wanted change. Joe
Meegan, who had grown up in the area worked his way through De Paul University, and had
become a teacher became a key ally and together they set up the Back-of-the-Yards
Neighborhood Council. While historically an Irish-Catholic community, they were able to
identify common interests that brought together previously hostile ethnic groups of Serbs and
Croatians, Czechs and Slovaks, Poles and Lithuanians in the community and brought them
into the organization. Alinsky also worked closely with local Catholic priests to build the
council. The way they built the coalition meant that the council had great success in
stabilizing the Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood and in advocating for that community.

In 1939 Saul Alinsky established the Industrial Areas Foundation to bring his method of
reform to other declining urban neighborhoods. He left the Institute to work for the
Foundation. His approach depended on uniting ordinary citizens around immediate
grievances in their neighborhoods and in protesting vigorously and outside of the
‗established‘ ways of expressing dissent (see below). He concentrated on recruiting and
training indigenous ‗organizers‘ to take a lead in the communities. His first book Reveille for
Radicals outlines the principles and practice of community organizing and just one month
after its publication in 1946 it made the New York Times best-seller list (Horwitt 1989: 176).

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Alinsky was busy – and often on the road – and things looked promising. But in 1947 Helene
drowned while on holiday with the children – and it hit him hard. He found it difficult to
focus for many months; furthermore the financial position of the Foundation was not good.
Saul Alinsky took on writing an ‗unauthorized biography‘ of John L Lewis (which appeared
in 1949) in part to stabilize his own finances. He also began working with Fred Ross around
organizing Mexican-Americans in California. Significantly though, Saul Alinsky was not a
casualty of the hysteria surrounding radicals and supposed communists in the late 1940s and
early 1950s (Horwitt 1989: 240). He continued to have significant support from key figures
in the Catholic Church and the press – and his combative style might well have backfired on
any congressional investigation committee that called him before them (op. cit.).

Saul Alinsky had looked around for new writing projects (including proposing a joint book
with C Wright Mills) – and although he started work on a biography of Monsignor John
O‘Grady it was not completed. The community organizing work – with the exception of the
Back-of-the-Yards (under Joe Meegan) and California (Fred Ross) – was not developing. In
1952 Alinsky married Jean Graham (who had a debutante background and was divorced from
an executive of Bethlehem Steel) (Horwitt 1989: 256). Jean did not have a strong interest in
Alinsky‘s social and political work – but had rebelled against her family‘s upper-class elitism
(op. cit.: 257). Sadly, though she was to become ill with multiple sclerosis not long after they
were married. New areas of work opened up including working in Woodlawn and beyond
with Puerto Ricans (with Nicholas von Hoffman and the Catholic Church). He also looked to
New York and began to develop work there with various organizations with mixed results.
This took him away from home (and Jean).

The Industrial Areas Foundation gained a significant amount of money from the Archdiocese
of Chicago in 1957 to undertake a study of the changes in local communities resulting from
population shifts (in particular the growing African American) – and the tensions and
discrimination involved. As part of the study a number of priests were to be trained in
community analysis and organization. Saul Alinsky also worked to bring the first major
modern civil rights effort to Chicago, which as Horwitt (1989: 363) has commented was the
most segregated city in the North. He also continued be active in more general community
organizing – especially around Chicago. The work in Woodlawn, in particular, attracted
attention with its focus on local organizing and its critique of ‗welfare colonialism‘. As
Charles Silberman noted in his best-selling study Crisis in Black and White (which appeared
in 1964), Alinsky‘s approach (through the work of the Temporary Woodlawn Association –

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TWO) was of great significance. It looked to put much more control in the hands of local
people. Silberman recognized that large scale state intervention was needed in terms of
schooling, job creation and health – but how these were to be brought about, ‗at whose
direction and initiative, was critically important (Horwitt 1989: 449).

Press and media attention to Saul Alinsky grew significantly following the publication
of Crisis in Black and White. He became something of a celebrity – for example featuring in
a series of interviews in Harper’s. On the domestic front his relationship with Jean his wife
had deteriorated. She was living in California for most of the time while Saul Alinsky worked
out of Chicago. In 1966 Alinsky met and developed a relationship with Irene McInnis. Jean
and Saul Alinsky divorced, amicably it is said, in 1969 – and he married Irene in 1971
(Horwitt 1989: 536).

Saul Alinsky became more critical of both the approach and the tactics of the 1960‘s young
radicals. ‗A guy has to be a political idiot,‘ he told them, ‗to say all power comes out of the
barrel of a gun when the other side has the guns.‘ He was very distrustful of the charismatic
elements of some of the new radical movements. For him both action and direction had to be
rooted in the practical concerns of the masses. America‘s War on Poverty saw the expansion
of Saul Alinsky‘s organisation and its influence. In New York he successfully organized local
African American residents to pressure the city‘s largest employer, the Eastman Kodak
Company, to hire more African Americans and also to give them a role in recruitment.

However, he soon fell out further with both the establishment and more ‗radical elements‘.
He called President Johnson‘s War on Poverty ‗a huge political pork barrel‘ and found it
increasingly difficult to work with local African American groups influenced by ‗Black
Power‘ who understandably did not want to function under white leadership. He remained
active till his death, organizing white worker councils in Chicago, steelworkers in Pittsburgh,
Indians in Canada, and Chicanos in the Southwest, where he influenced Cesar Chavez, who
was later to found the first successful labor organization among California farm workers.
Alinsky‘s second book, Rules for Radicals: A Political Primer for Practical
Radicals, published in 1971 was a reflection on the lessons he felt he had learned in this later
period. It, like Reveille for Radicals was a publishing success – and has had a long-term
appeal.

Saul Alinsky died on June 12, 1972 in Carmel, California. He had been to visit Jean, gone to
a bank, and then collapsed outside of a heart attack.

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Alinsky on means and ends

Saul Alinsky had a particular take on the subject of means and ends, or in the terminology of
informal education, on process and product. He was specifically impatient with people who
would not take action for reasons of principle. As he says in his chapter ‗Of Means and Ends‘
in Rules for Radicals.

He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of
‗personal salvation‘; he doesn‘t care enough for people to ‗be corrupted‘ for them. (Alinsky
1972: 25)

He thought that the morality of action needed not to be judged in or of itself but weighed
against the morality of inaction. As Saul Alinsky states at the outset of the chapter:

The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has
no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various
choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of
means, only whether they will work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe
in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. (Alinsky 1972: 24)

Alinsky then proceed to develop a set of rules regarding the ethics of means and ends. Given
his take on morality the idea of a set of rules about them seems ironic and this was part of his
idiosyncratic style. Saul Alinsky can seem very amoral in his statements. I think that it is
helpful to treat them as questions upon which to reflect when considering the morality of
means and ends. For him the point was not to dwell on the morals people should hold, but to
understand the morals which guide people in practice.

Here I want to highlight the key elements of his approach – as outlined in Rules.

1) One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal
interest in the issue, and one’s distance from the scene of conflict (Alinsky 1972: 26). Saul
Alinsky was critical of those who criticized the morality of actions they were not involved in,
were dispassionate about or were not touched by. For him, the further people are away from
the conflict, the more they fuss over the moral delicacies. Furthermore, such moralising and
distancing denies one‘s own culpability. He agreed with Peck that the demonizing of and
moralising about the soldiers in the Mai Lai Massacre in the Vietnam War (where soldiers
massacred 400 civilians) was hypocritical. For Alinsky the questions were how do people got

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to the point of committing atrocities, how people were socialised into the army, its cultures of
responsibility, who becomes a soldier and ultimately why the war was being fought. Sadly
such concerns are still relevant today.

2) The judgement of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those
sitting in judgement (Alinsky 1972: 26-9).

Our cause had to be all shining justice, allied with the angels; theirs had to be all evil, tied to
the Devil; in no war has the enemy or the cause ever been gray. (Alinsky 1972: 3)

Yet nowadays, with the need for propaganda over, the declaration is still taken to be self
evidently true. For Saul Alinsky, both parties in a dispute will claim, and need to claim, that
the opposition‘s means are immoral and their own means are ethical and rooted in the highest
of human values. This seems to be true of the wars in the Falklands, the Balkans,
Afghanistan, Iraq etc. We portray ourselves as fighting for reasons such as freedom,
democracy, protecting the innocent and portray the ‗insurgents‘ as displaying the opposite
moral characteristics.

3) In war, the end justifies almost any means (Alinsky 1972: 29-30). For Saul Alinsky people
are expedient in the moment, and then find ways to justify this as consistent and moral after
the fact. For example, Churchill was asked how he could reconcile himself to siding with the
communists, given his stated opinions. He responded, ‗I have only one purpose, the
destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby.‘ Yet prior to the war he said
‗One may dislike Hitler‘s system and yet admire his patriotic achievements. If our country
were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and
lead us back to our place among the nations‘ – (Great Contemporaries: 1937). During the war
the allies, and Britain in particular supported the communist led resistance in Greece. Yet
after the war Churchill turned British guns on communist partisans who had fought with the
allies in the second world war in the Greek Civil war and supported the return of a monarchy
for Greece.

Saul Alinsky uses the example of the American Declaration of Independence to elaborate on
this statement: To the Colonists who drafted it, the Declaration was self-evidently true; to the
British, it deliberately ignored the benefits of the British presence. The colonists recognized
at the time that the document was not balanced and was to some extent propaganda.

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4) The judgement of the ethics of means must be made in the context of the times in which the
action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point (Alinsky 1972: 30-
2). Saul Alinsky uses the example of the Boston Massacre to illustrate his point. Patrick Carr,
one of the townspeople shot dead by the British, stated on his deathbed that the townspeople
had been the aggressors and that the British fired in self-defence. This admission threatened
to destroy the martyrdom that the Revolutionary Leader, Sam Adams, had invested in the
townspeople. Adams thereby discredited Patrick Carr as ‗an Irish papist who had died in the
confession of the Roman Catholic Church.‘ For Alinsky it would be easy to condemn Adams,
but as he says, we are not today involved in a revolution against the British Empire. Alinsky
says we have to judge the act through the lens of the times.

5) Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available (Alinsky 1972: 232-
34). Saul Alinsky said that moral questions may enter the equation when one has alternate
means. If one lacks this choice, one will take what options one has. He was talking at a time
when there was condemnation of the tactic of the Viet Cong of sending children to plant
bombs in bars frequented by American soldiers. He would have probably have understood the
actions of suicide bombers, or at least would have said the question is not ‗how could anyone
do this‘? but what drove them to see these actions as their only effective tactics.

6) The less important the end, the more one engage in ethical evaluations about
means (Alinsky 1972: 34). This is similar to Saul Alinsky‘s first point, the question being
how people‘s moralizing changes according to how important the end is to them. As a
parallel, many informal educators I have worked with moralise very differently about, for
example, the young people they work with compared to their own children. With the young
people they work with, they recognise that they will experiment with drugs, alcohol and sex
as a part of their ‗means‘ of growing up; and have ways of reacting to the young people when
they do these things. However they react to their own children using drugs and alcohol and
having sex quite differently! Such ‗means‘ are not an options for them.

7) Success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics (Alinsky 1972: 34).

Yesterday‘s immoral terrorist is today‘s moral and dignified statesman of high standing —
because he was successful. Yesterday‘s moral statesman is sitting in front of a ‗war crimes
tribunal‘ today — because he lost. (Connachie 2001)

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Saul Alinsky saw this as an extension of the old adage that history favours the winners. I am
sure Churchill would be remembered very differently had we lost the war. He also identified
‗winners‘ as those in power, not necessarily in a complimentary way, but simply in
recognition that at present, those with power are winning. From this perspective, whether
groups are defined as terrorists or freedom fighters, is normally determined by those in
power.

