Making things happen - gaining and using information through Reflect
In the dark - obstacles to good quality information
Room for improvement - less reliance on literacy
Tell thy neighbours - communication via bicycles and songs
Building on success - the Reflect ICTs Project

Information and communication are essential for effective analysis and action, and as such are crucial factors in the Reflect circle. The Reflect ICTs Project aims to improve awareness of, access to, and control of information sources, provide effective communication tools and establish mechanisms to document local knowledge.

My visit to five Reflect circles in Bolangir District in Orissa, India, provided an opportunity to assess how information was accessed and disseminated in the circles about to embark on the ICTs and Reflect process. What obstacles do communities in rural India face in their search for reliable news and data? Have government agencies improved their methods of information dissemination? And what actions have Reflect participants taken in order to make themselves heard and share their experiences with others?

Making things happen - gaining and using information through Reflect:

There was a time when most people in Sargimunda had no idea what the local government bodies were up to. In the hamlet-level assembly, the Palli Sabha, members of the local elite set and discussed the agenda with no regard to the poor and "untouchable" majority of the population. The Panchayat (village council) of the area also made decisions in splendid isolation - and for the advantage of its members, the richer and more powerful villagers. Crumbs of information would reach the 80 Adivasi families (of 116 in total) only by chance. So would government benefits for the poorest. Instead, the funds often ended up in the pockets of those with a seat on, or good contacts to, the council.

Today, members of the Adivasi majority of Sargimunda regularly join the sessions of the Palli Sabha and the Panchayat. The lists of those entitled to BPL-benefit (for those living below the poverty line) and pension payments have been rectified. Like in other communities in Bolangir District of India's eastern state of Orissa, Micro-Level Planning and Reflect processes have led to collective action by the poorest in Sargimunda. Once they had obtained information about government procedures and become aware of their rights and entitlements, people started to hold local government officials accountable.

In Bubel, Mathiabata, Putulamahula, Sargimunda and other villages, people tell almost identical success stories. They insisted on being admitted to assembly and council meetings. They laid siege to District and Block offices to press for the dismissal of schoolteachers who never showed up. Village committees demanded the payment of compensation for failed crops, applied for plots for the landless, exposed corruption in the distribution of emergency rations. Following these triumphs, they initiated the digging of wells, opened grain banks and started small business schemes.

Members of the four long-standing Reflect Circles I spoke to during a visit to Bolangir explained that it was the information received from facilitators during the sessions that enabled them to analyse their situation and then start rocking the boat. "Information equals wealth", said the President of the Village Committee in Bubel and described how the fact that more people now attend council meetings as well as workshops and training events of Community Based Organisations (CBOs) has generally improved access to information.

In the dark - obstacles to good quality information:

However, trustworthy information is still seen as a luxury when it comes to sources outside of the Reflect Circle and CBOs. Government facts and data are often not communicated voluntarily; on many occasions they reach the population too late. Besides, people have learned not to have confidence in the words of the powerful. As a result, the Committee President in Bubel, like Reflect participants in other villages, puts great trust in the facilitator: "We always check back with him because we regard him to be the best source of information." The powerful role of the facilitator as the one who knows best has itself become an issue to be discussed by the Circles during the Reflect ICTs process.

Only very few people in Bolangir District have access to mass media as additional sources of information. In all communities I visited, newspapers in the local Sambalpuri-Oriya dialect are known. But they are read by few and not given great importance, due to the majority of population being illiterate and the remote location of many communities: The Reflect Circle in Mathiabati used to subscribe to a paper and read it out loud during meetings. But with the village being on a bumpy dust road miles away from the nearest town and feet, bicycles and the occasional motorbike the only means of transport, the paper got there so irregularly that the Circle cancelled the subscription.

Most villages, even most Community Based Organisations in the region, do not have a telephone. Moreover, many villages are not, or only partly, connected to the power network. And only very few, usually wealthier and higher-caste citizens in rural regions own television sets and radios, often refusing to let neighbours watch or listen to programmes on their private sets.

Room for improvement - less reliance on literacy:

Yet in the Reflect Circles I visited, enthusiasm for electronic media seemed enormous. Villagers suggested that one public TV set and a VCR should be installed in each village, so that they collectively could watch news, as well as regionally produced soap operas, and discuss the programmes afterwards. In Sargimunda, people told of the popularity of an agricultural programme broadcast daily by a local radio station. They also like to listen to a women's radio show and an empowerment programme called "Our Administration is in Our Hands", both broadcast once a week. But generally, knowledge of local radio programmes seemed patchy, and none of the other four Reflect Circles seemed to be aware of the programmes so popular in Sargimunda.

