Effective Global Governance Structure impossible without NGOs

Historically, NGOs have been actively involved in global issue since 1919. The evolution of International Labor Organization was a combined effort of nongovernmental organizations, trade unions and business sectors. Participation of NGOs were crucial in shaping and evolving the UDHR, started a dialogue and discussion in international forum to create separate and effective institutional mechanism for children and women under the UN System. In the global governance, the role of NGOs has been recognized as an important player and valuable non state actors. 

There are many advantages of NGOs as important driving force to streamline global governance agenda and to deliver the global public goods. NGOs works as an informal organizational structure, which enables them to be creative in using information, attracting wider attention, building capacity of local community at grassroots level, identifying target intervention and implementation strategy and to combine all these aspect to build strong network, where information, advocacy and effective communication creates enabling environment for better governance. Decentralized and less bureaucratic structure distinguish the civil society from public and private sectors.

NGOs have also experienced evolutionary changes and transformed their working style in last few decades.  John Clarks in his book, “World Apart” illustrates the progression as moving from a focus on ‘poor individuals to poor communities to poor societies’ to global governance. This is also important here to understand that each stage of progression of NGOs has been important part of development process. This has been recognized that NGOs has been involved in responding to humanitarian needs, building social infrastructure for local development, engage in advocacy for policy change and to empower the disadvantage community and civil society. Walter Powell called NGOs as ‘third mode of economic organization, which is different from market and hierarchal economic structure’.

The United Nations recognized that the rise of civil society is one of the historical events and global governance has not been sole domain of government. These days, NGOs and non state actors are prime movers as with issues of gender, climate change, human rights violence, debt related issue, landmines, HIV/AIDS. The core value of global governance and its global institutions is to provide good governance, which requires empowered citizenry and accountable government institutions at national and local level. The Civil Society organization leverages to improve the relationship between the local institutions and citizenry.  

The outreach area of NGOs and strong connection with common people help them to recognize the principled idea, norms to promote those causes to influence and to advocate the policy change. ‘Make a difference and transnational advocacy network’ helps the civil society organization to act together and build strong network at national and transnational level. The transnational advocacy networks provide an effective platform to NGOs to work together, work jointly to gather and share information, influence government to change the policy statement etc.  There are many instances, where NGOs has played significant role in changing behavior for social benefits of society and influence the policy making process to be more social sensitive. 

Civil Society organizations have used the informational politics to combat female circumcision, influence several government and administrators like George Bush to take preventive steps using land mines during war and internal conflict, Baby Food Campaign against Nestle, while symbolic politics of networks convinced the global institution, UN to declare Year of Indigenous People, Watergate issue to create awareness about political corruption, Vietnam War and used ‘naming and shaming’ campaign  against famous director Spielberg not to make documentary for human right repressive regime of Chinese Government. 

The leverage politics and accountability politics are another aspect of network, which brought down the financial institutions such as World Bank to introduce policy change and influenced Eastern European and Russian government to protect human rights. Technology, knowledge network, decentralization are major advantage of third sector and enable the civil society organization to be accountable and transparent in their working style. NGOs also enjoy credibility for its technical expertise, grassroots experiences and sound analysis.There are many weaknesses inherently presence in the NGOs and its network politics. NGOs are dependent on the financial resource on the funding agencies. A large number of funding agencies provide financial resources to NGOs with an objective to achieve its political agenda. 

The ‘rational irrationality’ approach of NGOs is a kind of collective action for collective goal, which help in building the common strategy of global governance to address the issue of human security in global policy agenda. NGOs provides abundance space for ‘policy entrepreneur’, such as Henry Dumont, Mohammed Yunus, whose idea has positively changed the lives of millions  and idea is being scaled up in other part of the world. 

Rethinking Poverty Alleviation: A ‘Poverties’ Approach

I have been trying to find real answer of following questions who has invented poverty? Who define poverty? And how poverty ridden groups or individuals feel about poverty? Poverty is neither an idea nor a substance but its presence in any idea and substance make the state of affair challenging. Recently, I went through quite insightful article entitled “Rethinking Poverty Alleviation: A “Poverties” Approach, written by Edward R Carr (http://www.edwardrcarr.com/index.html).

Defining poverty has been a matter of debate since the day the concept was identified in the human civilization. Although, the changes in understanding and dealing the poverty alleviation mechanism has somewhat made the concept lucid but has also opened many windows of opportunity to address the ‘causes of and solution to the challenges that threaten human well being.’ The article thoroughly objects the preconceived notions and its influence in defining, measuring and structuring poverty and poverty alleviation program. Although, the article decries about the poverty as singular universal problem and also rejects the idea of poverty alleviation program which are structured on this basis. The article considers that the main reason behind the failure of the “Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers” by the IMF and World Bank in 1999, was the approach and its implementation techniques. Treating the poverty as singular and universal problem was not a good approach and the economic orthodoxy of IMF and World Bank was unable to provide space to loan seeking nations to challenge them.