8) The morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of
imminent defeat or imminent victory (Alinsky 1972: 34-5). This relates to point five and says
that we should judge different acts differently at different points. If a person cheats because
they are desperate, we should judge it differently than if they cheat when they are winning.
Similarly if a person steals to feed their children, it is different from theft by someone who
already has a lot of money. Interestingly, at present, for a first offence or a small amount,
both are likely to receive a fine in the UK. This seems the opposite of Alinsky‘s principle in
that the poor person would be less able to pay the fine, and have a greater (admittedly only
financial) impact on them than on the richer person.

9) Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical (Alinsky
1972: 35-6). Alinsky sees one of the tactics of those in a battle is to judge the other side as
being immoral. We will find ways to judge their methods as unethical even if they are also
used by our side. We will, of course, be using them is a slightly different, more moral, way.
As a youth worker I remember having a battle with a certain management committee about
the use of the building, in particular about whether we needed the full-size snooker table that
dominated one room – and which no young people used. At first they questioned whether I
was being truly representative of the young people in their views about the table, despite this
being my role in the meeting. When I brought the young people to express their own views to
the management committee they said I had put them on the spot in a meeting, which was not
appropriate, despite them having invited them. When the young people wrote in to express
their views, the management committee said that while they were the young people in the
club, they questioned whether they were representative of the young people ‗in the
community‘. The snooker table stayed.

10) You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments (Alinsky
1972: 36-45). Interestingly while this may seem the most morally redundant, Saul Alinsky

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uses the example of Mahatma Gandhi‘s concept of ‗passive resistance‘ as an illustration. He
points out that, perhaps ‗passive resistance‘ was simply:

… the only intelligent, realistic, expedient program which Gandhi had at his disposal; and
that the ‗morality‘ which surrounded this policy of passive resistance was to a large degree a
rationale to cloak a pragmatic program with a desired and essential moral cover….
Confronted with the issue of what means he could employ against the British, we come to the
other criteria previously mentioned; that the kind of means selected and how they can be used
is significantly dependent upon the face of the enemy, or the character of his opposition.
Gandhi‘s opposition not only made the effective use of passive resistance possible but
practically invited it. His enemy was a British administration characterized by an old,
aristocratic, liberal tradition, one which granted a good deal of freedom to its colonials and
which always had operated on a pattern of using, absorbing, seducing, or destroying, through
flattery or corruption, the revolutionary leaders who arose from the colonial ranks. This was
the kind of opposition that would have tolerated and ultimately capitulated before the tactic of
passive resistance. (Alinsky 1972: 38, 41)

Alinsky on liberalism and radicalism

As we can see from the opening quote, Saul Alinsky was contemptuous of the kind of liberal
thinking that led to inaction. Indeed, he devoted a significant part of Reveille for
Radicals comparing the radical and liberal orientations. He was also equally contemptuous of
what he termed ‗suicidal‘ or ‗rhetorical‘ radicals. He starts the prologue to Rules for
Radicals by addressing what he sees as the new generation of radicals, and the folly of some
of their approaches.

The Revolutionary force today..are reminiscent of the idealistic early Christians, yet they also
urge violence and cry, ‗Burn the system down!‘ They have no illusions about the system, but
plenty of illusions about the way to change our world. It is to this point that I have written
this book.

Furthermore, he felt that people should not underestimate the room to manoeuvre in
democratic systems. Saul Alinsky did not deny government harassment, but still felt that the
system had potential to be reformed. More to the point unless the masses thought that these
avenues had been exhausted, they would not embrace change. He felt that many of the new
radical movements, erroneously, wanted to skip the organising phase and go straight for

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revolution, turning potential allies, and even those communities they were meant to be
representing, against them. For Alinsky, to take such a suicidal approach means ‗there is no
play, nothing but confrontation for confrontation‘s sake – a flare-up and back to
darkness‘ (op. cit.). He saws the involvement and active participation of citizens in issues
where they had real concerns, as the key, both to radicalism and democracy. He was cynical
about easy sloganeering, especially when some of the heroes of the day were cited.

Spouting quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara, which are as germane to our highly
technological, computerized, cybernetic, nuclear-powered, mass media society as a
stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport. (Alinsky 1972: xxv).

Tactics for radicals

The bulk of the rest of Rules for Radicals is concerned with tactics, which he sometimes also
refers to as the rules of power politics. I will expand on each in turn. I will also give examples
from Mark Thomas, a UK-based socialist comedian who I think uses these techniques in his
show.

1) Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have (Alinsky 1972:
127). In the book he says that if one has mass support, one should flaunt it, if one does not
one should make a lot of noise, if one cannot make a big noise, make a big stink. Mark
Thomas uses this technique frequently. When complaining about the tube privatization he
formed a band of famous names and asked them to perform on the tube singing protest songs
about it.

2) Never go outside the experience of your people (Alinsky 1972: 127). Mark Thomas
makes extensive use of such techniques as getting the public to ring up their elected
representatives or have mass letter writing campaigns. He will also put familiar mechanisms
to other uses. When complaining about the use of organophosphates he put up yellow appeals
for witness signs to draw attention to the public. When investigating Crown immunity to
murder, when a person was run over by an army Landrover he put up tiredness kills signs all
over the front of the army base.

3) Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy (Alinsky 1972: 127). Mark
Thomas would continually try and dumbfound people. When complaining about the building
of a dam that was to displace 15,000 people in Turkey he built an ice sculpture of a dam in
front on the headquarters of the company building it.

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4) Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules (Alinsky 1972: 128). This is one of
Mark Thomas‘s favorite tactics. He found out that people who inherited expensive paintings
could avoid inheritance tax by allowing the public to have access to the painting. He got the
public to ring up numerous people who had done this and request to see the paintings. When
they refused, or refused everyone he managed to get the law changed.

5) Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon (Alinsky 1972: 128). Mark Thomas was
complaining about the exporting of guns to Iran, where the government had claimed that they
did not know the pipes were going to be used for that purpose because they had been put
down as something else for export terms, despite the fact that they could not have been used
for that purpose. He protested by painting a tank pink, put a plastic ice-cream cone on the top
of it and tried to export it as an ice cream van.

6) A good tactic is one that your people enjoy (Alinsky 1972: 128). When some pensioners
had arranged to have, what could easily have been a boring meeting with a health minister, he
got them to ask questions in the form of a dance routine. He also get a group of people to
protest against GM crops by wearing radioactive protection gear and running around with
Geiger counters.

7) A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag (Alinsky 1972: 128). Mark Thomas
confesses to using a series of ‗stunts‘, to make his points. He tends to use a lot of small
actions, as illustrated about, rather than a prolonged action. This approach leads into the
eighth rule.

8) Keep the pressure on (Alinsky 1972: 128). Saul Alinsky says not to rest on ones laurels if
one has a partial victory. He says we should keep in mind Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s response
to a reform delegation, ‗Okay, you‘ve convinced me. Now go on out and bring pressure on
me!‘ For Alinsky, action comes from keeping the heat on.

9) The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself (Alinsky 1972: 129). When
Saul Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the
washrooms of O‘Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a
longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands
of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they
imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city‘s reputation. Again,

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when challenging the avoidance of inheritance tax, Mark threatened to have more and more
people requesting to see the paintings if a change did not happen.

10) The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a
constant pressure upon the opposition (Alinsky 1972: 129). Such pressure is necessary, Saul
Alinsky argued, in order to get reaction from the opposition. He argued that ‗the action is in
the reaction‘ (op. cit.).

11) If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its
counterside (Alinsky 1972: 129). Essentially, this is to not give up and be afraid to
concentrate on the negative aspects. In many cases Mark‘s pushing of the negative aspects
led to changes, such as a change in the law for the paintings, Nestle reconsidering their
production of milk and Channel Four producing a website for posting up MEP‘s interests
(which is compulsory in other countries). He also succeeded in getting some serious
questions asked about corporate killing in Parliament.

12) The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative (Alinsky 1972: 130). This
is the other side of the previous rule. If one does push the other party through to changing one
has to offer some kind of solution. This would be one of my criticisms of Mark Thomas; he
rarely offers solutions to the issues that he raises. It probably highlights the difference
between an entertainer and a community organizer. It would also be one of Saul Alinsky‘s
main criticisms and goes back to the distinction he made between a real and a rhetorical
radical. He had little time for some on the ultra left who knew what they were protesting
against, but had little idea what they were fighting for. It is noticeable that Mark Thomas does
achieve concrete things, when he has concrete demands.

13) Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it (Alinsky 1972: 130). This is
perhaps Saul Alinsky‘s most controversial rule and is the counter to the common idea that we
should not make things personal. When pursuing the changes in the inheritance law for
paintings he targets one individual. He will often find out who the CEO is in a company and
hound that person. In the organophosphates debate it is one scientist that he targets and the
validity of his findings.

Conclusion

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Saul Alinsky‘s ideas could be seen as controversial, but he was effective and practical as a
community activist, and his work and writing deserves to be more widely known among
those involved in informal education, community development work and social pedagogy.

Mahatma Gandhi and Social Change

Basic Issues of Social Change:

In his voluminous writings, Gandhi touched or dwelt upon myriad issues of interpersonal,
intergroup and individual-group relations that affected society and called for reform and even
revolutionary change in the structure, institutions, processes and value orientations of society.
Although his perspective was Universalist in nature, his point of departure was the contem-
porary Indian situation.

Social change in India constituted his immediate goal and priority. In the pursuit of this
objective, he fashioned a programme of social reconstruction that evolved from his
experiences and experiments in various areas of social life in a kind of trial and error process.
He was deeply conscious of the inertial drag of tradition as well as the natural propensities of
man to pursue narrow and immediate interests and dominate his fellow beings.

The central feature of Gandhi‘s thought is that it is man centred, not system centred. Its
premise is the moral autonomy of man and the possibility of his lasting liberation from his
own lower self and the impersonal and compelling dictates of the structure of society. The
ideal social order is that which gives man the opportunity to realize his moral autonomy and
encourages him always to exercise this autonomy in an enlightened manner that is conducive
to individual and collective well-being.

The movement from the existing imperfect state of man and society towards perfection
requires the inculcation of certain fundamental values by man along with the establishment of
social instrumentalities, which will promote and ensure the perennial primacy of these values.

However, Gandhi postulates the inseparability of ‗ends‘ (values) and ‗means‘

(instrumentalities) that is the dialectical unity of cause and effect. Therefore, a logical

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discrimination between values and instrumentalities is not possible – nor even desirable – in
his thought.

It is in this context that the basic issues of social change in his writings have to be identified.
In other words, these issues cannot be classified into neat categories labelled ‗values‘ and
‗instrumentalities‘. Rather, they form a configuration that can only be analysed in terms of
certain objectives, which need to be woven into the social fabric.

From this point of view, we may identify the basic issues of social change prescribed by
Gandhi as the institution of human dignity and equality; the elevation of labour to a high
dignity; the quest for self-reliance; the propagation of the principle of trusteeship; the pursuit
of truth and ahimsa; the establishment of a socially purposive system of education; the
recognition of tolerance as a primary value; the realization of the inseparability of ends and
means; and the urge towards a rational and scientific view of life.

