Author:
www.irejectTINA.all
Visualising a new development paradigm
This piece is derived from the talk given by Dr Rajesh Tandon at trialogue 2047 - Transforming the Development Paradigm. The talk was organized by Development Alternatives in partnership with Heinrich Boll Stiftung on September 11, 2014 at Development Alternatives World Headquarters, New Delhi.
Close your eyes and picture my image of India on 9/11 2047.
A classroom in the Tara Institute of Local Knowledge set up by Development Alternatives in Orccha, Uttar Pradesh. Fifty students from twenty countries have just finished a course on music and musicology. They learnt from a professor who is a local folk artiste residing in the area.
Today, the students graduate. They await the guest of honour, who is the local panchayat elected representative, a woman. She begins her speech to the graduating class, by asking two questions:
Not all the students could correctly identify their national leaders, but all knew the name of the local community leader. The GDPs of their respective countries varied between 0.3% and 0.1%.
Commencement speech over, the students ate a meal which had been slowly cooked over five hours by male cooks. The entire meal had been prepared with materials locally sourced from no further than a 50 km radius.
After the hearty meal, in the evening, the students gathered in the open air to connect with other communities through a soul-connection, one in which each spoke his or her mother tongue and yet was understood, because the universal language was one of solidarity and camaraderie.
This story gives us optimism. It shows us a glimpse of a transformation where local strengths are going to be recognised, where educational institutions catering to global students set the agenda based on local knowledge systems. The craftsperson, the farmer, the folk artiste are professors on the same scale as the holders of PhDs. The world we want (www) should reject the notion that There Is No Alternative (TINA) to the current market-driven development paradigm in this country. Connections are not for commerce (.coms) but to foster inclusion (.all).
Can this become reality? What pathway will take us here? My story will be the destination when multiple sites, multiple nodes and multiple institutions are networked, all working towards a shared vision. When science and technology works for society and in society to help society. When the knowledge economy makes way for knowledge democracy to build a knowledge society.
I am an eternal optimist. I believe the world we leave our children will be better than the one we are living in currently. We can do this when each of us becomes an engaged citizen, of our countries and the world. We need to grow beyond vertical citizenship, conferred to us by the state, reduced to a vote. We need to foster horizontal citizenship â a shared feeling of solidarity and camaraderie between families, neighbours, communities and regions.
Without values and ethics, without camaraderie, we will not be able to create a âsoul spaceâ of networked individuals and institutions which communicate. It is possible â all it requires is 1.25 billion Indians and 7 billion in the world to make this change.
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