Despite the critical stand on poverty and poverty alleviation, the article somewhat has avoided accepting the fact of dealing poverty is not simply an easy issue or playing with jargon. This article asserts that the limitation in visioning poverty in the context of the practice of poverty alleviation unable to address the causes and challenges at the local. In reality, the poverty alleviation works under the top down paradigm rather integrating with the real causes of the poverty. This happens because the poverty is seen as singular, universal problem. The involvement of local knowledge and social participation is one of the important aspects to address this problem effectively, but learning shows that this initiative also faces challenge going beyond the advocacy parameter in poverty alleviation program.

Elaborated Essence:

Generally, the main thrust is to critically evaluate the preconceived notion and definition of poverty and how this notion and definition destroy the process of addressing poverty at local level with local strategy. The article underlines three ways under which the possibility to ensure the efficacy of poverty reduction intervention. Firstly, the contextual norms of understanding to deal with poverty should be integrated with the contemporary poverty reduction approach. Secondly, the causes of poverty are universally defined, which broadly structured the poverty alleviation approach, overlooking the local context is significant reason of failure in understanding the phenomenon of poverty. Finally, the potential of trade off and synergies disappears as the poverty is conceived as “singular problem with universal causes.” The author justifies the approach to reduce poverty should go beyond the singular conceptualization of poverty, and suggests that the “poverties” approach would allow us to rethink the development goals and its strategy, without disturbing the existing or ongoing efforts on the singular conceptualization. 

According to the article, the effort in defining and measuring poverty under the eight heading such as the sphere of concerns, definition at broader perspective, identification of its objective and subjective nature, justification in drawing poverty lines, units of measurement, dealing multidimensionality, time and causal explanation of poverty are also neither able to recognize the social participation (read local voice) nor able to conceive the poverty as ‘the product of locally unique problems’. The author shows his objection towards conceptualizing the poverty solution in broader perspective of the “growth” (Sach; 2005) or ‘access to capita’ (De Soto 200). However, he asserts that this nature of manifestation of poverty itself increases the chances of failure for the poverty reduction intervention at local level. 

He criticizes the sectoral approach of current poverty reduction intervention, in which, the issues of fertility, education, income and environmental quality mere a kind of manifestation of poverty. The article identifies the potential of the integrative approach as a best practice because one sector reform creates tension with the other sector as ‘education reform vs. market reform vs. environmental protection’. The lack of interlinkages with the different sectoral reforms creates more problem than solution in reducing poverty. The author lucidly asserts that ‘without addressing the local multidimensionality of what we call poverty, our intervention may cause more hardship than they alleviate’. 

    

The article cites the number of studies which identified the challenges related the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). The sheer objective of this initiative was to identify the diverse perspective in building project of poverty alleviation and development behest of the IMF and World Bank. However, the article agrees that the PRSPs were intended to underline the solution of poverty by either involving or identifying its local context through the ‘common sense’ application, besides this objective, the initiative was about to identify the alternative to the economic policies of the World Bank and IMF. Even the financial institutions studies show that the objective of PRSPs was not at all in practice at the national level discussion and in production of the paper. The article simply identifies that countries were not able to take risk of avoiding financial recourse to challenge the existing norms of the institutions. 

This is also to be noted here that the solution to address the poverty was largely evolved and developed away from the locality, where the project was meant to be implemented. Even the local partners (the national governments) did not want to disqualify for the debt relief and access to loan from these institutions. The motivation among the nations to submit the PRSPs was to demonstrate nation’s ability or need towards financial resources. However, the author blames that the economic orthodoxy of these institutions basically motivated nations to avoid challenging it in their nation’s PRPS. The article convincingly criticizes the PRSPs approach for encouraging Ghana to produce certain crops, which was conceived as incremental effects in increasing Ghana’s domestic food security and export earnings. 

However, this approach was unable to recognize the gender relationship in cropping the identified crop and also the power relationship in social context with the economic activities in Ghana. Resultantly, the approach yielded more harm than the poverty reduction at local level. Even land reform intervention in second phase of PRSPs in Ghana was miserably failed to integrate the real social issues in relation with the land holdings and its access among women in Ghana.