Before proceeding to a brief elucidation of these issues, it is necessary to point out that, in
contrast to other modern thinkers, Gandhi distilled most of his ideas from a-secular premises.
This is clearly seen, for instance, in his justification of equality and his prognosis for
sustaining the egalitarian imperative.

Modern egalitarianism has been derived from a positivist theory of natural rights, or from the
logic that it is not possible to determine relative primacy between the infinite hierarchies of
classification, or from the irrationality of discrimination between incomparable
individualities. Gandhi, on the other hand, eschews such abstract considerations and bases his
concept of equality on the monistic premise of advaita philosophy that all sentient beings
possess divinity as ultimately inalienable parts of the Supreme Being.

His belief in the Supreme Being, who manifested himself inter alia in an immanent moral law
of the universe and was the ultimate reality, identical with the absolute truth, was the core of
his thought. But his theism was rationally constructed and argued and it was devoid of
mystical elements. Indeed, his calculus of good and evil was based upon secular and rational
criteria and it is possible to argue that his references to the Supreme Being had a metaphorical
quality inasmuch as they sought to enjoin socially constructive conduct. To him, religions
were valuable not because they were built on the idea of communion with God, but because
they gave strength to ethical principles and conduct. In other words, despite the a-secular

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foundations of some of them, his social ideas were rationalistic in their content and
orientation.

To return to the issues of social change identifiable in Gandhi‘s vision, the institution of
human dignity and equality as the guiding principles and objectives for social reconstruction
derived from his belief that every human being, by virtue of the element of divinity in him,
must be recognized as having intrinsic worth and as deserving of the highest respect, and he
should feel and be free to achieve his full potential.

Denial of dignity or equality to an individual was thus unacceptable, not so much for being
offensive to formal human rights, as for its effect of crushing his spirit and denying the
Supreme Being itself. The dismantling of the artificial barriers that categorized human beings
according to descending scales of dignity and equality was a sine qua non for the ideal
society and necessitated a conscious realization of the moral indefensibility of these
categories on the part of those who were responsible for their sustenance and benefited from
them. But it also required the assertion of the right to dignity and equality by the victims of
their denial.

Gandhi extended the application of these concepts beyond individuals to group identities,
such as religious communities, cultural and linguistic entities, regions, and other distinctive
social collectives. His view that the oppressed and the underprivileged must struggle for their
own liberation is evident in his social crusades against untouchability and for gender equality,
for all through, he insisted that it was as much a duty for the untouchables and women to
strive for their emancipation from social degradation and inequality as it was for the rest of
society.

Although he was categorical in upholding the principle of merit, he did not reject the
principle of positive discrimination outright and, in fact, recognized the urgent need for
providing the conditions and wherewithal for the backward and the underprivileged to bring
them on par with the privileged sections of society.

He also maintained that if an equitable social order reflecting the ideal of respect for human
dignity and equality was founded on the inner realization that this ideal was an inalienable
element of the moral law of the universe, instead of on formal laws and social sanctions, it

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would not have the tendency to regress towards older or new patterns of indignity and
inequality.

However, Gandhi‘s conception of equality went beyond the right to equal dignity and
opportunity, for it envisioned the right to equitable sustenance by society for individuals
contributing to the social process to the best of their ability and potential. This was imperative
to preclude the persistence and steady enlargement of inequality on account of the differing
capacities and needs of individuals and the cooperative nature of social life.

This, in turn, required the removal of artificial distinctions between different kinds of labour,
and particularly between intellectual and manual labour, through the universal acceptance of
bread labour and the pursuit of self-reliance by individuals as well as different levels of
collective life from the family to the nation, which was represented by such ideals as the self-
sufficiency of villages with respect to their essential needs and use of swadeshi.

A significant component of this approach was the minimization of wants and the related idea
of non-retention of what was surplus to the satisfaction of natural needs. In order to ensure
against the resultant accumulation of unproductive wealth, Gandhi postulated the principle of
trusteeship whereby the rich were to act as trustees for their superfluous wealth, which was to
be used for society.

It is true that dignifying of labour, self-reliance and trusteeship are generally associated with
the economic realm of Gandhi‘s thought. Yet, they are of central relevance to the process of
social change for several reasons.

Firstly, Gandhi himself insisted on the comprehensive and integral nature of his ideas and
their categorization is, therefore, anathema to his scheme for social transformation.

Secondly, these ideas, despite their apparent economic orientation, are basically concerned
with and provide important instrumentalities for social change through the metamorphosis of
man into a social being in the true sense.

Thirdly, their operation represents and reinforces the innate higher traits of social
commitment and sympathy in human nature. In the ultimate analysis, the elevation of labour
to a high dignity, the quest for self-reliance and the propagation of the principle of trusteeship

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are important basic issues of social change because they have a direct bearing on extant social
structures and human tendencies that militate against progress towards the ideal society.

Truth and ahimsa were regarded by Gandhi as forming an inseparable complex, logically
distinguishable only in that the former is the end and the latter, the means. Although he
defined truth variously in different contexts, there is no inconsistency in his formulations. To
him, truth (the absolute truth) is identical with the ultimate reality which pervades the
universe (the eternal principle or God). However, man cannot realize this absolutely and is
prone to regarding a particular facet of it, relative in time, place or substance, as the end
itself. This may generate conflict between specific relative truths.

However, in the contest between different relative truths, there can be no place for asserting
the superiority of one over another and, therefore, for the imposition of one‘s own perception
over an opponent. This necessitates the adoption of ahimsa as an operative creed, indeed as a
supreme duty, not merely in the negative sense of not inflicting physical or emotional injury
on any living being, but also – and more importantly – in the positive sense of active empathy
with and love for the opponent, even to the extent of inviting and experiencing self-suffering.

The struggle for social change, therefore, requires the inculcation of persistent concern for the
disclosure of the absolute truth. This implies that each individual must recognize the relative
character of his own variant of the truth and commit himself to non-violence. In other words,
social change has to be predicated on a conscious and continuing pursuit of truth and ahimsa,
the mode of its articulation being satyagraha.

To Gandhi, education could sub serve social change only if it gave primacy to character
building over the acquisition of knowledge and occupational skills, and was moreover related
to the individual‘s environment and oriented towards its betterment. The character building
aim of education ought, he felt, to be directed to the inculcation of selfless values and
attitudes, and should contemplate the whole life by informing and pervading its learning and
occupational functions.

Education for its own sake or for acquiring specialized information in isolation from the
process of development of society was, he believed, a contradiction in terms. His Basic
Education scheme sought to universalize education by making the school complementary to
the home and integrating value orientation with vocationalization, while ensuring the

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economic self-sufficiency of the school. His urgent stress on the establishment of a socially
purposive system of education reflected the importance he attached to education as an
efficacious agent for social change.

Gandhi‘s emphasis on the recognition of tolerance as a fundamental value arose only

incidentally from his concern over the apparently endemic tensions and strife afflicting
contemporary inter-communal relations in India. This was so because, to him, tolerance as a
basic principle derived from his conceptions of equality among the constituents of plural
societies, truth and ahimsa (as set out earlier in this section). Each collective identity had the
same rights as the others, irrespective of size, and could claim to espouse no more than a
relative truth.

Moreover, it could only exercise the right to self-expression if it conceded the same right to
others, which implied the practice of ahimsa. An injured party was enjoined to seek redressal
only through the medium of satyagraha. Tolerance demanded that contentious issues be
resolved through dialogue, arbitration and compromise without sacrifice of the fundamental
principle. Tolerance alone could, he believed, provide lasting foundations of overall
integration and harmony in plural social orders.

Gandhi was emphatic in turning down the assertions that an object could be detached from
the means adopted to attain it and that the individual had the freedom to employ any from a
range of optional means to achieve a desired end. To him, ends and means were inseparable
and, in fact, convertible terms, and both ought to be equally pure.

Moreover, since means were themselves ends in the process of realization, different means
lead to substantially or qualitatively different outcomes, and fair results can only emerge from
fair means. His stress on the fairness or purity of means was also derived from his belief that
man can only strive and cannot command results, for he has control over means alone, never
on ends.

What an individual achieves through impure means only degrades him and makes him a
lesser mortal instead of aiding him (as pure means do) to realize his full stature. Impure
means (such as violence, hypocrisy and treachery) also involve the exploitation of other
individuals and, therefore, even when they achieve immediate results, they sow the seeds of
dissension and reaction among those who have been used and render the results unstable or

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ephemeral. Good means, or those consistent with truth, ahimsa and justice, may take longer
to fructify, but their fruits are enduring. Gandhi, therefore, insisted that the realization of the
inseparability of ends and means was essential for positive social change.

Although the premises of some of Gandhi‘s ideas were distinctly a-secular and he employed
an idiom and a metaphor that were spiritual in appearance, he developed his ideas in a
rational manner and reached his conclusions through the scientific method of observation,
hypothesis and experimentation. He readily admitted errors and varied the experiment to
discover the proper way to the solution of a particular social problem.

He always made the first test of a hypothesis on himself before he asked anyone else to try it.
In 1933, he stated that he had developed the ―science of satyagraha‖ through ―scientific
research‖, to which he had applied ―all the skill of a scientist‖. His approach to social
problems, including religious and traditional issues, was always critical and he advocated the
test of reason to prove the soundness of any doctrine or custom.

His critique of the methods and activities of the cow protection societies, the concept of
untouchability, and contemporary Hindu and Muslim fundamentalism was out and out
rationalist in temper, as was his advocacy of the revisions of the (Hindu) Smritis in the light
of contemporary goals and needs.

He believed that his own concepts of equality, truth, ahimsa, swadeshi and bread labour
would find universal recognition only when vindicated by popular rationality. It is true that
he gave faith a higher pedestal than reason in some respects, but at the same time, he held that
while faith transcended reason, it did not contradict it, and reason remained a valuable guide
to man in his social life. Thus, to Gandhi, the urge towards a scientific and rational view of
life was an important instrumentality for social transformation.

The foregoing account of the basic issues of social change has sought to identify the different
prongs of the interventionist thrust of Gandhi‘s reconstructive social programme, the aims of
which were twofold: to instill in man a deep and abiding concern for certain values and social
goals, and to institute practical arrangements which would serve to reinforce them and
prevent (and, in fact, obviate) regression towards unsocial and self-centred tendencies. The
agent of this intervention would be man himself, with the vanguard comprising persons, who,

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―through a revolutionary transformation of self‖, would initiate ―a process of social
reordering‖ and help ―create institutions that install and sustain a normal civilization‖.

This vanguard would mobilize the people by example more than precept into a collective
drive towards the ideal society. The values and social goals prescribed by Gandhi were to be
the essential elements of the personal ideology of the individuals constituting the vanguard,
but their ultimate test was their acceptance by the people as their operative creed.

Theory of Social Change:

Gandhi did not construct a theory of social change in the sense that most social analysts do.
But scattered through the vast magnitude of his writings are many pointers and indications
through which one can delineate his design for social reordering. This design is radically
different from that of other social thinkers.

It is pertinent to remember that his ideas were partly the result of his interaction with and
disapprobatory assessment of modern civilization as typified by the rich industrial countries
and partly the outcome of his political and social struggles in South Africa and India.

His upbringing and readings also played a major part in his orientation towards man and
society. His proposals for social change are different because they are not concerned with the
progress of civilization or the historical process; his main concern is the destiny of man,
which according to him is self-development, and he judges a civilization according to its
capacity to fulfill this purpose. Material well-being is the prime consideration of modern
civilization; opposed to this is Gandhi‘s view of progress as the movement towards self-
discovery or self-realization of man.