In the absence of mass media, CBOs and government resort to wall paintings, booklets and leaflets in order to spread news in the district. However, due to the high level of illiteracy, materials using the written words rely on those villagers who are literate to read texts out loud and/or to pass them on by word of mouth.

On my trips through the district I saw many, quite lengthy writings on walls and buildings: Government announcements promising immediate aid for people under threat of starvation and outlining the application procedure (right) - a pretty ineffective dissemination method heavily criticised by CBOs in the region. A Co-ordinator of the CBO NIPDIT said his organisation was trying to spread the word via its Reflect facilitators and newspaper articles. He complained, however, that many people still did not know about the scheme.

Yet he acknowledged that for lack of other communication tools, CBOs themselves often rely on the written word. NIPDIT, for example, has printed a leaflet with details of a Supreme Court decision that might lead to evictions from protected forest areas. The leaflet was distributed with one regional newspaper and also read out and discussed in Reflect Circles.

CBOs and Action Aid in Bolangir have produced a variety of materials for facilitators and Reflect Circles, ranging from a booklet about government schemes to a picture book about the rights of migrant workers. As it is impossible to explain complex issues in picture books, dissemination of contents mostly depends on facilitators and literate community members. In the opinion of the NIPDIT Co-ordinator, a community radio programme would be a much better tool to convey such complex issues.

Tell thy neighbours - communication via bicycles and songs:

In four of the five communities I visited, Reflect Circle members spoke enthusiastically about their wish to communicate with people in neighbouring villages and share their positive experiences. While women in Bubel said that they were thinking about using street plays, dance and songs in order to tell of the progress the community has made, people in Putulamahula have already put this plan into action. With the help of NIPDIT, they formed a performance group that has danced and sung about important health themes, superstition and other issues in over 40 villages. NIPDIT has so far provided transport for the group, but members said that they would travel around by bicycle if they had to.

A similar scheme was set up in Sargimunda, where Reflect Circle participants, with support from the organisation FARR, carried out cycle-rallies to 47 villages in order to hold public meetings about migration laws, insurance for seasonal migrants and the possibility of forming labour-societies. They proudly reported that as a result, 36 such societies had been founded. But they also acknowledged that such rallies would remain an exception, mainly because they are time intensive as a result of the distances and transport problems. On the other hand, Circle members mentioned that they have plans to start a theatre group to perform street plays about social and political issues.

Considering the confidence and the range of activities carried out by the Reflect Circle in Sargimunda, the lethargy of Reflect participants in the neighbouring village Bahabal came as a great surprise. Although the two communities are only 15 kilometres apart, people asserted that they had not heard of the progress made in Sargimunda. Reflect participants complained bitterly that some attempts to get the useless and corrupt schoolteacher dismissed had not shown any results. More assertive action, they feared, would expose them to "punishments" from the local authorities.

It turned out that this Reflect Circle had only met once a month for about a year. They had received little information about their rights and entitlements, had had only tentative discussions and made conflicting statements about their information needs. One man, for example, complained that "what happens in the world today we only get to know three months later". But he also said that most villagers with access to a radio listen to music "because the news is not relevant to them".

My conversations with community members in Bahabal not only showed that Reflect Participants can not carry out systematic analysis and actions if they meet only every four weeks - it also brought home to me how important communication between villages and Reflect Circles is. The reasons for the lack of communication between Bahabal and Sargimunda remained unclear. Perhaps facilitators are partly to blame for not having established some connections. The fact is that while people in Bahabal surely would be inspired by the experiences of Sargimunda, there is still no formal or informal communication that would allow systematic sharing between two villages 15 kilometres apart.

Building on success - the Reflect ICTs Project:

The Reflect ICT Project aims to take the process of analysis and action a big step forward - both in communities where a lot of progress has been made and in villages like Bahabal, where so far only little has happened. As a consequence of discussion about existing mechanisms and needs for information and communication, contacts between Reflect Circles will be strengthened. Community members will strengthen and diversify established information channels and take up new mechanisms according to their needs, while enhancing their capacity for using and managing ICTs. This will lead to new ways of learning, documentation and networking - and have an enormous impact on organisation and mobilisation in the communities.