Sample – 1: Class Contradictions and NREGA:

Sociological theory would give you what are class contradictions, how they emerge in a society, how they sustain, how they create the corresponding class consciousness and how the class structure makes the dominant class manipulate power in a such a way that, class persists and perpetuates. Even though many people denies the existence of class as such, rather want to stick to the term status groups, there were prominent sociologists who spoke of the interrelationship between caste, class and power like Andre beteile.

Even though our research was not a sociological research, the evident class contradictions in the society drew us towards the subject. We wondered how true the sociologists were when they spoke of the dominant class and their mentality when we ourselves met these rural people. The class contradiction can be easily felt with their opinions over the MGNREGA in their region. We met nearly 200 MGNREGA workers in the Kolanalli Gram panchayat. For them the MGNREGA is a boon which has helped them to live a meaningful life. When we met the farmers, they were furious over the issue and didn’t spare the govt, as well as the manual labourers.

The Farmer’s point of view can be summed up as follows

1. Land labourers are lazy and they don’t want to do a tough job even if they are paid Rs. 200 a day.
2. Agriculture will die if the MGNREGA continues.
3. The govt. is using NREGA to decrease the profits of the farmers, there by making the farmers to sell their land to corporate in the future, by the way they are laying foundation for the corporate farming.
4. They actually pay more wages than the MGNREGA wage of Rs. 100 a day, but still the people do not have the attitude to work.

The workers points of view can be summed up as:

1. The farmers do not give more than Rs. 80 for most jobs.
2. There is no job for at least 5 months a year in the farm for all. 
3. As the marginal farmers also work in the large farmers field for lesser wage, the landless labourers who demand reasonable wage is ignored.
4. There are few old age people who are jobless for at least 8 months a year.
5. They say when there is work in the farm they will first go there and will come here only after finishing it.
6. The farmers select only young persons and persons with good physique to work in their farms and reject the others and hence many go jobless most of the time.
7. Farmers use insecticides and latest technologies as promoted by the agricultural board which in turn reduces the need for the manual labourers.

The striking feature is that the labourers come from nearly all the castes in the area. They jointly in a single voice abuse their own caste people, but here they see them as upper class; the owner class; the rich class, not their own caste people.

At least among the NREGA workers there is no distinction of caste evident, at least when they work. The class feeling asserts itself whenever their class is in threat. We can see the importance of the economic necessities of a man in decision making.

Sample – 1: Democracy : Theory and Practise:

What is democracy? Even a elementary school student would easily answer you as “It is a govt. by the people, for the people and of the people”. It is the most complicated answer but still presented in a simplified form. To me, the most simple but still powerful definition is “democracy is consensus”. As Earnest Barker (political scientist) has pointed out, the consensus should be there at all three levels – Basis level, the regime level, and at the policy level. Democratic institutions like elections, panchayats etc is a means by which consensus is obtained.

We, Indians believe we are the largest democracy of the world. But do our democratic institutions function as per the theory of democracy. To get answer of the Question, we met 2 ex- chairman of kodumudi union. (NOTE: During the time we visited the place, the place was undergoing a political turmoil as 2 of 6 ward members were kidnapped for political gains. There was no chairman at that time. To add to that, previous chairman also lost his elections in spite of spending (allegedly) Rs.1 Crore(during elections) for that small union itself.)

We met Mrs. Revathi Thangavel, ex-chairman (AIADMK Party) and got the PRI structure. The total kodumudi union consists of 10 Gram Panchayats (Kolathupalayam and kolanalli are also part of these) and 7 Town panchayats. Every person in a gram panchayat has 4 votes in PRIs (Panchayat raj Institutions). 1^st vote is to election the ward member of the gram panchayat, 2^nd vote is to elect the president of gram panchayat, 3^rd vote is to elect the ward member of Kodumudi union (middle tier of the 3 – tier PRI) (NOTE: These ward members in turn elect their Chairman), 4^th vote to elect the ward member of Erode district (Apex tier of the 3 – tier system) [NOTE: These ward members would in turn elect the district chairman.] {Other than that we also know that the same people has to vote to elect MLAs and MPs, so finally they have 6 votes to uphold democracy!!!}. Another information we got was political parties are not allowed in the gram panchayat level. Before explaining about the interaction we had with Mrs. Revathi thangavel, and with giving respect to all the people we met during the research, we have to say she was the best. She understood the questions very aptly ranging from political economy to grass root democracy, in the exact sense and gave the answers precisely and neatly. Persons who feel women are not suited for politics should reserve their opinions till they meet her. But the point which worried us was, even she had the class consciousness.