This article articulates the meaning of ‘poverty to poverties’ as a transformation in the process of conceptualizing the development and poverty. Broadly, the sectoral approach has been significantly underlined as result of the failure of the singular universal definition of poverty. This articulation embraces the idea of heterogeneity and diversity in the nature of poverty, which are seen as corrective step in measuring and identifying poverty. However, the article accepts that the transformative articulation is not mean to reject the idea of existing norms and measurements, but promotes this as an approach to overcome the existing limitations in dealing with development and poverty alleviation. 

Although, the author cautiously categories that the definitional and operationalization aspect of ‘poverties’ are not quite away from ‘poverty’, but an approach to recognize the localized version of challenges and solutions, which somewhat close to reality about the understanding and dealing poverty. He agrees that the localized version of poverty and its challenges in his argument as to reinforce the Chamber’s approach to examine ‘who defines problems and its solution? And who benefits from this definition?’ However, the author highlights the value of local knowledge and its application as an additional advantage in building viable strategy to deal the ‘poverties’ and this would generate a sense of belongingness with the local people and good for the general well being. 

Throughout the article emphasizes the concept of legitimacy and values. In the ‘poverties’ approach, the concept of legitimacy is seen as the combination of local knowledge and power structure, a critical force for the outcomes of any poverty alleviation intervention. Meanwhile, the challenge of generalization is treated an opportunity to facilitate the new framework, which would be able to reproduces PRSPs once again to guide the national development policy. However, the reproduction of PRSPs would not replicate the sectoral approach but focus to integrate the social, economic and environmental processes within the country, which contributes the well being outcomes. Secondly, the ‘poverties’ approach would orient the PRSPs to focus on the local strategies and their significance in dealing with the prevailing inequalities at local level. In last, the article rejects the process of identifying the broader indicators of development through the survey and baseline analysis, because this process of building indicators is also reinforced the poverty as singular universal problem.

Ideal Type:

The article aptly fit into the category of ‘ideal type’, which fascinates the interpretation of existing norms and values. In this article, the significance of locality and grassroots approach are presented as the last resort to address the poverty effectively. In fact, the article sees the concept of knowledge as a structured body not as process of continuous learning. The social participation is also the prototype of diversity and heterogeneity, but the challenge to build consensus among the group is also daunting task. 

Additionally, the article avoids accepting the inevitability of social change as potent force for expanding the local knowledge base. As the knowledge base is changed, the social structure is developed around the “mechanical solidarity”, which encourages the specialized set of information and practice in the society. In the contemporary society, the sectoral approach is also based on the previous learning from the poverty reduction program. The education reform enables the local to utilize the available resources effectively rather than starting conflict with market reform. Although, the conflict is also normal phenomenon even at the grassroots level, while the article projects the conflict as pathological subject. 

The subject of poverty has been critically developed in this article but, on the one hand, the article criticizes the role of powerful theories and institutions in spreading the preconceived notion of poverty and its approach, while on the other hand, the article itself recognizes the domination of power in Ghana’s social structure a reason of failure of PRSPs. The relationship between knowledge and power is unavoidable; therefore, the sectoral approach in dealing poverty is not simply avoiding the integrated mechanism but also addressing the issue of poverty as multidimensional and multidisciplinary.  

In Last:

The social participation and local knowledge do not exist as combined entity at local level. There are various dimensions within the social structure in locality. The failure of many approaches in reducing poverty is not merely a reason of avoiding the local knowledge and its participation but the nature of poverty itself a challenge since a long period of time. However, the poverty to poverties has also been recognized in many poverty reduction approaches, while the local level power holding and sharing is still a challenge for strengthening social participation at local level. In last, the substance in the article promotes new opportunity for advocacy and rights based approach to deal the poverty as the causal effect of failed policies and approaches. This correlates the power of social participation in strengthening the capacity of local institutions.

Shame on Shameful Violence

Violence has been depicted and described in many colors and formats. However, discussion on violence is important for making nonviolence more relevant and significant. I also believe that democracy flourishes not because of majority rules or majority dominates, but minority extends faith and confidence on representative system and redefine dominance being responsible and accountable!

·     Religion Based Violence:

The religion based violence is one of the worse forms of violence and also a violence of identity and politics. Historically, the culture components are designed and structured in such a manner that the religious values are attached with every component. In fact, religion based violence has been prevalent in almost every part of the world. The interesting point to understand that, this is not merely based on that one religious group is fighting against other. Even in the homogenous religious society, such as Pakistan, England, certain part of Middle Eastern countries, the different sects within the same religion fight to each other. In Pakistan, the dominant Sunni community fights against the minority Shiites community. In the same manner, the majority Hindu community fights against the Christian and Muslim in India.

