Reflect and ICTs - community ownership at what price

From Rhetoric to Reality:
Ownership and Participation

By Hannah Beardon, Reflect ICTs Project Coordinator

Participation, community ownership, bottom-up development. All very attractive words, which applied to any project instantly convey serious humanitarian pro-poor values and, as such, are incredibly attractive to donors.

This may sound cynical, but in fact I am a great believer in the principles of participation and empowerment. I am currently co-ordinating a project which tests the very hypothesis that time spent building people's capacity to make meaningful choices pays off with deeper, more positive impact on people's lives and greater sustainability.

However, I am wary of the popularity of such terms. I believe that they are often wrongly applied, either as a quick and easy way to attach valuable attributes to a project, or for fear that leaving them out will deter donors and collaborators. And this increasingly general usage of these valuable words is leaving them practically empty of meaning.

In this article I wish to explore the dangers of overuse of these terms, and call for us all to be more honest and realistic about what we mean and expect by participation. True participation is neither easy nor quick. It is a lengthy process requiring great commitment from all involved. I don't believe that all projects could or should be undertaking this deepest level of participation. But more honesty about the real expectations of, and need for, participation in particular projects would surely be better for everyone.

This article draws on examples provided to me by two colleagues who have recently visited ICT projects on the ground in India, in particular Sigrun Rottmann's report on UNDP information kiosks in Orissa.

The UNDP is involved with developing systems and structures to enable people to access government information in India. Two main strands of this are:
A Block Information Management System - to improve information management and communication between governing bodies, increase transparency and accountability and thus promote better governance; and
IT Kiosks, run in co-operation with local organisations and government, to enable people to access such information. In Bolangir, where the Reflect ICTs Project is running a pilot, there are eight such kiosks.

According to the UNDP IT Coordinator in Bolangir, the ultimate objective of the project is to 'reduce vulnerability and strengthen livelihoods'. Through reducing the cost in time and money of accessing government information, people will be more able to benefit from schemes, subsidies and information aimed at them. By making such information more available to marginalised people, transparency and accountability will be enhanced and thereby governance improved.

… information for whose sake?
The UNDP Bolangir IT Coordinator describes the project as 'for the people and by the people.' It is based on a needs assessment carried out in the area and expects to be handed over to the communities in 2004. However, this does not ring true with the project focus, partnerships and the reality on the ground.

The UNDP project is actually the result of a strong partnership with the Indian government, to create mechanisms by which people can gain access to government information and documents. The focus of the work is on downward information provision - creating a management information system, software, virtual spaces and access points. The further you go down the line from government to the poorest and most marginalised people, the fuzzier and less well-thought-out the project appears.

Implementation of the project at village or Block level is through the locally elected panchayat or village council structures. The kiosk visited by Sigrun was located next to the panchayat office. Volunteers are trained and paid to run the kiosks and fulfil outreach, training and marketing roles.

… tackling or reproducing inequality?
From the state or national government perspective, the panchayat system may seem the most obvious means of reaching people at village level. However, in many cases it is the panchayat members - the powerful elite within a village or area - who are responsible for exploiting poor villagers under their control. ActionAid and Reflect workers in Bolangir report that panchayat members work in their own interest, usually the opposite of the interests of the poor. A woman who attends Reflect meetings in Matiabhata village, Bolangir (right), said:

In this context it is clear that the choice of panchayat structures to implement a project aimed at reaching the poorest and most marginalised is mistaken. The only way that the project promotes the goal of official transparency is by offering new tools to existing local government bodies, such as the panchayat. As Sigrun notes in her report: "The assumption that the panchayat councils wish to be transparent and carry out social audits … has to be treated with caution. Experiences in Bolangir indicate that more often than not they are reluctant to be transparent."

The users of the kiosk visited by Sigrun do not represent those who are most in need of good quality, cheap information for 'reduced vulnerability and stronger livelihoods'. While only 25% of the general village population can read and write, an estimated 70% of all kiosk users and 100% of those attending their computer courses are literate. And though women are a key target group, illiteracy creates a huge barrier for them to use the kiosk and there are no strategies to overcome this.

From the ground there is no evidence that the wider community feel any ownership of the kiosk or indeed an increased ability to analyse and meet their information and communication needs.

