Modern West and were alien to us. These efforts failed because our poverty and its causes have been captured from a position outside our ground and social realities.
I contend that our rich culture, traditions and norms can be perceived as 'backward', 'traditional', 'stagnant', and 'altogether lacking’ only if one looks at them through arrogant and dismissive Western lenses. I feel that our indigenous knowledge and cultural diversity is increasingly being pressurized as the process of modernization and development reaches every corner of our province and country. And, when we are cleverly instructed by the development agencies and their well-trained workers that we lack the ability to interact with each other, that we do not care for our collective future, that we are oblivious to our own problems, that we do not even care about our own children, I can only feel hurt.
On numerous occasions, my fellow community members (often labeled as ‘uneducated’) have shown superb analytical skills whilst discussing the inability of 'community workers' and 'development agencies' to identify the real issues confronting them. Also, as a community worker in many development schemes and as a participant in workshops and seminars, I have been stunned on innumerable occasions by the sophisticated manipulation and indoctrination of community participation approaches. These have led me to conclude that the staff of support organizations has undergone training which states that the western 'scientific' way of thinking is superior to that of any other tradition. I have hardly seen a cohesive framework being presented by the 'consultants' that addresses the process of 'learning how to learn from the communities'. There has never been any appreciation for indigenous knowledge and institutions that is combined with empathy and also encourages a provocative dialogue with the communities in search for better alternatives. On the contrary, I have seen these agencies and training efforts ultimately geared to serve the purpose of dependence and domination. I have been a spectator to misdirected priorities, misleading incentives, and a painful lack of awareness and knowledge of development experts regarding the inherent participatory spirit of our people. I have also been a witness to the lack of cooperation, mistrust, fears, jealousies, and lack of participation amongst those who are propagating participation as the decisive ingredient of development.
After undergoing years of this deceitful drive towards development, if we as communities are collectively participating in the rejection of this 'imported' model, it comes as no surprise to me. We had (and many of us still have) an inherent voluntary spirit of helping and supporting each other. As one of the oldest civilizations of the world, the people of Sindh have had systems and institutions that bred and protected communal cooperation and selflessness, and were gifted with cultural diversity, a wealth of vision, concepts, techniques, customs, rituals and practices. Therefore, the concern is not of community participation. The real question is why have our local sensitivities failed to feature as community participation practices in the 'modern' developmental effort?
Anyone who has studied this region or even lived in it for a brief time can identify that the ethos and essence of participation, cooperation and support is deeply rooted in its socio-cultural fabric. If we look at Sindh only, a vast canvas on which a vivid picture of collective communal values is depicted, from the ruins of Mohenjo-daro to the sand dune dwellers of Thar, there emerges a history of community commitment:
Hamarcho, (’Come together’) is a song that is sung at the crop harvesting and cutting time in Thar. All the menfolk of the village join together to help their fellow men in sowing and harvesting the crop. This is done voluntarily and a sense of helping the fellow villager is so strong that they, out of happiness, begin to sing the Hamarcho song.
If anybody dies, the whole community shares the immediate family’s grief and suffering and help them in all possible ways. According to tradition, the family in mourning does not cook food for three days and it becomes the social and moral responsibility of the community to provide for all needs of the family during this time.
When there is a marriage, the celebration of the event becomes the collective responsibility of the whole community. Puo (Nanuandra in Punjab) is a financial contribution by all community members to collectively share the expenditures of the marriage celebrations.
Wangar is a collective, voluntary act to take on a task for a community member, either by building his home, constructing a mosque/Imam Bargah, or digging watercourses etc.
Otaq in Sindh and Chopal in Punjab are the common communal meeting places where the village community sit together and enter into a participatory dialogue concerning their daily life and communal development. This forum acts as a court where minor and major feuds are settled with mutual consensus.
These are only a few examples of common voluntary and collective acts performed by the community. We used to embrace the concept of community participation at birth. Whenever a child was born, whether it be a boy or a girl, rejoicing took place in the family proportionately to its means. On the night after the birth, the mother's female relations assembled together, carrying a certain quantity of milk with them, paid her a visit reducing/eliminating any financial burden on the family. Also, it was a moment of the collective exultation and and inherent sharing spirit of the people of Sindh. The impression that we lack the will as well as the intellectual ability to help each other, comes as an insult to us. I believe we must pause and ask whether a society so traditionally and culturally immersed in community participation needs any 'strategic' initiation of the same? This is the time to realize that we are people who are at the verge of losing all this in the name of 'development', and ironically we have succumbed to the seductive slogans of 'community participation' and are proud 'partners' in this destructive drive.
We must understand that instead of working 'with us', most community participation practices have tended to work 'against us'. Instead of cultivating and reviving our local voluntary mechanisms, contemporary community participation practices have uprooted and alienated us from our own cultural diversity. Instead of making us self-reliant, community participation practices have made us believe that we are incapable of learning anything - that we are sick, lazy, and unproductive - that if we are to be 'successful' and 'developed' we will have to be 'submissive' to western culture and its definition of 'development'.
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