The following site visit report was prepared by Sukanya Bose after a visit to Navsarjan in mid-April. Sukanya is currently working with Eklavya in MP. She has been involved with the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha and other voluntary organizations in the past. She was also a coordinator of Asha-Stanford's Internship Program 2001.

Assessment:

The assessment of a programme on the basis of a two-day visit could turn out to be dangerously misleading and it is with a sense of trepidation that I put down my views. On several of the issues, the counterpoints were provided by LB and we debated the implications of certain aspects of the programme, which I hope would lend some character to the report and make it less judgmental.

If we look at the work of Navsarjan against the present socio-political landscape of the country and the recent occurrences in the state of Gujarat, its aims and achievements are noteworthy. It is anybody's guess (and everyone's apprehension) that the communal violence now plaguing the city of Ahmedabad will eventually spread to the hinterland, as the RSS organizational machinery increases its stranglehold. For a population denied of most service facilities associated with basic human rights, nursing a deep hurt on the issue of displacement, and therefore highly vulnerable could be an easy target for RSS. This phenomenon is being observed in several other parts of the country. In fact in the city of Ahmedabad there were many reports to say that the dalits are at the forefront of the killing. Navsarjan I would say has its politics right - the effort of Navsarjan could be seen as an effective means of preventing co-option of the tribals by fundamentalist forces.

Unification of the tribals around the question of tribal identity is another positive aspect of the programme. It is true that the question of identity and differentiation is a very complex one and it is a path that one must tread carefully. Among all the aspects of the programme, this is the one that requires a great deal of mature and sensitive handling, which I hope the people in the organization will be able to maintain.

After the amendments to the Panchyati Raj Act, several NGOs are working with Panchayats in order to enable them to translate the legislation on paper to practice. The work of Navsarjan is a variation on the theme in that they are building these alternate organizational structures to which there is open admission through memberships. Locally, I would say, the effect would be the same as what several other NGOs who are working with Panchayats have achieved. But what is new to the approach is the larger politics of unification of tribals and building up a collective identity as also the building up of a collective force that can put forth their demands much more forcefully.

The functioning of the organization, both of us noted, is democratic. The people in the field are not in awe of Stanny and there is comfortable and easy relationship across staff members. The amount of work that they are able to achieve with the lean staff strength is amazing. The work culture is obviously something that we could learn a great deal from and probably that is the reason Navsarjan is unwilling to increase its staff strength. The staff that we met is superb in terms of both confidence and efficiency.

There is an amount of discontinuity, which should not be interpreted as a lack of harmony, between the legal aids programme and the PO programme though both are very important in their own right. The legal aid and awareness programme has a well-defined, focused objective. The aim of the PO programme is linked to the ultimate objective of empowerment of the villagers through awareness, advice and training for which the Trust has created an elaborate organizational structure. As the two programmes have the same staff representation, there is an operational overlap. But to try to draw an extension of the legal aids programme to the PO programme (most of its documents put the story in that manner) appears forced and unnecessary.

Possibly it would be more useful to look at the PO programme vis-à-vis the panchayat programme in the village in relation to which its ultimate objectives can be evaluated. This is a space for contests and conflicts as much for persuasion as the PO members who constitute the Gram Sabha put pressure on the Panchayat and forces it to deliver. We realised only later that in putting us through its programmes, Navsarjan had given us a sense of the two prongs of its activities (legal aid and PO), which in a sense could be distinguished from each other. This had limited our time we had to learn and observe more about the scene at the panchayats. Of course I realise that it would have been difficult to put up a demo of the panchayat meetings! Possibly, the point I am trying to make is that the PO programme has to run on its own feet now and somewhere emerge from the shadows of its more lauded legal aid programme.

The project proposal put forth by Navsarjan would enable them to enrich and strengthen the PO programme by training the PO members, members of the Panchayat and their own staff members. In my assessment, the budget that Navsarjan has made is modest and without any sort of excesses.

What I would wish the Asha volunteers to consider is an additional allocation for documentation and resource material so that the training modules that the organization produces can be used by other organisations working on similar themes. There is need for greater exchange and sharing in a coordinated manner across NGOs in India. So production of a good training manual that might be priced and marketed would be a resource book with usefulness extending beyond the immediate application.