Date
01-Dec-2011 to 02-Dec-2011 		Location
PRIA, New Delhi		 Format
International

The first Advisory Board Meeting in conjunction with the CORE Steering Committee Meeting II was held in New Delhi on 1 and 2 December 2011. The two day interaction with the advisory and steering committees included “reflections from the field”.

CORE project partners shared field work plans and a round of updates from the preliminary field work. The field reflections focused on the voices/perspective from the grassroots. This provided a good opportunity to understand the differences between the European and Indian case studies.

The European cases showed an emerging political economy of violence linked to a wide array of shadow economies. The studies here focus on identifying indigenous forms of peacebuilding and if at all they contribute to peace. The Indian case studies showcased the everydayness and militarized existence of people. An important question raised by the Indian partners was whether governance notions are being created with prior knowledge of peace. Another interesting aspect opened for discussion was on development programmes as being both creators and contributors of conflict.

Under the study research is being carried out on the following case studies:

S.No

Partner organization name

Acronym

 Case Study

   1

International Peace Research Institute,
Oslo (Coordinator)

PRIO

 

  2

Berghof Research Centre for Conflict
Management  (Thematic Analysis)

BCR

 

  3

University of St. Andrews

USTAN

Cyprus

  4

Institute for International Affairs

IAI

Georgia

5

Central European University

CEU

Bosnia-Herzegovina

6

University of Delhi

DU

Kashmir and Ladakh

7

Jawaharlal Nehru University

JNU

Bihar and Jharkhand

8

Malaviya Centre for Peace Research, Benares Hindu University

BHU

Meghalaya

9

Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group

MCRG

North Eastern states of India and the state of Bihar

10

Society for Participatory Research in  Asia

PRIA

Jammu and Kashmir

 

PRIA’s presentation of preliminary field visits to Jammu and Kashmir reflected on the intended and unintended impact of conflict on the lives of local people in the state. The first strand of the research focused on elections and electoral politics in Jammu and Kashmir. The team visited Kashmir in the months of October and November and met with 46 Sarpanch and Panch (women elected representatives included). As part of the study the team visited districts Anantnag, Budgam, Ganderbal, Kupwara and Baramullah and interacted with multiple stakeholders i.e. the community, elected representatives within the village, district level officials, and political leadership.The team mapped dialogic encounters between multiple stakeholders, i.e., at the community level, elected representatives from the villages, district level implementing agencies and the political leadership. The team deliberately selected villages that were close to the block headquarters as these were likely to be the ones where outreach and interaction with district officials might have taken place. Some of the villages visited were classified as backward and others that appeared backward but were not classified as such.

The team conducted research around mapping people’s hopes, expectations and challenges using participatory methodology. Research methodologies were used as per the situation, at times discussions with individuals and at times organized focus group discussions, informal discussions in paddy fields, saffron fields were really useful.  At times focus group discussion’s yielded important results as also helped save time and gave insight into issues. Sometimes the team stopped randomly and talked to those attending to their saffron fields or their paddy crop as this was the harvest season. These conversations were conducted without prior knowledge of whose political affiliation was with which party and no attempt was made to select people with any particular political affiliation or those with no political affiliation. While approaching farmers in the field the researchers used the fact that it was harvest season to start a conversation around it and then moved to developmental issues. This was helpful as at times even the local field worker did not know the farmers. Initially some of the people were reluctant to talk but slowly everyone got talking. The methodology applied throughout was free-wheeling questions along with the technique of participant-observation, videography, recording people’s expressions, and body language. What came across through these discussions and conversations was that the district authorities were feeling threatened with the new power equations (which might be implemented) that they were creating rifts between the elected representatives.

The field findings suggest that as a result of the panchayat elections held in the state of Jammu and Kashmir there has been a rise in both people’s expectations and people’s frustrations. Initial findings show a need to create conversations between different stakeholders in order to address the dialogue and communication gap between the political leadership and the people. Respectful communication needs to be facilitated. The current arrogance and patronizing attitudes of the officials and their open disdain for “illiterate representatives” is only adding to the mistrust. These findings open up a window of opportunity to decode the conflict situation in Kashmir in light of the large-scale voter turnout in the 2011 panchayat elections.

A follow up meeting will be held in Varanasi in March 2012 to review further progress of the project.

CORE project partners and advisory board at the meeting

R to L: Oliver Richmond (USTAN), Rajesh Tandon (PRIA), J. Peter Burgess (PRIO), Jonas Grans (PRIO)

R to L: Peter R. DeSouza, Ranabir Samaddar (MCRG), Chaitanyakumar Bhatt

R to L: Hans – Joachim Giessmann (BCR), Anna Bernhard (BCR), Elena Stavrevska (CEU), Nona Mikhelidze (IAI), David Chandler, Imran Amin (JNU), Amit Prakash (JNU)

The meeting in progress