The ethnic conflict in Africa and ongoing clash between the Tibetan and China is also a part of cultural aspect of religious violence. Huntington’s theory of Clash of Civilization significantly addressed the clash and conflict in the format of economic and cultural interest. According to Huntington that, ‘the global manifestation of the fundamental change in local and regional identities is the division of world into civilization’. However, he defines the religion based violence in the political context.

This is not fair to deny the political dimension in understanding the religion based violence in the society. There are many countries, where state is directly in confrontation on the basis of religious identities. For instance, ‘Lebanon (Christianity versus Islam), Israel (Judaism versus Islam), Sudan (Islam versus Christianity and African traditional religions), Sri Lanka (Buddhism versus Hinduism), Iran/Iraq (Shia Islam versus Sunni Islam), Afganistan (Islamic civil war), Yugoslavia (Christianity versus Islam), Cyprus (Christianity versus Islam), Ulster (Roman Catholic versus Protestant Christianity) and south-eastern Russia (Christianity versus Islam). This list could be extended further by including conflicts in which Christianity fights Communism, as well as in Kashmir, India and Pakistan (secular Hinduism versus Islam) where there have been three wars and continuing tensions’.

In the recent much talked about ‘war against terror’ is also being debated in the media and academic world, weather the involvement of the religion is the prime motivator or the terrorism is not at all religiously inspired? The religion based violence is one of the challenges for the world and also for the advocate of human rights.

·     Identity based Violence:

The violence against the tribal population and their exploitation also highlights the cultural pattern in violence mechanism. The Indigenous people in almost everywhere are not actively involved in decision making process. Resultantly, a group of legitimate citizens in the country have been systematically away from the development process. Again, the culture of industrialization and urbanization started with a promise to share the economic development with everyone. But, in many cases, the tribal and indigenous people of the country not only lost their land and identity but were forced to integrate with the new culture, which belong to the people of economically and socially dominant in the country.

Here, I would like to mention that there are many reports and documents, which shared shared and published by government and non-government organizations provide enough evidences, which show that the violation of indigenous and tribal people in India is widespread. In many states, the tribal people are either taking up arms or provides logistic and moral support for the arm struggle. The report mentions that ‘the increased armed conflicts as the Naxalites - the ultra left wing armed opposition groups - spread their activities.

  

As it considers that 21 out of 28 states of India are afflicted by armed conflicts. The seven North-Eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura have been afflicted by armed conflicts over demands for self-determination and autonomy. At least 13 other states - Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and West Bengal in mainland India were afflicted by the Naxalite conflict. With the exception of Jammu and Kashmir, conflicts in all other states involve indigenous peoples irrespective of whether the armed groups are led by indigenous peoples or non indigenous peoples like the Maoists’ leaders. There have been reports of serious human rights violations by the security forces and the armed opposition groups.

The conspicuous absence of women, tribal groups, marginalized section of society and other subordinated sections in the decision making process in many countries, this is not because these groups or sections are not interested but, the dominant groups are not either creating or providing space to them. The culture of fear and silence in the prevailing situation becomes the part of socialization process in such society.

Despite of these cultural barriers and stumbling blocks, there are many efforts and endeavors are going on to address the issues of violence and steps being taken in many countries to make the culture of preserving human rights to shun the violence against women, tribal communities and marginalized section of society. In last, the situation can be improved and transformed when a culture sensitive approach to development can itself become deterministic if policymakers do not integrate culture with other factors that influence identities, such as class, occupation, gender, location and politics (Sen 2004).

Un-Cultured Brightness in Violence Against Women and Castes

There are many examples of violence, which are based on the culture of dominance. I would like to share few, which I consider most heinous and most important for discussion and questioning its nature!

Violence against Women

The violence against women and girls is recognized as an epidemic in almost every countries in the world. The horrifying situation about the violence against women not merely affecting women physically, but the social and health consequences of violence against women is equally horrifying in the world. In 1994, the World Bank’s study based on ten risk factors facing women in this age group, rape and domestic violence rated higher than cancer, motor vehicle accidents, war and malaria. Moreover, several studies have revealed increasing links between violence against women and HIV/AIDS. Women who have experienced violence are at a higher risk of HIV infection: a survey among 1,366 South African women showed that women who were beaten by their partners were 48 percent more likely to be infected with HIV than those who were not. The violence against women is also a profound health problem, sapping women energy; injure women self confidence and self esteem.