Therefore, it is necessary in this context to begin with an examination of Gandhi‘s theory of

human nature, or his conception of man. He begins with the recognition that in his basic
inclinations, man is essentially a brute and easily led towards the gratification of his
fundamental brutish nature or lower self. This phenomenal personality of man is subject to
the law of nature (or, the egocentric urge to survive and dominate by whatever means) that
governs all living beings. However, man is also endowed, unlike the brute, with reason,
discrimination and free will, which invest him with the capacity to choose the kind of life he
would lead and the kind of relationship he would have with his fellow beings, or the rest of
humanity.

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As a result, ―the law of nature as applied to … [man] is different from the law of nature as
applied to the … [brute]‖, for these endowments enable him to be aware of the self-
destructive consequences of the unfettered expression of his brutish instincts. As Gandhi put
it: ―If all men were to act according to their lawless law, there would be perfect chaos within
24 hours. Man being by nature more passionate than the brute, the moment all restraint is
withdrawn, the lava of unbridled passion would overspread the whole earth and destroy
mankind.‖

Moreover, man also possessed a moral and spiritual tendency because of the element of
divinity present in him. Under his phenomenal exterior, there was an inner, higher core that
distinguished him from the rest of creation. This was the real self of man (the ‗self‘), which
lay unmanifest and unrevealed. The exterior personality of man and his inner self were both
socially oriented, as man was a social being by nature as well as the compulsions of survival.

But while the phenomenal exterior tended towards the lower instincts of dominating and
exploiting fellow beings, the real self-soughtfulfilment through the actualization of the moral
instinct of fraternity and sympathy. However, the real self remained suppressed as long as the
exterior personality held sway over the individual.

Gandhi held that each individual had in him the potential to rise above his natural
inclinations, or lower self, and strive to become a total human being, provided he understood
the moral and spiritual aspects of his nature and exercised his will for the purpose. The effort
to move towards a higher plane of existence initiated the process of the uncovering of the real
self – of self-realization.

Gandhi, however, rejected the notion that the endeavour of the individual for self-realization,
or rising above the law of nature, could only be meaningful if he transcended the pulls of the
phenomenal world by renouncing all existential concerns and withdrawing from the social
realm. Instead, he postulated the doctrine that the duty of the individual ―lies in remaining in
the world and engaging in action not motivated by self-interest, but directed towards
ameliorating the suffering of others‖.

To Gandhi, real freedom meant liberation from (or rising above) the law of nature and
recognizing the fundamental unity of man and equality of individuals. In other words, laws
designed to protect man‘s individuality and enshrine his rights were not the essence of

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liberty, for what was important was the freedom of the self to evolve and take man towards
disinterested altruism, which represented his duty and destiny to toil tirelessly for perfection.

However, the path to genuine self-discovery is strewn with numerous pitfalls. The first of
these is the seductive pull of material comfort and the gratification it brings to the senses.
Gandhi maintained that ―man must choose either of the two courses, the upward or the
downward, but as he has the brute in him, he will more easily choose the downward course
than the upward, especially when the downward course is presented to him in a beautiful
garb‖.

A second pitfall is that out of ignorance, he is not able to discriminate between worldly
concerns and the imperatives of self-realization. A third arises from the bind of samskaras, or
the socially conditioned or acquired habits of thought and behaviour, which cloud his vision
and make him, veer towards actions reflecting his lower self. Finally, engagement in any kind
of action (including philanthropic action), without constant awareness of the need to remain
detached from the fruits (even the socially beneficial fruits) of such action, activate the ego
and open the door for the assertion of the lower self and immersion in the phenomenal world.

But Gandhi had faith in the ultimate redemption of man. In his view, the individual was not
only perfectible, but also had the spark to search for perfection, and this quest itself, however
humble or limited, initiated the process of social transformation. However, his effort could
have no content or meaning in isolation from his fellow beings – from society. Therefore, the
question of the relationship between the individual and society was at the centre of his social
theory.

Gandhi believed that the individual and society were parts of an organic whole in which were
included all living beings and material objects. There was an essential unity underlying all
phenomena, which underscored the fact of mutual dependence between them. He gives a
graphic description of this relationship in the following passage: ―Individuality is and is not,
even as each drop in the ocean is an individual and is not. It is not, because apart from the
ocean it has no existence. It is, because the ocean has no existence if the drop has not, that is,
has no individuality. They are beautifully interdependent. And if this is true of the physical
law, how much more so of the spiritual world?‖

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However, there is no doubt that for Gandhi, the individual was the prime factor and corporate
growth was determined by individual growth. He would often say that ―a chain is no stronger
than the weakest link in it‖. But this did not mean that the individual was supreme, for his
very individuality would lack relevance if it developed without reference to the individu-
alities of others, or if their needs were subordinated to his requirements. Indeed, man‘s effort
for self-realization would defeat itself if it became a quest for personal salvation or a private
enterprise in which society was merely a necessary facility.

An individual moving on the path towards the uncovering of his real self had no superior
claim to social resources than one who was steeped in the demands of his lower nature. On
the contrary, the first condition of moral growth was the recognition of the priority of the
needs of others, of the indivisibility of man and his fellow beings – of the essential oneness of
the individual and society.

Gandhi thus posits the concept, not so much of the interdependence of man and society, as
their integrity. To him, the dichotomy of the individual and society is false. Society is not
something external to the individual, but a projection of his own identity or an extension of
the self. Gandhi‘s doctrine, therefore, rejects both the Marxian view of man as an ensemble of
social relations whose nature is governed by the objective conditions of his existence (the
basic material structures of social life) and the liberal view of man as a free agent in a milieu,
which arises ―mechanically and independently of the individual will, from the actions of
countless autonomous individuals on each other and in response to each other, behaving as
rationally as possible for the protection of their private interests … with no regard for any
trans-individual authority or values‖.

In his scheme, the individual is potentially a morally autonomous entity, entrapped by his
lower nature into subservience to the false imperatives and values of the phenomenal world,
but capable of being aroused to his moral freedom to pursue the call of the higher self. This
quest begins independently of the social fabric, but the course of this movement towards self-
realization reshapes his environment in accordance with the moral and spiritual concomitants
of the higher self, which are built on disinterested altruism, or the imperative of submerging
individual identity in the service of humanity.

In the light of the foregoing discussion, one may recapitulate, in outline, Gandhi‘s theory of
social change. At first glance, it would appear that his ideas, with their emphasis on the

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divinity of man and union with God as the ultimate destiny of the individual, are derived
from spiritualist premises and have spiritualist objectives. However, on deeper reflection, it
becomes clear that these concepts are metaphorical (and not substantial) in his theory and
their purpose is to stress the necessity for considering each individual as absolutely equal in
social regard and to elevate selfless endeavour to the highest level of human conduct.

He does not postulate any divine design for the universe, or the operation of a divine law
which entails retribution for transgressions of the will of God, or any afterlife. His view of the
primary brutish instincts of man and the possibility of their sublimation through the effort for
self-realization, or the movement from false consciousness to real consciousness, is an essay
in the psychology of man, which has a striking concordance with modern theories of human
behaviour.

To Gandhi, truth was, in its essence, the state of freedom from self-regarding motives and the
continuous urge to overcome the bewitchment of false consciousness. His belief in the
perfectibility of man, or in the ability of the individual to relentlessly pursue the truth, is a
reflection of the conviction that it is possible for man, at the individual level and collectively,
to proceed non-regressively from a self-regarding to another-regarding outlook.

This pursuit is aided along by the effort to adhere to certain norms of conduct and Gandhi has
suggested a number of such referential standards. To that extent, his approach is normative.
He also believed that while man‘s conduct was influenced by the values current in society,
man had also the capacity to commit himself to value orientations that lay beyond the sphere
of extant social values.

Social values emanated from the interaction of man and his social environment and were
perforce relative in space and time. However, values which represented a perceived
dichotomy between the individual and society, or which were discordant with the essential
oneness of all human beings, were falsely reflective of the lower self. True values must, he
felt, be relevant to the moral well-being of the individual and society.

But Gandhi was not a positivist, for he did not believe in or prescribe a fixed system of
ultimate values and he rejected the concept of progress in a linear fashion. Progress could not
be measured on a material scale and had to be related to the extent to which the individual

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had advanced on the path of self-realization and the extent to which the social order had
developed into one which helped, not hindered, this quest.

However, Gandhi rejected the utilitarian calculus of the greatest good of the greatest number
because it, ―in its nakedness, means that in order to achieve the supposed good of 51 per cent,
the interest of 49 per cent may be or rather should be sacrificed‖. He characterized it as ―a
heartless doctrine which had done harm to humanity‖. Against the utilitarian ideal, he
proposed ―the only real dignified, human doctrine‖ of sarvodaya, or the greatest good of all,
which could only be achieved ―by uttermost self-sacrifice‖.

To be animated by the spirit of self-sacrifice was to proceed towards self-realization, the goal
of which was the achievement of integration between the individual and society. However,
this goal could only be reached gradually, for man was subject to a variety of limitations,
physical, physiological and intellectual, which retarded his ability to transcend his proximate
environs. Gandhi, therefore, prescribed the path of commitment and service to ―our
immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote‖, which is articulated by the
concept of swadeshi.

The concept of swadeshi was, in Gandhi‘s theory, inextricably linked with the ideal of the
village republic or self-contained, self-sufficient and autonomous communities, which,
however, were not self-limited or self-limiting, as they had a network of mutually supportive
and sympathetic linkages with their counterparts.

These communities were not to be arranged hierarchically, but would be encompassed in

―ever-widening, never ascending circles‖, in which life ―will be an oceanic circle whose
centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish
for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals,
never aggressive in their arrogance, but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle
of which they are integral units‖.

They also represented a social system which was participative in character and was so
constituted that it encouraged the cooperative tendency, that is, assisted the individual to
break out of the restricted shell of selfish individuality on to the goal of disinterested altruism.
In other words, they constituted a social order that enabled man to attempt the transformation
of society through self-transformation.

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Thus, Gandhi‘s thinking on social change was in terms of a social revolution in which
systemic change was attained through a moral revolution in values. His most important
contribution to the general techniques of revolution was the theory of ahimsa (non-violence)
and its practice in the form of satyagraha. This included, firstly, the use of moral force by an
individual dedicated to the service of the people and, secondly, collective pressure and
persuasion against the opponents.What was envisaged by Gandhi was a dialectical opposition
of values in which the satyagrahi pitted the whole of his spiritual strength against the
opponent and was prepared to suffer all hardships – physical and emotional – heaped on him.
Initially, the opponent might not be moved, but Gandhi believed that no individual was
without a divine spark which could, in certain circumstances, be ignited and made to respond
to a moral appeal. The satyngrahi‘s effort was to reach this depth of the individual being and
bring out its most noble aspect.

Violence, or even a slight compromise in means, could not be considered, as the question
concerned human values. Against such an onslaught, the opponent is expected to assert his
perception of truth or reality and the struggle might continue, but each stage would be marked
by a higher level of truth.

In such a moral struggle, however long and protracted, the outcome would perforce be a
moral one, for as long as the protagonists of different partial versions of the truth made a
constant effort to comprehend the fact of the relativity of their perception, their confrontation
initiated the process of its revelation and had the positive outcome of bringing all closer to the
absolute truth.

The Modern Non-Violent Social Order:

Gandhi was sceptical about drawing up a detailed plan for a modern non-violent social order
for several reasons. As the individual was instrumental in transforming society through the
extension of his self, social institutions and systems were reflections of his moral and social
level. A violent people would obviously create a violent society, while a non-violent people
would create a non-violent one.