According to her, the people in the gram panchayats or union level or district level panchayats do not decide what kind of policies they want. They don’t decide polices regarding cultivation, agricultural technological necessities, about human development, education of children, kind of social security measures suited to their place etc. She accepts every region has its own subculture and practices and hence, decentralized way of administration would actually help to develop the human community in the particular region than any centralized concept. She accepts even they don’t try to get consensus among the people in local administration as well. They are just agents to implement the govt. Schemes like free overhead tanks, free toilets etc. When we enquired about the rationality of so many votes in the system (because despite casting 6 votes, the people of the region seldom participate in decision making) she accepted the fundamental flaws in the practice.

The main aim of the grass root democratic institutions and structures should not be representation, but participation. It should make people participate in the decision making. But it doesn’t work that way either. They don't even democratically decide how to spent the allocated money because of caste, class segregations. One group always tries to manipulate power on the other group and eventually they succeed, putting an end to the spirit of democracy. As told by a ward member, the main use of these 3-tier system is that, when people need a street light they meet gram president, when they need roads they meet union chairman and when they water in their canal they meet district chairman. That’s it. If that is the case the why should there be so much elected representatives. The people should decide about the type of street lights to be cast, where to be cast, design methods to improve electrical administration which benefits their society, rather than requesting their gram president to allot a street light via a petition. That can be done to a VAO itself. Why do we want a elected representative to do the work. If the policy makers think administrative failures can be negated by elected representatives, the govt. is wrong in such an assumption. These elected representatives with so many allegiance like towards their caste, political parties, class, are the worst performers than the administrative officers. The system makes them corrupt than the other way round. The thrust for power and the pride attached to it makes them indulge in cheap power politics rather than helping the real persons in need.

The reality is that these PRIs enables the political parties to solve their internal power politics. The local economic giants, who previously fought for MLA seats alone now settle with district chairman, union chairman posts etc. The party leaders also use this to satisfy the power thrust among their party cadres. Other than that there is literally no use in these PRIs, at least in the region of our research.

Sample – 1: Government Records about Kodumudi Union

When we decided to do a research and designed the first step to understand the society, we decided the government machinery should also come under our module of research. The Main reason for including the govt. Machinery also into the research module is because of our methodology ‘material dialectics’. Nothing should be read in isolation. The society is continuously influenced by govt. policies and schemes and the govt. policies and schemes also reflects (in fact should reflect) the peoples needs and aspirations. when we read the society we also read the associated change in the society; infact nothing can be read as a static entity in our methodology. Govt. machinery being one of the chief tool of such change, that has to be read. Also, we wanted to see whether such changes are planned, follows any logic or just institutional without any spirit.

We first went to the Block development office, kodumudi union and met the Assistant Block development officer there. First Let me sum up, what were the Questions asked by us, then I will give you the rationality behind the Questions along with the answers got (if any) from the officer in charge.

The important Questions which were asked were,

1. Do you maintain the people’s profile, like their job profiles, economic statistics etc?
2. What is the economic structure of the village concerned and the employment structure of the corresponding people?
3. How many land labourers, farmers, carpenters, barbers, small merchants, big merchants, intermediaries etc are present in the village?
4. What are the jobs of the people during different periods of the year?
5. What the peasants do when there is no work in their field?
6. What the labourers do when they have no agricultural work?
7. Do people migrate from our place to other place during any particular period of the year?
8. Do any set of people from some other district migrate to our place during any particular time of the year?
9. Do the village has any bonded labourers?
10. How many child laborers are there in the village?
11. How many children work without going to school?
12. How many beggars, differently-abled persons, sex workers, transgenders, destitutes are there in the village?
13. Does in any form Untouchability is practiced in the villages concerned?
14. Did the region witness any recent caste clashes?