The violence against women has been seen as the problem of sheer violation of human rights and also being considered as legal matter. But, the tentacle of culture, such as patriarchy, masculinity, gender, the idea about womanhood is significant in increasing the incidence of violence against women globally.  In fact, the magnitude of this problem is cultural and socialization. A man are born and brought up in a society, where man controls almost everything and the essence of ownership also replicated in the community and in the relationship. The violence against women does not confine in the marital relationship only. A report shows that at global level, there are ‘10% to over 50% of women report being hit or otherwise physically harmed by an intimate male partner at some point in their lives’.

The Violence against women and gender based violence is not simply a phenomenon of region, religion, least economically developed countries. This is prevalent in everywhere in the world. According to state statistics, about 18% of women are being sexually abused in the U.S. According to the UN Report on violence against women, ‘the condition in other developed countries such as Denmark, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom etc. is no better. In the U.S., the Department of Justice reported that, every year; 3-4 million women are battered by their husbands or partners.

Even in Sweden, which ranks high in the gender-related index, 66% of the 18650 reported cases of violence on women in 1996 were of domestic assault. Further 45% of 681 offences of homicide recorded in England and Wales in 1996 involved women killed by their spouses or lovers. On the other hand, the statistical data from the developing countries like Antigua, Barbados, Columbia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Sri Lanka and others reveals widespread prevalence of physical and sexual abuse on women.

In a study of 796 women from Japan carried out by Domestic Violence Group shows that 59% reported physical abuse, 66% emotional abuse and 60% reported sexual abuse. Studies from African countries, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania reveal that 42% women are subjected to physical abuse at their homes. In China, a conclusive evidence of wife battering has been reported among 57% women. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) do enforce certain special rights and privileges for women. But it is amazing that only 44 countries have laws against domestic violence. Only 17 countries have made marital rape a criminal offence & only 27 countries have passed laws on sexual harassment’.

Caste Based Violence:

This is another kind of violence, which is combined with culture, religion and demeans the humanity in India. This is not misleading to equate the violence based on caste is of the similar kind, which propagates violence against race. In both kind of violence is based on treating the human being in the concept of the purity and pollution.

India is highly stratified society and the caste system is based on three principles, such as ‘predetermined social, cultural and economic rights of each caste based on birth, the unequal and hierarchical division of these rights among the castes and provision of strong social ostracism supported by social and religious ideology to maintain the Hindu social order and the third prescribed the social mechanism’ (Caste Violence and Dalit Derivation in India- A Capability Approach, Venkatesh S).

The caste based violence is a normal cultural phenomenon in India. Despite of numerous legal measures to discourage this nature of violence, but the social norms and rules dominates in encouraging violent behavior towards the lower caste in India. The conflict between the lower and higher caste is not a new phenomenon. The massacre and killing of lower castes is regularly reported but the humiliation, social ostracism, social penalties, inhuman treatment are another dimension of violence which is based on the century old religious and culture aspect of the society.

Statistically, the magnitude of the caste based violence in India is presence in such a manner, which shows its presence in every aspect of social, economic, cultural spectrum of Indian society. There are almost half of the total number of lower castes (Dalits) do not have access the drinking water, around 33% government health official refuse to visit lower caste home for providing health services, 38% of lower caste children sit separately in the government school. Even in market based social development indicators, the lower castes are allowed to take the taste of fruit of development because widespread denial in the market places and not buying and selling product to them.

Despite of the constitutional provision to abolishing untouchability and discrimination against lower castes, around 64% of lower caste are not allowed to enter Hindu temple for performing the religious rites and in almost 50% Indian villages, the lower castes are prevented to access cremation ground. The crime against the lower castes is continuously taking place in India. According to the official crime statistics, According to official Indian crime statistics, averaged over the period 2001-2005, this has been recorded that, ‘27 atrocities against Dalits every day, 13 Dalits murdered every week, 5 Dalits’ homes or possessions burnt every week, 6 Dalits kidnapped or abducted every week, 3 Dalit women raped every day, 11 Dalits beaten every day, a crime committed against a Dalit every 18 minutes’ 

The culture of dominance and competition are manifested in the form of violation as well violation of human rights. In a survey conducted by BBC Pulse of Africa Survey in 2004, this shows that there is strong desire to preserve ethnic tradition with 78% in Kenya to 95% in Malawi. In this context, this neither pragmatic nor sensible to ignore the cultural views of the people, when the development polices and implementation is evolved in these countries and regions. Amartya Sen openly shares that ‘cultural influence can make a major difference of human behavior, which can be critical to economic successes’.

From Power Within to Inside the POWER !