Therefore, Gandhi felt that it was futile to draw up a social scheme before the adequate moral
level was attained. In 1929, he wrote: ―We do not know our distant goal. It will be
determined not by our definitions, but by our acts, voluntary and involuntary. If we are wise,

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we will take care of the present and the future will take care of itself. God has given us only a
limited sphere of action and limited vision. Sufficient unto the day is the good thereof.‖

Secondly, Gandhi‘s faith in the principles of renunciation of the fruits of action precluded
planning far into the future as that could lead to attachment and desire. It emphasized
concentration on immediate duties and problems and reliance on the efficacy of good deeds.

If the seeker of truth gave free rein to his imagination and dissipated his energy in an attempt
to describe the social order that would emerge after the non-violent revolution, he would
encumber himself with irrelevant details and lose his detachment, his thought control and
present efficiency.

There was another reason for Gandhi‘s lack of emphasis on the future social order.
Satyagraha was a science in the making. He had not worked it out in its entirety. He was still
experimenting with non-violence, trying to apply it to all spheres of life and studying its
possibilities. Indeed, he felt that the experiment was not even in an advanced stage.
Therefore, he regarded the very effort to determine in detail the institutional forms of the
future non-violent society as premature and ―unscientific‖.

Nevertheless, we do find fairly detailed references in his writings to the kind of society
Gandhi envisioned as ideal, inasmuch as it had the quality to help man in the pursuit of
unfolding his real self. To Gandhi, society provided the framework in which the individual
could strive meaningfully and achieve liberation. He had a deep distrust of politics and he
refused to assign a significant role to political machinery as the agent of individual or social
change.

He viewed ―an increase in the power of the state with the greatest fear because … it does the
greatest harm by destroying individuality, which is at the root of all progress …. The state
represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as
the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from the violence to which it owes its
very existence.‖

He pictured the ideal society as an ―enlightened anarchy‖, where ―everyone is his own ruler,
and … there is no political power, because there is no state‖. However, Gandhi-was also a
realist and, despite his negative assessment of the political realm, felt called upon to

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participate in the arena of politics: ―If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics
encircles us today like the coil of the snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how
much one tried. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake.‖ It was the same realism that, in
later writings, brings him towards the acceptance of the inevitability of the state in human
affairs. However, the state of his conception, the non-violent state, was a distinctive entity,
quite different from any other model of the state.

To Gandhi, political power, or the state, was not an end in itself, but ―one of the means of
enabling people to better their condition in every department of life‖. Thus, he did not accept
the Hegelian view of the state as the final goal of human organization, the ultimate end that
has the highest right against the individual and is itself above morality.

He was against the theory of absolute sovereignty of the state, which lays upon the individual
the duty of absolute, unquestioning obedience to the law of the state. For him, sovereignty
was of the people based on pure moral authority. Though Gandhi makes the disobedience of
laws that offended the moral sense a right as well as a duty of the citizen and considers such
disobedience the key to democracy, he provides ample safeguards against anarchy by making
this disobedience civil and non-violent.

Gandhi consistently favoured a democracy, but, for India, based it on a system of indirect
election to circumvent the problems of its vast size and its relative backwardness. In his view,
all public offices had to be held in the spirit of service without the slightest expectation of
personal gain. To ensure that only virtuous persons were elected to represent the people, he
postulated the ―labour franchise‖, which meant that political rights would only devolve on
those who performed manual labour.

To quote him, ―The qualifications for franchise should be neither property nor position, but
manual work … [for a] literacy or property test has proved to be elusive. Manual work gives
an opportunity to all who wish to take part in the government and the well-being of the state.‖
Labour franchise is the application to politics of the ideal of bread labour, which aims at
making life self-sufficient and people self-reliant and fearless.

Gandhi wanted to reserve the right to vote only to people aged between 18 and 50. People
above 50 would have only moral influence, but no political authority through the vote. The
non-violent state would have to be a secular state. Even if the whole community had only one

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religion, the state must not patronize it. Everyone living in the state should be entitled to
profess his religion without let or hindrance, so long as he obeyed the common law of the
land.

However, Gandhi held the teaching of fundamental ethics to be a function of the state. The
state must not undertake religious education, which must be the sole concern of religious
associations. He was also opposed to state aid to religious bodies.

Crime, though diminished, would not disappear from the non-violent state because it would
not consist only of ideal men. But Gandhi regarded all crime as the result of social malfunc-
tioning and so prescribed its treatment along different lines. Criminals would be detained, not
for punishment or deterrence, but for reform. Prisons would be turned into reformatories and
workshops so that their inmates could be rehabilitated and discharged prisoners might
become model citizens of the state.

A police force would be necessary, but its ranks would be composed of believers in non-
violence. They would be servants, not masters of the people. The force would carry some
kind of arms, but they would use them rarely, if at all. In fact, policemen would be reformers
and their police work ought to be confined to robbers and dacoits. Gandhi was opposed to the
use of the army for the protection of civil liberties, internal peace and even against foreign
aggression. In the non-violent state, he would completely decentralize defence against
aggression and injustice. However, he was in favour of a non-violent army.

In the sphere of production, the non-violent state would differ from the stateless society in
that the indispensable large scale production as well as heavy transport would continue.
Gandhi conceded that so-called civilized man had come to regard these as essential for his
comfort and convenience. But centralized production, he felt, should be so planned as to sub-
serve and not destroy villages and their crafts.

For this purpose, he would permit private ownership of the means of production only if the
capitalist raised the worker to the status of co-proprietor of his wealth and both labour and
capital worked as mutual trustees and trustees of consumers.

Failing this, he would accept state ownership. These nationalized, state owned factories, he
said, ought to work under the most attractive and ideal conditions, not for profit, but for the

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benefit of humanity. In state owned enterprises, workers should have a place in the
management through their elected representatives and an equal share in the management with
the representatives of the government.

The production of primary necessities such as food and cloth had to be completely
decentralized in that it should remain in the control of the masses. Even in this sphere of
production, Gandhi said, so long as villages aimed at being self-contained and manufactured
mainly for use, he had no objection to villagers using even modern machines and tools that
they could make and afford to employ. Only, such machines and tools should not be used as a
means of exploitation of others. Thus, if electricity could be made available in villages, he
would not mind villagers plying their tools and implements with the help of electricity. But
then the village communities or the state would own the power houses just as they did their
grazing pastures.

The state would promote small scale industries and would control natural resources such as
forests, minerals, power resources and communications in the interest of the people. The state
would regulate the rate of commission to be paid to the trustees for the wealth accumulated
by them. If landlords and capitalists failed to live up to the ideals of trusteeship and voluntary
efforts proved unavailing, the state would have to end the various forms of landlordism and
own and manage, jointly with workers‘ representatives, the unavoidable centralized
production. Gandhi was of the view that the role of the state would diminish gradually once
the non-violent structure was firmly established and economic life became increasingly self-
regulated.

A unique feature of Gandhi‘s scheme of taxation, however quaint, was the idea of payment in
labour, rather than in money. He said, ―Payment in labour invigorates the nation. Where
people perform labour voluntarily for the service of society, exchange of money becomes
unnecessary. The labour of collecting the taxes and keeping accounts is saved and the results
are equally good.‖ Payment in this form also implies the use of taxes for the benefit of the
area in which they are collected.

Before concluding this section, Gandhi‘s concepts of nationalism and the related theme of
internationalism may be considered as they are the projections of his ideas for laying the
foundation of a new social order in the world. Nationalism, in his view, was not confined to

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the territorial limits of a nation, but transcended them and had universal connotations. It could
not be aggressive, exclusive or destructive.

One reason why nationalism was constructive in his opinion was that the means it employed
to fulfill itself was non-violence, the method of conversion and non-coercion. Besides, it was
inspired by the ideal of world unity rooted in the highest truth, the spiritual oneness of
mankind and stood for a country learning to live, not by exploiting others, but by serving
others and dying for others.

As such, he said, non-violent nationalism is the essential precondition of sound

internationalism. In 1925, he wrote: ―It is impossible for one to be an internationalist without
being a nationalist …. It is not nationalism that is an evil, it is the narrowness, selfishness,
exclusiveness which is the bane of modern nations …. Indian nationalism … wants to
organize itself or to find full self expression for the benefit and service of humanity at large.‖

Nationalism to Gandhi did not mean isolated independence, but a state of healthy and
dignified interdependence with other nations. Such a condition of peaceful coexistence could
only be maintained, he thought, by the world being united under a central governing body
composed of the representatives of the component parts.

Only such an international organization that was freely established and maintained by non-
violence could solve all the problems of the world. The League of Nations failed in its duty
because it lacked the necessary sanctions, he felt. This power should be based on satyagraha
or non-violent non-cooperation, the efficacy of which had been demonstrated in India. The
first necessity was the giving up of armaments and the use of force to defend even proven
rights.

―Proven rights,‖ he writes, ―should be capable of being vindicated by right means as against
the rude, or sanguinary, means.‖ For controlling violent outbreaks between states, he would
welcome an international non-violent police force resembling peace brigades or the police
force of the non-violent state. Before general disarmament commenced, he said, some nation
would have to dare to disarm itself and take large risks. The level of non-violence in that
nation would naturally have risen so high as to command universal respect.

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Gandhi was clear that all the nations composing the League of Nations would have to be fully
independent and there could be no question of superiority or inferiority between them. The
smallest nation should feel as the tallest.

This state of affairs could only be reached after the establishment of just political and
economic international relations and the ending of imperialism. For this purpose, the great
nations would have to shed competition and the desire to multiply wants and material
possessions obviously, a prerequisite of such an international league would be the inculcation
of non-violent values by the member nations.

In short, Gandhi‘s theory of social change would lead to the creation of a society in which the
average individual would have attained a high level of moral growth and he would lead a
corporate life characterized by approximate social and economic equality, genuine political
consciousness, voluntary cooperation and simplicity.

Contemporary Relevance:
We finally turn to an examination of the contemporary relevance of Gandhi. ―Modern
industrial civilization‖, as Gandhi described it, has crept over most parts of the world and this
has led man to seek contentment through the satisfaction of his material needs,‘ concerning
himself less and less with discovering his true or inner self. The world has become roughly
divided into the very rich countries and the very poor, and within each country, there is social
and economic polarization.

Exploitation and violence are common phenomena of life. Transcendental values such as
honesty, morality, harmony and kindness, which point the way to an integrated and simple
life, hold little attraction. Powerful divisive forces are at work in their place, which are
leading to an extreme fragmentation of our social and political life. Religion, region and
language have become shibboleths under whose cover many crimes are committed.

Another major, fallout of modern civilization is the very real threat to our ecosystem or
biosphere. For example, carbon dioxide emission levels have risen by 29 per cent in the last
150 years, leading to global warming, which is causing glaciers to melt, raising sea levels and
drowning coastal lowlands.

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Our soil, air and water are getting clogged with noxious chemicals from polluting industrial
effluents, which, in turn, are dangerously impacting human health, reportedly even causing
diseases such as skin cancer, gastrointestinal, eye, dental and bone problems, ‗spontaneous‘
abortions and even altering human DNA.

In such a grim scenario, Gandhi‘s proposals for social change take on special relevance.
Modern writers and thinkers have recognized the fact of the ―broken totality‖ of modern
human life lacking a notion of intrinsic good and a holistic approach. Gandhi emphasized the
essential oneness of all life with interdependence as the law of life. This was also the supreme
truth or God for Gandhi, the realization of which was the goal of all life.