I have listed only some important questions which were asked to the officer. Actually we asked more than 50 questions to the officer. First of all we have to commend the patience of the ABDO for listening to all our questions. He was a nice personality in the individual capacity. But in the official capacity, we have to say he aptly represented the office concerned, ie “ an empty vessel.”

Other than very few questions like caste fights etc. None of the questions was answered by the ABDO. He said that the office do not maintain these records and asked us the rationality of those questions. The rationality is the concept of development should be human development rather than just infrastructure development. We accept the importance of infrastructure and its potential to develop the human community, but wanted to see whether the concept of human development, the ultimate goal of development has penetrated to administrative wing in a simplified form. The Block development office, which function as the sole grass root department to implement the govt. policies should also have mechanism to provide the statistics of the grass root for effective policy formulations. Policy cannot be framed on vacuum. If you do not know how many people migrate to your place, in a particular of time how would you will provide civil amenities for their harmonious living? Even if the collector wants to promote a innovative idea of development it has to precede with datas. The ABDO said, we don’t work in that logic, we are just agents of the govt. machinery to implement some centralised govt. policies. He guided us that we could get some of these details from labour office, Erode and local police stations. He asked us to meet the agricultural officer to get details on agriculture. We met all the concerned persons of the above said departments and also many other department offices. Either they were very busy to contact or did not have any details we asked for. The Labor office in Erode, did not have even a smallest Labour details of the district. We were shocked to see that, but still they defended by saying “we are just agents to implement govt. policies, we are not statistical organisations to maintain those statistics”. One officer even argued that “what you are saying is census. We are just govt. office”. We disagreed and said census gives you exact details for some of the questions, but each office should have some approximate details for Implementing policies. Like, we can have the number of beggars in the village or union sorted into different categories VIZ category A ≤ 3 persons, category B ≤ 7 persons etc. This will be helpful to get the over all picture of the block and will be useful for govt. policies. The Labour officer asked us to refer the Human development report of TN, Economy survey of TN if published. He also said he is not actually aware of any such thing being published consistently every year as the union govt. does.

The Agricultural office also did not have any such details. we asked them about the prevailing rate of wages for weeding, planting etc. We also asked about the wholesale rates (market) and other intermediate rates of food items. They did not have any such recorded details and just gave the approximate rates from their own knowledge(at least they gave that)

Ok. Now lets sum up the govt. officer’s point of view. They are just public servants. They serve the public as told by their govt. executive (ministers of Govt. of TN). The govt. executes its policies and programs, which are framed not by administrative means but by political means. Political institutions functions in all the levels till the grass roots (Panchayats and Municipalities). They formulate the required policies of the people and is reflected as programs administered through these govt. officers. Hence, policies are made democratically they say, instead by administrative way. ok, even though there are many fundamental flaws in that argument, we accept it for the time being and lets see how the political institutions function in the next post.    

Sample 1: CHIEF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY – AGRICULTURE:

As we already saw, the chief economic activity of the people of Kolathupalayam and Kolanalli is agriculture. Once we understood that agriculture is the chief economic activity, we went to office of agriculture in Kodumudi union to get the necessary details. According to the agriculture office, 5 chief crops of kodimudi are 1. Turmeric (Manjal) 2. Sugarcane 3. Tapioca (Maravalli kilangu) 4. Banana 5. Paddy. There are 2 canals, whose water is majorly used for irrigation. One is Kalingarayan canal and the other one is canal from Bavani sagar dam.

Almost all the people earn their livelihood from agriculture in one way or other. When we interacted with the people we understood that most of the upper caste people invariably owned some land and the land labourers were of mostly dalits. But we have to say that even among upper castes there were poor land labourers.

The striking feature of kolathupalayam and Kolanalli gram panchayat were that we can easily feel stratification (class based) rather than hierarchy (caste based) in the society. The corresponding class consciousness can also be easily felt in the society.

We met the Assistant agricultural officer and enquired about the latest technologies introduced into the farming. Our questions where mainly focused on; what were the new technologies that was inducted in the region by the board? what are the schemes to support it? what is the mechanism for induction and feedback? and what was the overall reception among the public?