I believe that power and dominance is also vital factor in defining and presenting culture in different perspective. The dichotomy between the defining culture and observing culture is political and modern concept. David Apter in his book, “Politics of Modernization” argues that the modernization was born in the West when the commercialization and industrialization was legitimately connected with the agenda of economic growth. The role allocation and role differentiation was considered the first step, which brought the concept close to the traditional institution and consciously started widening the gap between the individual and social organization.

Although, the theory of modernization does not recognized the importance of traditional institution but its adaptive qualities were seen as a force of modernity during the initial period of time. David Apter further argues that the success of modernization project depends upon the role of marginality, accessibility of innovative role and medium of mass communication.

In short, modernization needs people who are living in the social structure where order means to obey the customary laws. The marginalization is the potential ground to generate the support for modernization easily. The survival of the colonialism was hidden in its consciously directing process, which enabled the colonial power to redefine the capacity of ‘marginal man’ and allocation of new role within the traditional institution created new avenue for this process.

Denying the political agenda with economic pursuit would tantamount to reject the idea of power and dominance in cultural milieu in the human society. The most illustrated title “Black Man Burden”, in which the author, Basil Davidson critically develops his argument on the colonial efforts in building nation state and reshaping the cultural identity in Africa and outlines the unintended consequences of colonial interference in Africa.

Basil Davidson further blames the colonial powers are responsible for the present crisis of Africa and analogically describes the process of transition from Asante nation state to the Asante Empire State. He argues that the “party political” compartment of parliamentary structure encourages the politics of clientelism, which attempt to maximize accessibility to resource.  He also finds that the culture of clientelism and the legacy of the nation state are adequately responsible for the series of dictatorships and socio economic disorder in Africa. The colonial power evolved many institutions to serve their goal and economic objective. The limited involvement of African in the political and economic institution excluded them to experience the transition within them and also at society level. Despite of being independent states, many are still not able to address the issue of development, governance, democracy.

The presence of Europe rather colonial power, in Africa not merely disturbed the basic social structure but also developed new class in the society. This class was not limited in resource but limited in understanding the politics of development of the colonial power. Basil Davidson concludes in his book that “Kinship Corporation cannot produce a democratic state, whether or not they are disguised as political parties”. The collapse of social economic structure and mutual understanding between the ruling kinship corporations is consistently addressing the need of colonial powers. The nature of the nation state and absence of mass participation in Africa are seen as a major reason behind its backwardness. Justifying the reason of backwardness is almost rejecting the idea of nation state. The Black Man Burden is not an Africa’s problem but a state of mind, which promotes the universal clash between the given identity and acquired identity.

Conflict and violence is inevitably visible part of human society. When we examine the above exemplary explanation of Africa’s plight in Basil Davidson’s argument, we can easily fix up the culprit- the European Nations. This is one way to see the reason behind nourishment of conflict. There are many reasons, many permutation and combination work behind both popularizing the reasons and also explaining the truths. Conflict and its escalation demands and commands our attention, therefore, the Iceberg Model truly represent the idea of conflict and also it’s underneath causes. The underneath causes are clearly highlights the ways to understand the conflict in holistic manners and also broaden our understanding to perceive the relationship of power and dominance in the context of culture. The conflict and violence is also not free from the culture, because the human relationship is largely embedded in the culture. The question arises that is culture always a factor in every conflict? In a broader extent, the culture plays a significant role in both escalating and diminishing role in conflict and conflict like situation.

Culture is also potential source of power and exploitation, oppression and privilege, hierarchy and collectivism. The legacy of cultural dominance is visible in today how perception of individual and group is constructed, with different groups’ stands between the dominant and subjugated arena. Culture is also important component of human communication and interaction, which is also seen as a source of domination. Language shapes our understanding and also helps in maintaining and establishing social hierarchy.

The French Scholar, Pierre Bourdieu boldly claims that ‘all cultural symbols and practices, from artistic tastes, style in dress, eating habit to religion, science and philosophy, even language itself- embody interests and function to enhance social distinction. The struggle for social distinction, whatever is symbolic form, is a fundamental dimension of all social life’ (David Swartz; Culture and Power- The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu). The relationship between culture and violence is positively correlated but this does not mean that every culture promotes violence.

The presence of dominance and power breeds the causes of conflict and violence in any society. To understanding the nature of violence and conflict, we need to have cultural lens, but we also need to understand the spectrum of violence in the broader manner. Generally, the culture centric approach fuels the tendency of narrowness and makes the individual and group not to think beyond their own perceived idea of violence and conflict. Even the concept of violence means that there is physical hurt or physically molested. A different expression ranges from emotional and verbal abuse, racial discrimination, sexual discrimination.