Satyagraha was the means he forged for the purpose. The concept was integral to the pursuit
of truth and ahimsa. One might question the practicality of the technique of satyagraha for
bringing about changes in the modern social and political milieu. If it is accepted that there
are and always will be individuals who can rise above themselves and energize radical
movements that articulate popular concerns with determination and restraint, satyagraha will
assume significance as an effective and relevant modality of popular action.

The burgeoning environmental movements in the heartland of modern industrial civilization,

and particularly their local and communitarian articulations, represent the core of the
technique of satyagraha in their non-violent and mass character. The degree of success they
have achieved in forcing governments to institute ecological legislation, compelling industrial
units to abide by them and infusing people with ecological consciousness vindicates the
practicality and relevance of the concept.

Evidently, there can be no greater indictment of modern civilization than the arms race
between the superpowers and the lesser powers, their heavy reliance on the sale of arms to
other countries and the increasing sophistication in the production of weapons designed to
annihilate large portions of mankind. In this situation, non-violent techniques, which require
both moral courage and physical courage, appear to be the only rational way out. As Gandhi
suggested, one major power will have to have the courage to begin the process of
disarmament by disarming itself, rather than continuing to participate in the arms race.

In this context, it may be noted that a group of Palestinian nationalists had tried to apply
Gandhi‘s philosophy of non-violence to force Israel to end its occupation of West Bank and

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the Gaza Strip. Leading the movement was Mubarak Awad, director of the Palestinian Centre
for the Study of Non-Violence, who was convinced that the Israelis did not know how to
handle people who practised non-violence.

Awad came to India for six weeks in 1986 and discussed with Gandhians the ways in which
he could use Gandhi‘s philosophy for advancing Palestinian nationalism. He said, ―I tell the
people no throwing stones, no violent behaviour of any kind. Even if the tanks come, do not
run away because you have truth on your side.‖

Well known people‘s movements in recent history based on civil disobedience have
acknowledged the strong impact of Gandhi on their philosophy and strategy. Martin Luther
King, the leader of the civil rights movement in the United States, said: ―Gandhi was
probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction
between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale …. The whole
concept of ‗satyagraha‘ was profoundly significant to me.‖

Gandhi became the symbol of resistance and was acknowledged as such by non-violent
revolutionaries in Eastern Europe, such as Lech Walesa in Poland and Vaclav Havel in
Czechoslovakia in the 1980s The Dalai Lama has always proclaimed the influence of Gandhi
in his non-violent effort to gain autonomy for Tibet. In the 1990s, Nelson Mandela was in a
position to publicly acknowledge that ―the Gandhian influence dominated freedom struggles
on the African continent right up to the 1960s‖. Very recently, Gandhi‘s influence appeared
to have motivated the Buddhist monks who launched a powerful movement in Lhasa in
March 2008 and in Yangon against the authoritarian regime in Myanmar.

In terms of social development, India presents a paradox: While, on the one hand, cultural
pluralism is plainly evident, on the other, communalism and communal strife pose a major
threat to peace and development. Gandhi‘s views in this regard assume a great deal of
relevance for us. His chief concern was the evolution of human values in the context of truth
and morality, and for this reason, he was not dogmatically attached to any religion. In his
view, all the principal religions of the world were manifestations of truth, but none was
perfect because each was interpreted through human agency.

Each religion had to be looked at from the point of view of the adherent as it satisfied a
spiritual need in him. Equal regard and mutual tolerance must form the ground rule of life in

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a multicultural society. What was necessary was to consider the essential and underlying
spirit of a religious system, rather than its external and mundane details. Gandhi was
uncompromising in one respect. Reason, he said, must form the sole guide for accepting the
authenticity of religious texts and, therefore, the irrational and superstitious customs and
traditions associated with religion should be rejected.

The state, in Gandhi‘s opinion, had to be strictly secular and keep aloof from all religious
activities and not patronize any denomination at all. Appeal by the government to the
religious sentiment in any form was reprehensible. The majority community had a positive
role to play in defusing communal tension. Being stronger it must, he said, extend the hand of
friendship and try to make the minorities feel secure.

In this context, Gandhi always desired that respected leaders of both communities should
meet together and discuss contentious issues in a spirit of mutual regard and consideration for
the sentiments of each other. Issues that could not be decided in this manner should be
referred to arbitration councils composed of eminent persons enjoying a reputation for
fairness.

Another suggestion of Gandhi‘s for defusing communal tension has a good deal of
contemporary relevance. At the level of the locality, individuals enjoying the trust of both
communities should form peace brigades, the purpose of which would be to iron out
differences and form bridges to promote active cooperation between the communities.
Women, he felt, had a special role to play here. Gandhi believed women had greater
persuasive powers and could effectively mould public opinion. Gandhi died a martyr to the
cause of communalism and, in his death, showed the path to communal harmony.

The press and other media have always played a major role in the spread or containment of
emotive issues such as communalism. Gandhi was in favour of editors, journalists and
reporters following a minimum code of professional morality and reporting with a sense of
social responsibility. He was also of the view that scurrilous writing in the press should be
submitted for review to the arbitration councils, which would verify the facts and have
correct versions published. Such a policy could be followed in our own times with common
benefit to all.

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Gandhi regarded education as a powerful medium for transmitting secular and humane values
to children. He stressed the need to ensure that educational curricula were free from religious
bias and designed to promote fundamental ethics common to all religions. He was totally
opposed to the ownership and management of educational institutions by religious bodies, as
they often propagated communal feelings.

However, he did not mind established religious institutions imparting purely religious
education, for this was not meant for the general populace or general students. These ideas
are quite germane to the present as state sponsored or state aided educational institutions in
India are neither able to promote secular ethics or social consciousness among pupils, nor
combat overarching communal biases among the young.

Another important value where education could play a positive interventionist role was that
of manual labour. It is strange but true that manual labour is looked down upon in an
agricultural country like India. This is the reason for the sorry state of the labourers in the
country, the undue rush for white collar jobs and the deep social divide so plainly visible
between those who labour with their hands and those who function from their desks.

Gandhi‘s doctrine of bread labour made him regard manual labour in the light of a sacred
duty laid upon each individual, regardless of his vocation in life. He believed in the equality
of all labour and in the corresponding equality of wages. If Indians would alter their attitude
towards manual labour and try to approximate Gandhi‘s approach, many of the economic and
social ills in the country could perhaps be resolved. One obvious way would be to include
manual labour in the school curriculum, not in a mechanical way, but integrated with the rest
of die curriculum, as Gandhi had envisaged.

Gandhi‘s emphasis on swadeshi, which did not merely denote ―belonging to one‘s country‖,
but also to the immediate neighbourhood, is extremely important for our times. Local insti-
tutions and organizations for managing local affairs have either dwindled or become non-
existent with the result that we have lost faith in ourselves to do anything and constantly rely
on the authorities to solve our local problems.

The need of the hour is to arouse popular consciousness about local issues and try to resolve
them through voluntary cooperation. People in the field of appropriate and indigenous
technology are showing ways in which even a force like electricity can be produced locally,

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rendering huge dams unnecessary. The indigenous water harvesting technology being tried
out in various parts of India would have met with Gandhi‘s whole hearted approval. Conser-
vation of resources was an article of faith with him.

The doctrine of swadeshi also assumes significance in the face of the economic and cultural
imperialism launched by multinational corporations in developing countries. The government
and the people need to make concerted efforts to stop the march of the multinationals and
launch a simultaneous movement to promote the consumption of indigenous products.

With India‘s manpower and agricultural resources, it must be obvious even to laymen that the
emphasis in production should be on small scale and cottage industries, which would do
justice to India‘s resources and bring about substantial uplift of the rural poor, who compose
the overwhelming majority of the country‘s population.

Gandhi was wholly in favour of small scale production, it being most beneficial for humanity
– man would not be uprooted from his native soil or lose his empathy with nature. This may
sound like turning the clock back, but may well become necessary very soon.

Gandhi‘s persistent emphasis on sound management of agricultural production in India

assumes great significance in the context of the current global food and unemployment crises,
which have affected India as well. It would be relevant to quote M.S. Swaminathan, the
celebrated agricultural scientist and Father of the Green Revolution in India, on the issue:
―Carefully planned agricultural progress can help to create simultaneously more food, income
and jobs. It is only agriculture, including crop and animal husbandry, fisheries, forestry and
agro-processing, which can promote job led economic growth. Modern industry, in contrast,
promotes jobless growth, which will lead to joyless growth in population rich nations.

In his quest for the satisfaction of his senses, modern man has indiscriminately exploited his
environment, both human and non-human. In the process, he has become spiritually impover-
ished and alienated from his true self, which demands sharing and giving for its fulfillment.
The current danger to life from all kinds of pollution and ecological imbalances is the result
of man‘s thirst for material possessions and personal advancement. This process has had a
reaction and led to an upsurge of movements and activities to protect the environment. Some
such are mentioned here as they are closely related to Gandhi‘s ideas.

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The Chipko Movement was launched in the Garhwal hills of north India for the preservation
of the forests. Inspired by Gandhi and Acharya Vinoba Bhave‘s Sarvodaya Movement, it was
led by Sunderlal Bahuguna and first began with the villagers embracing tree trunks to protest
the felling of ash trees by a sports goods company. This movement now has global dimen-
sions. Bahuguna is currently engaged in resisting non-violently the threat of enormous
destruction to human life and the environment by the giant Tehri Dam Project, which is also
in the Garhwal region.

Another strong non-violent movement to save the environment, especially the uprooting of
local communities for a giant river project and to prevent the resultant havoc caused by it, is
the Narmada Bachao Andolan led by Medha Patkar with the active and committed support of
several other members of the intelligentsia. More recently, the satyagraha technique was
adopted to protest the construction of big dams across the Bhagirathi river (the upper reaches
of the Ganga), as a result of which two of the six projects have been suspended so far. The
satyagraha is being undertaken by Professor G.D. Agarwal, a retired professor of the Indian
Institute of Technology in Kanpur.

The relevance of Gandhi‘s ideas in the judicial field is becoming increasingly apparent these
days. A lawyer himself, he was well aware of the dilatory tactics and enormous expenditure
involved in litigation, which often resulted in the total denial of justice to the common man.
He was of the opinion that disputes should not reach the stage of litigation and must be
resolved through arbitration and conciliation. He was in favour of reviving the ancient
panchayat system of settling disputes in the villages.

The modern Lok Adalats exemplify to some extent Gandhi‘s concept of rendering justice.
They were first established in 1982 as part of the legal aid strategy. To quote from the legal
journal, The Lawyers Collective, ―Lok Adalats are informal, flexible, participatory forums
which have as their purpose the encouragement of settlements, compromises and the
avoidance of litigation.‖

The parties to a dispute voluntarily utilize their services to avoid the harassment and
frustration often met with in ordinary courts of law. Lok Adalats have no adjudicatory
authority and their judges are usually retired judges, advocates or social workers, who act
only as mediators or conciliators. Lok Adalats have received statutory status and it is hoped
that they will be fully integrated into the present judicial structure. This will inspire greater

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confidence among litigants and advocates and provide access to quick, effective and
―inexpensive‖ justice.

Finally, even on the contentious subject of reservations in jobs and services, Gandhi‘s views
are very relevant today. Gandhi believed in social and economic equality and more so in
equality of opportunity, especially for those he called Harijans. However, he was totally
opposed to reservations in jobs and services on the basis of social categories as that was
tantamount to compromising the standard of merit in them.

