Upcoming Events

PRIA in partnership with Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) is organising a workshop on India’s Global Development Presence and Engagement of Indian Civil society on 31 May 2013 at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. During the past decade, India’s global presence is being acknowledged in various multi-lateral and bi-lateral global arenas. India is seen as the rapidly rising global power by virtue of being the largest democracy, having younger demographics and one of the top five economies of the world today. As a member of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Asian Development Bank, India has increased its stakes and influence following the global financial crisis of 2008. In new multi-lateral mechanisms like G20, IBSA and BRICS, India’s influence is being increasingly felt. Indian business enterprises (both public and private) have been expanding their presence around the world. Indian investment abroad in 2012 was higher than foreign investment in India. However, most Indian civil society organisations have largely remained domestically focused in their development efforts. A recent study on “Civil Society @ Crossroads” suggested that most Indian civil society actors have not come to terms with this changing global reality, except in respect of rapidly declining international funding for their domestic programmes. India’s official development cooperation also seems to have increased during the past decade. In order to streamline the growing programme of development cooperation, the Ministry of External affairs has created a separate unit Development Partnership Administration (DPA). Senior officials of DPA have shown an interest in interacting more regularly with Indian civil society organisations, especially those having experience in overseas programmes in developing countries. RIS (Research and Information System for Developing Countries) convened a meeting in January 2013 to explore this interaction between DPA and Indian civil society and academia. Following that meeting, a Forum for Indian Development Cooperation (FIDC) has been launched. The specific purposes of the workshop are: • To develop a deeper understanding of India’s global development footprints bilaterally and multi-laterally in G20, IBSA, BRICS, etc.; • To explore approaches and modalities of broad-based cooperation between Indian civil society and DPA; • To evolve a set of mechanisms that can support on-going and critical engagements of Indian civil society with India’s global influence in bi-lateral and multi-lateral fora.

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Background The concept and practice of participation has travelled a long distance, since its modest introduction to the development discourse. A lot has been learnt on participation from the practices of Civil Society Organisations and Voluntary Development Organisations over the last four decades. Reckoning with this practice based knowledge the governments, donors, corporations and other actors have also engaged in supporting and promoting participation. Notwithstanding that a lot has been achieved in institutionalisation of participation, still a lot has remained as rhetoric. In the decades of 70’s and 80’s much of the participation was expressed through many popular movements on the issues of environment and access to and control over natural resources like land, water, forests and other mineral resources, which was often called ‘popular participation’. The decades of 80’s and 90’s experienced the practice and discourse on participation in projects and programmes of the governments as well as those of international development agencies often implemented by the Voluntary Development Organisations. These decades also experienced engaged and vociferous advocacy by the practitioners of participation for the scaling up, mainstreaming and institutionalising participation in development policy, programmes and institutions. Since the middle of 90’s and throughout the last decade of 20th Century the discourses on governance, citizenship, civil society, and so on influenced the discourse on participation. Many practitioners viewed this as forward movement of the discourse on ‘participation in project’ to ‘participation in governance’. The introduction of decentralisation and revitalisation of local governance institutions deepened this discourse to a large extent. The first decade of the millennium experienced somewhat a ‘resurrection’ of the discourse on ‘deepening democracy’. The vitality of this discourse is of critical importance to the practitioners and advocates of citizen participation for a variety of reasons: First, the citizens are increasingly getting disillusioned with the institutions of representative democracy, particularly those which are represented by the political parties. These institutions are increasingly being viewed as unresponsive and incompetent to fulfil the aspirations of citizens. Second, in recent times, there has been an upsurge of ‘eruptions’ of citizen movements often supported by civil societies. As many public institutions are failing to ensure safety, security, justice and transparent and accountable governance, the citizens, particularly women, youth, dalits, tribals, are expressing their agony, frustrations, and anger through these ‘eruptions’ of movements. Third, a considerable number of citizens and civil societies, equipped with new information and awareness, are increasingly becoming vigilante of the state and private corporations. Democracy, according to them, is not only casting on the ballot once in five years, but it’s a 24x7 initiative. The realisation of citizenship rights and entitlements cannot be left to the state alone. The state and private corporations must be held accountable for their performance, conducts and outcomes. In light of this discourse, Logo Link - Learning Initiative on Citizen Participation in Local Governance has initiated the formulation of a “Global Charter on Right to Participation in Local Democracy”. It is envisaged that the Global Charter will enable deepening of citizen participation in local democracy by scaling-up, mainstreaming and institutionalising citizen participation in all spheres of democratic governance. The preparation of Global Charter will catalyse numerous deliberations involving a range of stakeholders – citizen leaders, practitioners, civil society organisations, policy makers, elected representatives, media, academia, and so on. This will act as bridging initiative between civil society, local, sub-national and national governments, political society, private sector, bilateral and multilateral institutions and other stakeholders.   Logo Link is a global network of practitioners from civil society organisations, research institutions and governments created to stimulate and support civil society organisations and networks to engage in citizen participation and social control of public policies at the local level. During its 10-year existence, it has contributed to the achievement and consolidation of citizen participation and social control in processes and in public institutions (www.logolink.org). The Consultation With this backdrop, PRIA (India), Wave Foundation (Bangladesh) and Logo Link –jointly announce the “Consultation on Right to Participation in Local Democracy” to be held on 6 June 2013 at Dhaka. It is expected that the Consultation will explore answers to various complex issues and questions including: What is the meaning of real participation and why is it important to local democracy? What motivates citizens and civil society to participate? What are the pre-conditions of authentic participation? Where are the spaces for participation? How are the voices of marginalised women, youth and other excluded incorporated in the local democratic processes? The consultation will provide a platform to civil society, activists, and citizen leader’s to share their experiences and insights to the critical issues and challenges of citizen participation.

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Organised by The EU Centre at RMIT and hosted by The Hong Kong Institute of Education, the 11th PASCAL International Observatory Conference will take place in Hong Kong, 18-20 November 2013 with fieldwork to test approaches in different Hong Kong settings on 19 November Cities Learning Together - Local Communities in the Sustainable and Healthy Learning City Can integrated effort and partnership within and between sectors, organisations and urban centres lead to a viable and sustainable future for the urban majority who now inhabit the planet? How can city administrations, voluntary bodies, business and universities work together to overcome the multiple crises facing us and develop healthy cities that can survive and self-improve? Does city learning really matter? How do cities really learn?  How can we create learning spaces and processes that encourage people to learn and plan consciously as groups linking up with other learner-actors across all sectors and institutions in the city?  How and where does devolution really work? How can local responsibility and wisdom be engaged to meet global and national ecological and economic priorities? How is high-level intent translated into practical action? What is the role of local communities and neighbourhoods in addressing the big issues confronting cities? These questions are vital to the health and survival of people in towns and cities -especially in the multiplying mega-cities growing up in all continents. Decades-old environmental and resource challenges now combine with persisting global financial and economic crises to make ‘the end of growth’ a new and fearful nightmare – acknowledged by some, denied by others. What do we mean by learning cities, community, and cross-sector partnership in this high-risk world? How to build futures for all that are economically viable, socially cohesive, culturally inclusive and environmentally constructive? Cities have become the primary site in which these challenges and the associated debates are being played out. In the emergent and powerful economies of East Asia, some world-leading cities seek solutions via new ‘learning city’ approaches; meanwhile in western economies some city leaders are looking beyond earlier learning city initiatives, recognising the importance of knowledge and capability in balancing economic and social goals with environmental protection. The Conference targets all city and business leaders, as well as non-government organisations and academics who believe that these are crucial issues for cities in the next twenty years.  

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