There are many valid reasons behind the occurrence of violence and the culture of dominance play vital role in the reasons. The violence and violent like situation occurs in many ways, such as,

·         When the dominant groups take the advantage of legal or extra legal institutions to create boundaries of subjugation for the “other groups”

·         Prevalence of separate and unequal treatment, e.g., slavery, castes, sex, and age based segregation

·         When the dominant group try to erase other’s cultural or identity related boundaries and integrate subordinated group

·         Elimination of subordinate group erupts violence

In one of the paper (Culture, Violence, and Inequality; Yasmin Jiwani, Ph.D), “Culture Violence and Equality” this has been acknowledged that ‘Violence is about power-the power to control, subjugate and dominate others, and to violate their dignity, integrity, and sovereignty. It is the power to deny a people or a group the right to exist as they wish and to oppress them. This is the same violence that we see enacted within the context of gender relations, intra-nation relations (between groups within a nation), and international relations between countries. What signifies violence in these contexts is the power of one party over another. That power can take a discursive form (through the use of verbal threats, sanctions) or it can manifest in armed conflict and war. Those who are most vulnerable to violence are groups, individuals, and countries which have less power, low status, and limited access to resources or recourse’ 

The Novgorod Model, Crafting Democracy and Supporting Social Capital

Do government agencies play significant role in building social capital? Or how social capital helps in sustaining the effort of community based organizations?

I have chosen this to share my views for two reasons. Firstly, in governance paradigm, the role of community based institutions or NGOs are significant, in which denying the social capital would be fatal at local level.  Secondly, the state tries to ensure its hegemony by establishing its institutions at local level, to promote democracy and economic prosperity. Even the decentralized process of decision making is significantly based on centralized structure of the state.

However, these articles have examined and discussed many aspects of social capital differently, which shows that a well established functional institution, both at government and local level is important for active social capital.

Nicolai clearly argues that social capital can be constructed by the state intervention and role of the state is indispensable in creating the social capital by ensuring the active involvement of government agencies or by coordinating with local organization. According to his terminology, this is a ‘statists’ approach of defining social capital. He criticizes ‘non statists’ approach, where ‘social capital can only be generated outside of government sphere’. In fact, the Novgorod Model is interesting case to recognize the importance of government in building social capital. The article shows that Novgorod of Russian region has improved a lot in comparison to many neighboring regions and even Novgorod has surpassed the national average in many economic growth indicators. In the period of 1995-98, Russian’s GDP declined by 2.1%, while the annual growth of Novgorod was 3.8% during the same period. Other indicators such as, employment rate, regional salary before taxes, inflation, industrial production, Novgorod has shown the impressive result.

How this has possible in Novgorod? In 1990, the regional administration of Novgorod reached on three point’s agreement, “promoting small scale and medium sized businesses, attracting foreign investment, and reforming the housing market” to generate alternative source of revenue after the collapse of federal government subsidies. The local administration was agreed that small and medium scale businesses to be promoted more for generating long term impact and job creation at local level. Administration adopted market friendly policy, but an administrative system was evolved to ensure the check and balance on the market reform.

The regional government established a cordial link with the local self government and facilitated them to increase their administrative capacity. Novgorod was the first region, which conducted the election regularly and timely.  The political stability in the region provided ample ground to take corrective measures to promote economic development equally among everyone. A regional stabilization fund was established, which ensured that the rich region would transfer fund to poorer region. This mechanism of financial cooperation at local level motivated the local administration to implement government policies effectively and involved other actors and institutions in decision making. The Social Chamber was one of the associational connections to share the legislative decisions and to involve civil organizations. The Social Chamber was an important institution which brought administration closer to the community leaders and helped in establishing the network between the government and different organizations, such as trade unions, political parties etc.

This is important to recognize that Novgorod region was able to generate social capital by government efforts because the local government recognized many social rules, which was later accepted as agreements and this helped the local government to identify various actors and mediating agencies at local level for effective implementation of government policies. The author strives to equate the instrumental value of social capital with the economic development and growth of Novgorod. According to him, the involvement of local economic and political elite with the government efforts and they also wanted to break the status quo. In sum up, we can say that the author has supported that the role of government is essential and indispensable in creating, generating and maintaining social capital at regional and local level.

In the Novgorod Model, the author has supported that the government agencies can build the social capital. The economic development of Novgorod region proves that the effective local government agency enable the community to strengthen the social capital and enable them to participate in decision making. But, this argument is very much similar, which has been repeated several times and commonly known as trickle down approach of social development. The regional economic development helps elite and powerful and they act collectively when they need to pressurize decision making process in their favor.