Moreover, such reservation removed the incentive for improvement and endeavour in those
on whom these benefits were bestowed. He favoured special opportunities for education and
training for the underprivileged sections of society, especially the Harijans. This would
naturally widen the scope of their employment and betterment.

But successive governments have acquired a vested interest in carrying on the policy of
reservations and, in the process, fostered a feeling of antagonism towards the reserved
categories among the rest of the population. What is required is political courage to phase out
the policy of reservations and for the government to follow a comprehensive plan for
securing social justice and equal opportunity for all, particularly at the grass-roots level.

It is hoped that the foregoing section has illustrated to some extent the contemporary
relevance of Gandhi‘s theory of social change. Men and women in Gandhi‘s society would
live in close touch with their environment, not wishing to dominate it, but enjoying being part
of it. His relevance for all time has been brought out most cogently by Sarojini Naidu, his
famous co-worker and India‘s outstanding poetess, in a passage written a few months before
his assassination.

Ambedkar

Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born on 14th April, 1891 in a small town at Mhow Cantt
near Indore in Mahar caste, which is known as untouchable caste in Maharashtra. He died on
6th December, 1956. His name was Bhim Sakpal, during childhood. His father was Ramji
Sakpal, who was the follower of Saint Kabir. Therefore, he never believed in caste. He

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adopted Buddha religion along with 5 lakh people in a historical congregation on 14th
October, 1956 at Nagpur.

In 1923, Ambedkar started his law practice and also devoted himself for the upliftment of
Dalits (depressed class) and poor. In 1930, he became the president of the All India
^Depressed Class Association. In 1936, he formed an Independent Labour Party, which later
on turned into All India Scheduled Castes Federation.

On 7th August, 1942, Ambedkar became the member of the Council for Governor General.
In his chairmanship, the Consti-tution of India was drafted. On 3rd August, 1949, he took the
char ge of the Law Minister in the Government of India. In 1955, he formed Bharatiya
Buddha Mahasabha. Ambedkar always felt that the depressed class has no honour in the
Hindu religion which also reflects in his writings and actions.

Concept of Dalit:

Generally, the word Dalit includes those who are designated in administrative parlance as
Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
However, in common political discourse, the term Dalit is so far mainly referred to Scheduled
Castes.

The term ‗Scheduled Caste‘ was used for the first time by the British in Government of India
Act, 1935. Prior to this, the untouchable castes were known as depressed classes in public
discourse. Mahatma Gandhi gave them the name Harijan – man of God. Gandhi himself did
not coin the name. He borrowed the name from a Bhakti saint of the 17th century – Narsimh
Mehta.

Dalit Liberation: Subaltern Approach:

With the advent of Ambedkar into the Indian political arena during 1920s, the issue of social
reforms achieved a new dimension. He was of the opinion that until and unless the
downtrodden themselves came forward to fight their battle, no one else could alleviate their
grievances. No one else could know better than them about their own state of affairs.

An another aspect of Ambedkar‘s subaltern approach for the emancipation of Dalits and their
empowerment was his distinct formulation of Indian nationalism in opposition to the

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dominant discourse of Hindu nationalism as represented by Raja Rammohan Roy, B.G. Tilak,
Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

Methodology:

Ambedkar undertook different types of studies, some involving the collection of sizeable data
and the other processing such as the election studies of 1937 and 1945, focusing on the
constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes. He undertook several case studies, often to
drive home a point better.

There are studies where he attempted to locate the major changes in policy or issues over a
period by dividing the period into appropriate stages. These projects required resort to
documents and archives for necessary data, such as doctoral studies of Ambedkar, which
drew not merely from official documents but also from archival data. In them, there are the
standard references to the manuscripts and texts.

There are studies such as Who were the Shudras?, exegetical in nature, which delve into texts
but propose an alternative thesis because the existing explanations of these texts do not
account for certain known details or passages. Studies, such as The Untouchables, resort to
the method of constructing a distinctive thesis centred on a characteristic feature in a
determinate group, existing solely in that group and universally shared by it.

Ambedkar also dwelt a great deal on interpretation and on the criteria appropriate for it.7 He
argued that Gandhi‘s interpretation of Hinduism did not stand up to the criteria of
interpretation, Further, he felt that interpretations which do not take popularly held beliefs
and strong evaluations into account, do not materially affect the situation studied.

The ideas and ideals of John Dewey, Edwin R.A. Seligman, the Fabians and the British
Idealists had a deep impact on Ambedkar. He described himself as a ‗progressive radical‘ and
occasionally as a ‗progressive conservative, the qualification, ‗progressive‘, being generally
present, distinguishing himself from the liberals and the communists depending on the case.

He saw the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Indian Constitution as upholding
economic democracy. His notion of liberty was avowedly that of the T.H. Green kind.
Although he talked of equality before law and considered it as a major contribution of the

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British rule in India, he was not satisfied with this notion and advanced stronger notions such
as equality of consideration, equality of respect, and equality of dignity.

He was sensitive to the notion of respect, and the notion of community was central in his
consideration. The demand for ‗fraternity‘ in the French Revolution was seen by him as a call
for ‗community‘. The Buddha, he argued, strove for building commu­nities while
Brahminism attempted to fragment them.

Ambedkar showed an extraordinary interest in Marxism, particularly in the 1950s. All his
major writings during this period, viz., Buddha and the Future of his Religion, The Buddha
and his Dhamma and Buddha and Karl Marx, refer to Marx as the central figure. He
identified certain crucial areas on which he agreed with Karl Marx: the task of philosophy is
to transform the world; there is conflict between class and class; private ownership of
property begets sorrow and exploitation; and good society requires that private property be
collectivized.

He found that on all these four issues Buddha is in agreement with Marx. He, however,
rejected the inevitability of socialism, the economic interpretation of history, the thesis on the
pauperization of the proletariat, dictatorship of the proletariat, withering away of the state and
the strategy of violence as a means of seize power.

He felt that the Buddhism, which called for self-control and a moral foundation for society,
could provide the missing dimensions for a socialist project and for the purpose, called for a
dialogue between Marxism and Buddhism. Therefore, while liberal and modernist alliances
of Buddhism were taking place elsewhere, Ambedkar wanted to relocate Buddhism in the
trajectory of Marxism and vice versa.

Religion:

A large part of Ambedkar‘s writings had a direct bearing on Hinduism, most of which
remained unpublished and in the initial draft form during his lifetime. In these studies, which
he undertook mainly from the second half of the 1940s, Ambedkar argued that Buddhism,
which attempted to found society on the basis of reason and morality, was a major revolution,
both social and ideological, against the degeneration of the Aryan society.

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It condemned the varna system and gave hope to the poor, the exploited and the women. It
rallied against sacrifices, priestcraft and superstition. The Buddhist Sangha became the
platform for the movement towards empowering and ennobling the common man.

However, Brahminism struck back against the revolution through the counter-revolution
launched by Pushyamitra. Here, Ambedkar deployed a specific terminology employed to
explain mainstream European transitions of nineteenth and twentieth centuries and he felt that
the corresponding explanation was appropriate for India too, although the periods in question
were wide apart.

Caste:

Ambedkar‘s understanding of caste and the caste system underwent certain significant
changes over the period of his writings. Initially, he had argued that the characteristic of caste
was endogamy, super-imposed by exogamy in a shared cultural ambience. He suggested that
evils such as sati, child marriage and prohibition on widow remarriage were the outcome of
caste.

He also found that the caste name is an important feature, which keeps inequality in the
normative anchor of the caste system. Graded inequality restricts the reach of equality to
members of the caste at the most. Ambedkar thought that caste is an essential feature of the
Hindu religion.

Although a few reformers may have denounced it, for the vast majority of Hindus breaking
the codes of caste in a clear violation of deeply held religious beliefs. He found Gandhi
subscribing to caste initially and later opposing it but upholding varna instead. Gandhi‘s
conception of varna is the same as that of caste, that is, assigning social agents on the basis of
birth, rather than worth.

It led to upholding graded inequality and the denial of freedom and equality, social relations
that cannot beget community bonds. The solution that Ambedkar proposed was the
annihilation of caste. He suggested inter-caste marriage and inter-dinning for the purpose
although the latter by itself is too weak to forge any enduring bonds.

Untouchability:

Ambedkar‘s engagement with untouchability, as a researcher, intel­lectual and activist, is

much more nuanced, hesitant but intimate as compared to his viewpoint on caste, where he is

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prepared to offer stronger judgements and proffer solutions. However, with untouchability,
there is often a failure of words. Grief is merged with anger.

Identity:

As in the case of the untouchables, Ambedkar attempted to construct a separate identity of

Shudras as well and this too during the second half of the 1940s. He identified himself with
the non-Brahmins and attempted to build a non-Aryan Naga identity ascribing to it the signal
achievements of Indian civilization. He also proposed to write on the clash of the Aryans and
the Nagas much more elaborately than he was to do. However, his explo-ration of the Naga
identity remained quite thin.

Economy:

Unlike in the domain of politics and religion, Ambedkar‘s inter­vention in relation to

economic thought and issues was intermittent though persistent over a long period. For his
Master‘s at Columbia University, Ambedkar wrote a lengthy dissertation, which he did not
eventually submit. It was entitled as Ancient Indian Commerce and included three fascinating
chapters, viz., ―Commercial Relations of India with the Middle East‘,

‗Commercial Relations of India in the Middle Ages‘, and ‗India on the Eve of the Crown
Government‘. It projected India as a land, which has deep and varied ties with other countries
based on the nature of its economy. He portrayed very vividly the exploitative nature of the
Company‘s rule in India. In The Administration and Finance of East India Company,
Ambedkar provided a lucid account of the organization of the East India Company, its
sources of revenue and items of expenditure upto 1857.

Colonialism and Nationalism:

Ambedkar‘s critique of colonialism ranges across a whole spectrum from the economy to the
nature of the colonial discourse. In terms of the later, Ambedkar demanded that the terms of
the discourse be altered. He had no defence to offer in favour of colonialism but he did not
want power to go to those who would not promote partisan ends in the name of the people.

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Ambedkar‘s considered judgment was that colonialism benefited the untouchables least,
except for the rule of law which it inaugurated, allowing some space for them. He insisted on
a responsible and accountable government based upon adult franchise, and was one of the
first top rung leaders in India to demand universal adult franchise early on in his submission
before the Simon Commission, in the strongest possible terms.

Constitutional Democracy:

The major area of Ambedkar‘s work was on constitutional democracy. He was adept at
interpreting different constitutions of the world, particularly those that mattered insofar as
they were committed to democracy, along with their constitutional develop-ments. This
becomes obvious if we note the references that he adduces to the different constitutions, in
the debates of the Constituent Assembly.

Governance:

One of the issues that Ambedkar paid close attention to was power and governance. He
thought that governance must reflect socio-logical reality as closely as possible lest those
wielding power to their advantage suppress the excluded groups.

Ambedkar spent a great deal of his time and energy in advancing proposals for the purpose
stressing the need to respect justice and equity. While he was opposed to overrepresentation
to Muslims as expressed in the constitutional reforms of 1909, he did not accept that minority
representation should be exactly in proportion to its population.

He engaged in more rigorous study of Christianity in India than of Islam. He rejected

Gandhi‘s opposition to conversion but felt that, given its resources, Chris­tianity should have
attracted more converts but it had not due to its own inadequacies.