We found from the officer that some technologies like drip irrigation, new techniques like tissue culture in banana, have been given subsidies by the govt. to make the farmers use them. Especially for using drip irrigation, in case of small peasants 75% subsidies are given and for big farmers 65% subsidies are given. Many agents were recruited to spread the benefits of the new technologies and techniques to the peasants and farmers. Many farmers meeting are conducted, field demonstrations, university tours are arranged to spread the new ideas. At the same time, the officers of the Kodumudi agricultural office also attend workshops with scientists every 2 months to get updated and trained in new technologies and practices, so that they could teach the same to farmers under their Jurisdiction. According to the officer, the board is functioning well and most people welcome the technologies and techniques introduced by the office.

But when we met the farmers we got a slightly different picture. Farmers say many techniques do not work in their field and they are skeptical in using them. They feel that traditional practices yielded them more results than the new ones. They also blame the officer for their lack of timing in introduction of new techniques. They blame by saying that during the time of weeding the officers come with techniques of harvesting and vice-versa, which are not useful. Few young peasants admit that even though the new techniques are truly advantageous, it is hard to convince their parents to use it as their parents generally don’t believe in govt. officials!

 

Sample – 1: Kolathupalayam and Kolanalli (Kodumudi Union)

As we decided the first step is just understanding the society, we decided to go to a place which is very convenient to start with. One of our own teammate, Mr. Karthikeyan BABL, helped our cause and took us to his village Karattur which is in Kolathupalayam – gram Panchayat, Kodumudi – Union, Erode – district, Tamil Nadu state. Interestingly, we are starting from the place where Tamil Nadu’s greatest social reformer ended. We were very happy to start our maiden research, the research which we believe will take us close to our dream, from the land of Periyar.

After going round all the places, we finalised our sample region as Kolathupalayam gram Panchayat and Kolanalli gram Panchayat in Kodumudi Union. Kodumudi Union (see Map) consists of 10 gram Panchayats and 7 town Panchayats. For govt. records, we visited Kodumudi Union, Block development office, kodumudi union Agricultural development office and for some records we visited Erode – Labour office.

Our team consisted of myself and Mr. R. Dilip, MSW, a student of Madras school of social work(MSSW) and Mr. Karthikeyan BA.BL. Sincerely we thank on behalf of our team, all the friends of MR. Karthikeyan and all the other people who made our stay comfortable and our research possible. 

Philosophy of Human Being.

Who is a Human being? Why is he/she born in this world? What are his/her duties? These questions were tried to be answered ever since the man started to think! Different belief systems gave different answers, many culminated in the formation of religions and many others were the tools of the rationalist reformers of that times. These things were not just philosophies, but were the vision for the next generation. One such vision, a philosophy of human being that inspired people across centuries was that of Karl Max . Marx wrote in his doctoral thesis that “He who no longer finds pleasure in building the whole world with his own forces, in being a world creator instead of revolving forever inside his own skin, on him the spirit has spoken its anathema”. simply, Marx believed a human being should be a world creator.

Lets stop here and analyse the philosophy of Marx. Is really a man a should be a world creator? Is this the sole difference between human beings and other animals?

If we plainly see, we might be tempted to answer “NO”. We might substantiate by saying that “Man is Just a social animal. The difference between a man and other animals is his/her social consciousness ie, a consciousness that is developed by virtue of living in a society. That’s it”. Can we take this argument as a valid one? If we do, then how do the social forces work? Do the arbitrary actions of human beings structure themselves to form a social force or it is planned by some individuals? If we say, we don’t try to create the world we live in, it automatically means that social forces structure themselves naturally determined by some natural law. In that case what we do? We just live in the boundaries of some social structure which we haven’t formed and live under the whips and whims of some social web of forces which we didn’t design. Then what is the difference between us and animals in a zoo? OK, if we reconcile our earlier answer and now say, “I don’t create , but my forefathers did or my leaders do and I follow”, then again “what we do personally; just follow others as a flock of sheep? what else? again there is no difference between us and animals.