However, Nicolai N. Petro not able to recognize the civil society and informal organization, which have been promoting civicness among the general masses, who are unable to participate in government sponsored structure such as Social Chambers. The positive aspect of the Novgorod Model is that the model shows that the government can create effective implementing mechanism and mediating agencies to promote prosperity in the regional basis, by developing local level institutions and agencies. The political transparency and accountability of these agencies and institutions is important ingredient to build positive social capital at local level.  

Culture a modern phenomenon or encourages manifestation of Power and dominance?

The most misunderstood and most discussed topic in the human society is culture. The simplistic definition of culture is significantly synonymous with the idea of goodness and valued aspect of collective lifestyle or collective behavior of the group of people. The word culture is a conglomeration of many aspects of human society and its behavior. 

Despite of its omnipotent presence, the defining culture in one sentence is a million dollar question. In fact, there is no need to define the culture in uniformed way, because the basic difference between culture and civilization is that the propensity of culture is dynamic, while the civilization is static. This also seems challenging to define the culture without civilization and vice versa. Even in various theories of modernization (Parson, Huntington 1971, Inglehart 2000, Apter, Hegopian 2000) the definitional aspect of culture is not seen as independent paradigm. The question remains unanswered, is culture really a complex issue in the human society? Culture matters and culture also defines and redefines the social structure on the basis of the influence from inside and outside actors and actions.

When we conceptualize about the culture as multidimensional, shared, often unspoken in nature, an underground river of meaning making, a series of lenses that shape what we see and what we don’t see, shapes our idea and attitude and above all, culture operates below the surface and shifting propensity enhances the cultural domain beyond the definitional aspect. The dynamic nature of culture orients the human being in a particular ways, which consolidates the concept of ‘we’ and keep away from ‘others’.

Here, this shows that the human society does not belong to single culture but a multicultural. Therefore, the human being is experienced about cultural assimilation, cultural adaptation, cultural realism, and cultural centralism from the early age.

There is no comprehensive understanding about the culture exist, since the culture never works in isolation. The contextual realities shape and manifest the cultural resilience and its essence in the society. This is also a fact that there is nothing called culture free perspective. When we start visualizing the ideas and values, the cultural influence works in shaping the perspective on the basis of our inbuilt cultural intermingling and socialization. Here, one thing important to understand that  despite of seeing culture as potent weapons, the awareness about the different perspective make the culture more tolerant and more dynamic than the civilization.

Modernization and industrialization has affected the human lives significantly in both positive as well as negative ways. One the one hand, the concept of individual recognize as building the culture of human rights and peace in addressing the culture of violence, while on the other hand, the state has become a hegemonic creature, where violence as seen as the problem of law and order.

The Grand theory of Modernization encourages the essence of ‘Rite to Passage’, and also recognizes the challenge in the formation of nation state. Apart from this, modernization is still being used as the potential tools to serve the vested interest of economic agenda and political development in the world as it was used during the spread of colonialism. Historically, the human society is a multicultural society consisting of many nations, identities, differing abilities, languages, gender, sexual orientation, political and religious affiliation and list goes on further.

During the 18^th Century, the phase of clonialisation started with the grand concept of modernization, when the dominance was the politically inspired but the hierarchy and its significance was institutionalized in the social structure. However, colonialism was not solely responsible for building hierarchical social structure.

There are many evidences show that the hierarchical structure of society was visible even before the concept of colonialism. The most oft repeated example is the caste system in India, which is religiously defined but there is no ontological separation of religion from the political sphere of influence. Religious institution and activities were part and parcel of political system in India. This is rightly observed here that “Kings derive much of their power from worship, and bestow their emblems and privileges in a cultural atmosphere that is permeated by the language and attitudes of worship. Further, temples are key institutions in the formation of social communities”.

Generally, this is believed that the concept of social structure in India is based on ‘purity and pollution’ (Louis Dumont; Homo Hierarchicus, 1970) and ‘sacred and profane’ (Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Form of Religious Life 1912), a central characteristic of religion. But in case of India’s social structure and power structure has worked together and brought together the religion and kinship.

This has been correctly described that ‘Religion does not encompass kingship any more than kingship encompasses religion. There are not two distinct forms of power, secular power had by kings and sacred power had by Brahmans. Kings and Brahmans are both privileged but different forms of divinity in a world in which all beings were, however distantly, generated from the same ontological source. And power—whether defined as a constellation of cultural conceits or as an analytic concern--cannot be restricted to a single domain of Indian social life’.