Along the lines of the UNDP kiosks, Gyandoot is a highly acclaimed, international award winning ICT project aiming at bringing official information closer to marginalised people. It is described as a "network for empowerment of rural people through self-sustainable use of information and communications
technology."

While there have already been some positive results from the project, an evaluation by Alok Sanjay of ActionAid India shows that lack of attention to local power-relations and lack of awareness of constraints facing poor people has limited the impact of the project. Three years from the start of the project, Alok found that "severe discrimination at the panchayat level leaves nearly no opportunity for the educated poor and marginalised". Shockingly, in some places scheduled castes (untouchables) are not allowed to enter the kiosks, and in most cases they are ignorant of the project. He concludes that:

Both of the projects described above illustrate the dangers of designing an information and communication for development project without basing it on a true picture of the needs and realities of poor and marginalised people. But how is this true and real picture to be found?

Firstly, it has to be acknowledged that pictures of reality differ from person to person, institution to institution. For a project to be pro-poor, or to serve the needs of the poorest and most marginalised, careful attention needs to be paid to the complex and multi-layered power relations within a target community or group. To access that community through the most visible, most literate or vociferous, is likely to result in strengthening existing power structures that underpin poverty and inequality in a community or region.

ActionAid and the International Reflect Circle (CIRAC) are currently embarking on a three-year Information and Communication Technology (ICT) project which pays close attention to people's capacity to make meaningful choices about the technology offered to them. The first year of the project will be spent promoting analysis of issues surrounding information, communication, technology and power within existing Reflect groups in the pilot locations in Burundi, India and Uganda - so that they are confident to assess and choose the types of technology which best suit them and their communication needs. Only in the second year will any equipment be purchased, based on a plan developed by participating groups stating how it will be managed, used, sustained and its impact monitored.

The key to the community ownership of this project is that it builds on existing Reflect structures. These established relationships with groups formed of the poorest and most marginalised, working to define and achieve their own development needs, forms a solid basis for a project claiming to be bottom-up and participatory in nature. It means that while the project team create a clear framework for the project and establish relationships with donors and peers, no assumptions need to be made about what target communities want or even who has the right to decide this. All of these difficult issues can be dealt with in groups which have been established on the back of many years of delicate capacity and relationship building work.

This is the key. Bottom-up projects with truly participatory planning, implementation and monitoring, which respond to the real needs of the most excluded, must be the domain of organisations with deep and long-established links with, or roots in, the target community. They cannot be invented, planned and implemented by project planners in offices in London or Nairobi.

The two-week 'needs assessment' which passes for participatory planning in some projects cannot possibly hope to negotiate complex issues of power, control and conflict of interest within marginalised communities, let alone deal with the imbalance of power and self-confidence between project planners and community members. They cannot be expected to find people to consult who are not only the least powerful and least able to avail of market-led solutions, but also the least confident and able to expressing their needs. Such processes are likely to evoke a strong sense of the needs of those sections of the community who have already had better educational and social opportunities, and deliver solutions accordingly.

However, the alternative to such brief, superficial consultation cannot realistically be the years of painstaking relationship building which enables an organisation to analyse, plan and implement on an equal footing with the poorest and most marginalised members of a community. Instead, we all need to be aware of and honest about our strengths, and what we have to offer to the development process.

Projects such as the UNDP kiosks and Gyandoot are applying useful skills to tackling important issues and therefore have an important role to play in the development field. But by presenting themselves as 'community-led' or 'empowerment' projects, they are opening themselves up to criticism and preventing themselves from really thinking about and compensating for the consequences of their distance from the ground. Instead they should make an honest assessment of their strengths and create strong collaborative relationships with organisations and projects which have the capacity to deliver real participation and community leadership.

According to the DfID study, Gyandoot realise they need NGOs to promote Gyandoot to the rural poor. However, I would argue that this collaboration would be most effective during the consultation and planning phases rather than just for marketing and outreach.

Such an honest collaborative approach will benefit everyone - ensuring that communities really do get the type of development projects and products that suit them and that they can use, and protecting projects such as UNDP kiosks and Gyandoot from criticisms of replicating unequal power structures due to their distance from the ground.