Disadvantaged and Supportive Polity:

Ambedkar made two major contributions in terms of evolving a polity, which would extend
special considerations to the disadvan-taged. He was the first major theoretician in India who
argued that consideration for the disadvantaged should be the constitutive basis of the state.
He developed a complex set of criteria to determine disadvantaged and attempted to specify
its various gradations.

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His second contribution was to develop a system of safeguards for the disadvantaged in
general and the untouchables in particular, which could be enforceable, quantifiable and
accountable – a system that he evolved from early on but found its shape at the time of his
deputation before the Simon Commission.

Disadvantaged and Preferential Treatment:

There are diverse types of disadvantages that men and women suffer and a common yardstick
cannot be applied for their amelio-ration. However, there are common principles on the basis
of which ameliorative measures to handle disadvantages can be pursued. It is not enough that
equal resources and opportunities are assigned to people. Therefore, the disadvantaged need
to be extended certain preferences that result in giving a fair opportunity to them.

Concept of Exploitation:

For Ambedkar, economic exploitation was a major issue to contend against. It explains his
life-long critical engagement with Marxism. However, he felt that there are other sources of
exploi-tation and marginalization besides economic exploitation, which deprive people of
those basic goods indispensable for the consti-tution of a confident self, a life of a mutual
recognition and participation in collective affairs.

Reason, Rights and Identity:

Ambedkar argued that it was in modern era that human reason came into its own and
extricated itself from bonding with myths, customs and religious ideologies. There has been a
reversal of the relation between myths and traditions on one hand, and reason, on the other.
He saw freedom, equality and fraternity as essential conditions for a good life and argued that
they should be under-stood and pursued as one entity. It was only on their foundation that a
comprehensive regime of rights could be built.

Privileging Buddhism:

While Ambedkar acknowledged the possibility of diverse religious and moral standpoints
that were reasonable he did not see them as equally predisposed towards freedom, equality
and fraternity. Buddhism alone cherished such goals comprehensively and offered a
complementarity to freedom, equality and fraternity.

Pluralism and its Limits:

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Ambedkar felt that a liberal democracy has a natural tilt towards the culture and way of life
of the majority. It posits itself as the normal and the expected. If the political society is
relatively homogeneous, such a tendency may not provoke deep resentment, but in societies
which are culturally plural, it may spell doom for the identity of minorities. Therefore, it is
necessary that proper safeguards be provided for the expression of these identities.

Constitutionalism and Rule of Law:

Ambedkar felt that to sustain rights, to let identities thrive as well as make them respect
rights, to maintain an order favouring the disadvantaged and to facilitate a vibrant civil
society, constitutional order expressed in the rule of law becomes imperative.

Besides, given the size of dalits, low castes and disadvantaged in general, no political party
can afford to ignore the electoral dividends that Ambedkar as an ally can bestow. For the
state to sustain a modicum of hegemony Ambedkar has become an indis-pensable necessity
today

Medha Padkar

Medha Patkar was born as Medha Khanolkar on 01 Dec 1954 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, the
daughter of Vasant Khanolkar, a freedom fighter and labour union leader, [5] and his wife
Indumati Khanolkar, a gazetted officer in the Post and Telegraphs department. [6] She has one
brother, Mahesh Khanolkar, an architect.

Medha Khanolkar earned an MA in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Career as activist

Medha patkar worked with voluntary organisations in Mumbai's slums for 5 years and tribal
districts of North-East districts of Gujarat for 3 years. She worked as a member of faculty at
Tata Institute of Social Sciences but left her position to take up the field work. She was a PhD
scholar at TISS, studying Economics development and its impact on traditional
societies.After working up to M.Phil level she left her unfinished PhD when she became
immersed in her work with the tribal and Peasant communities in the Narmada valley spread
over three states.

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Narmada Bachao Andolan

Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) is a social movement protesting against the dam on river
Narmada which began in 1985 consisting of adivasis, farmers, fish workers, labourers and
others in the Narmada valley along with the intellectuals including environmentalists, human
rights activists, Scientists, academicians, artists who stand for just and sustainable
development. Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat is one of the biggest dams on Narmada where
the non-violent people's struggle has questioned social and environmental costs,
undemocratic planning and unjust distribution of benefits. The struggle is still on in the
Sardar Sarovar affected areas and also other large and medium dams on Narmada and its
tributaries. It has led to thousands of project affected families receiving land based
rehabilitation and continues to fight against submergence and displacement without
rehabilitation of more than 40,000 families residing in this submergence area of Sardar
Sarovar till date. Many of its claims and critique on economic, social and environmental
aspects of Sardar Sarovar and Narmada valley development project stand vindicated today.
Patkar has also questioned the wisdom of the currently popular developmental strategy of
linking rivers in India as a means to address issues of water shortage. [7]

NBA has been running JEEVANSHALAS- schools of life, since 1992 with about 5,000
students having passed out and many graduated. Tens of them are under training in athletics
and some have won many awards. NBA also successfully established and managed two
micro hydral projects which got submerged due to SS dam. It has been working in many
sectors over last 30 years including health, employment guarantee, Right to Food and PDS,
rehabilitation and environment protection.

Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan

It is a struggle for housing rights in Mumbai, started in 2005 and continues to fight for rights
of slum-dwellers and those cheated by the builders in various rehabilitation and re-
development projects. It all began when the government of Maharashtra demolished 75,000
houses of the poor in 2005, against its own promises before election. Strong people's
movement was founded by Medha Patkar and others when she gave the slogan in a large
public meeting at Azaad Maidaan Mumbai. It was through mass action that the communities
were re-built on the same sites and continue to assert and attain their right to shelter, water,
electricity, sanitation and livelihood. As members of working class GBGBA respects the

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slum-dwellers for contribution to the life of the city and involves them in equitable and
inclusive planning for urban development.

National Alliance of People's Movements

The National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) is an alliance of people's movements

in India, with the stated aim of working on a range of issues related to socio-economic
justice, political justice and equity.[8] Medha Patkar founded the National Alliance of People's
Movements with the objective of "facilitating unity and providing strength to peoples'
movements in India, fighting against oppression, further questioning the current development
model so as to work towards a just alternative". She is the national convener of the NAPM.

Tata Nano Plant Singur

Tata Motors started constructing a factory to manufacture their $2,500 car, the Tata Nano at
Singur.[10] She protested against the setting up of the plant at Singur, West Bengal. Patkar's
convoy was assaulted, allegedly by CPI(M) activists, at Kapaseberia in East
Midnapore district while on her way to strife-torn Nandigram.[11] At the height of the
agitation, Ratan Tata had made remarks questioning the source of funds of the agitators. [12] In
October 2008 Tata announced that the factory would not be completed and that the
production of the Nano will be set up in Sanand, Gujarat.

Nandigram land grab resistance (2007)

She participated in and initiated various supportive actions including a fast during Diwali in
Kolkata, Mass-mobilisation, complaints at various national fora and building support of
intellectuals and various citizens across the country. The battle was ultimately won in favour
of the local people who had to lay their lives in large numbers during State Violence

Lavasa

Lavasa is a project by Hindustan Construction Corporation, in Maharashtra. It is a yet-to be

completed city. Lavasa Project is criticised by P. Sainath for unjust use of water in a worst hit
farmer suicide state.[13] Medha Patkar with villagers of Lavasa protested for the
environmental damage in Nagpur.[ She also filed a PIL in Supreme Court against the Lavasa
project.

Golibar Demolition

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A demolition took place on 2 and 3 April 2013 in the Golibar area, Mumbai, Maharashtra
evicting 43 houses and displacing more than 200 people. the whole project is to displace
thousands of families and 50–100 years old communities that are demanding in-situ and
participatory housing rights. Medha Patkar with more than 500 slum dwellers set on
indefinite fast to protest against any further demolition until the inquiry into the matter is
completed.[15] Patkar has alleged corruption and "atrocities" by builders in the city's slum
rehabilitation scheme, and called for the halting of six projects by the Slum Rehabilitation
Authority, until a proper inquiry is conducted. The inquiry was conducted giving partial
solutions hence communities continue with their struggle. [

Save Sugar-Cooperatives Mission

To save Sugar-Cooperative sector in Maharashtra from falling into the hands of politicians
including tens of ministers in the Maharashtra cabinet till 2014, Medha Patkar organised
protests. She explained that "the politicians are interested in the prime plots of land, old
equipment and machinery," of sugar co-operatives and accused the state government of
selling assets of industry at throw away rates. A case against Girna Sugar factory at
Malegaon, Nasik, Maharashtra and members of Chhagan Bhujbal Family pending before the
Supreme court of India and the unused land of the factory is re-occupied and cultivated by the
local farmers who were the donors of the cooperative that was privatized by the former
minister purchasing it at throw away price. [17]

Hiranandani land scam

Medha Patkar along with other activists registered PIL in the High Court of Mumbai, alleging
violations by property tycoon Niranjan Hiranandani in building luxury flats instead of
affordable houses. Hiranandani had signed a lease for the 230 acres of land in 1986 at rate of
Re 1 per hectare in a tripartite agreement with the state and Mumbai Metropolitan Region
Development Authority.[18] Responding to PIL Maharashtra High Court judges says that" we
appreciate the elegance of the construction and the intent on creating an architecture marvel
for the city of Mumbai, we see the specific intent of wholly ignoring the most vital, and
perhaps the only, condition in tripartite agreement (to create affordable houses of 40 and 80
sq m)".[19] If calculated according to the current market price, the quantum of the scam will
be around Rs. 450 billion.[20] The judgement of 2012 directed Hirandani to build 3,144
houses for the low income groups before any other construction at Hirandani gardens which
is yet to happen. The case is at the stage of final hearing at HC of Mumbai.

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Kovvada Nuclear project

Patkar expressed a strong opposition to the land acquisition in Kovvada of Ranasthalam

mandal in Srikakulam district, Andhra Pradesh saying that the nuclear plant would be a
disaster for ecology as well as people of region. [21]

Career in politics

It is in January 2004 during the World Social Forum held in Mumbai. Medha Patkar and
other members of National Alliance of People's Movement initiated a Political Party 'People's
Political Front [22]' also called as 'Lok Rajniti Manch'. However Medha did not participated as
an active Politician, but adhere herself in creating an atmosphere and environment by
organising a Fifteen Days Maharashtra State level Campaign. She was accompanied with two
young activists, Maju Warghese and Journalist jaspal Singh Naol (Jal). Meetings were
organised under her leadership in each district of Maharashtra. Most of the Members had
asked Patkar to stand for Election, but she denied.

It is January 2014, Medha Patkar joined the Aam Aadmi Party, a political party led by Arvind
Kejriwal. She and her organisation, National Alliance of People's Movement, provided
support to the Aam Aadmi Party during the Lok Sabha campaign. [23]

Patkar also contested 2014 Lok Sabha election from the North East Mumbai constituency as
an Aam Aadmi Party candidate.[24] She lost, receiving 8.9%[25] of the vote cast in North East
Mumbai constituency, trailing at third position behind Kirit Somaiya (BJP candidate, winner)
and Sanjay Patil (NCP candidate). [26] She resigned from Aam Admi Party's primary
membership on 28 March 2015.[27]

It is in the year 2016 during the National Convention of National Alliance of People's
Movement held at Rashtriya Seva Dal, Pune. Dr Suresh Khairnar, General Secretary,
National Executive Committee, Rashtriya Seva Dal openly expressed that any Political
Organisation led by Medha Patkar will get full support from Rashtriya Seva Dal, but they will
limit support to her if the leader becomes a follower.

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