Honestly speaking, only this attitude; the attitude of shaping the world we live in; the attitude of creating our own social forces, designing our own social structures, attitude of creating a harmonious environment not just for us but also for the future society, MUST differentiate a man from animal. It is not how much you read; how much one earn; how well one perform; but how much zeal one has in him/her to create or contribute his part in creating a peaceful, harmonious poverty less world, makes one as a true human being.

IT IS NOT THE KNOWLEDGE BUT ATTITUDE DEFINES A MAN. 

Research Design

The research neither have a specific time span nor have a specific technique of data collection due to the broad topic of research – Eradication of poverty. We do not want to use methods derived by other social scientists blindly for our cause, but want to derive each and everything from the scratch for our convenience in a more user friendly and lucid manner to negate any built in errors. The method used by us to 'understand the world' is the same as used by Marx himself, “Material dialectics”(Marx uses the term scientific dialectics), though I am also a postmodern sometimes by heart(Might sound stupid as well). We also might use historical method to collect data but are not confined only to that. {Note: The term method, methodology has variety of meanings in social science literature(though specific at times) and is used in varying connotations here. The term method itself is used in different meanings across the passage}.

The total research can be divided into 4 phases.

1^st phase – Understand different societies and their interconnections and the forces emerging out of it.

2nd phase – Understand poverty and their nature in different societies.

3^rd phase – Find the reason for Poverty and the reason for its permanence

4^th phase – Find the way to eradicate poverty.

The First phase of the research module is divided into different broad systematic steps and they should follow the same order for the true progress.

Step 1: Understanding the society as it is by the negating the bookish knowledge and other preconceived notions we have about societies and its processes.

Step 2: Check the wholistic assumptions made in social sciences (like demand – supply dynamics in economics), in all social set ups, including and excluding places where different kind of discrimination is practiced.

Step 3: Check for the important interacting forces in all social set ups and their variations, their linkages, their base etc with out any previous bookish knowledge.

The above three steps though not exclusive compartments will give us an idea of the society we are living in, about the neighboring societies, the contradictions in each societies, contradictions created in the interaction of these societies etc. This will broadly give us an idea about these societies and their resultant social forces. Only after getting and analysing the above results the exact research design to find the nature and causes of poverty and can be formulated. Let us start from the scratch now.... learn all that matters as a real student of social change!!!

Introduction.... Lets start....

In every day life we see a lot of people living in streets, with torn clothes, begging with children in their hands, cleaning human toilets for their livelihood, living in roofless houses etc. We feel for them and give them 5 or 10 rupees or at the maximum donate some money to orphanages or some NGOs which takes care of the poor. All these are not happening only today, but ever since the recorded history began. Millions of such acts of philanthropy by millions of such altruists over centuries, have neither ended poverty nor equipped these people to counter poverty. In fact, poverty has not just sustained but has increased over the centuries!!!!

Why? What is the reason? If poverty is associated with only material conditions of human beings, then poverty should be ended by now. But it is not happening. Why?

What are the contradictions in these acts and other social, economic and political processes in the society which stops the above in becoming a reality? To eradicate poverty is it a prerequisite that the society should be devoid of contradictions? If yes, then is it possible to create a society which is devoid of creating contradictions through it's processes? If yes, then what is that society and how to create it? If no, then how to nullify the resultant contradictions in existing societies so that it do not create or sustain poverty? What are the required tools that has to be placed to negate such forces which create and sustain poverty?

We, a group of like minded individuals have set out to research on these contradictions. The project has a start date and does not have a end date!!!!!!! We will continue to research, understand the society as it is and try to find the contradictions prevailing in the social, economic and political processes of different societies and those contradictions which sustains poverty, as long as we find the reason for the same!!!! Reason and the solution is intertwined and as soon as we find the reason, the solution automatically establishes itself!!!! Might sound ambitious and unrealistic, but we are committed to give our heart and soul into the project and find a way which would help in the transformation of the society. We believe in Marx's words that ' He who no longer finds pleasure in building the world with his own forces, in being a world-creator instead of revolving forever inside his own skin, on him the spirit has spoken its anathema'(Karl Marx: Doctoral thesis).