Papers by bhavya chitranshi
Routledge eBooks, Apr 28, 2023
This paper grapples with the problem of the difficult work of/on transformation1 in the adivasi r... more This paper grapples with the problem of the difficult work of/on transformation1 in the adivasi rural, in the specific context of singleness among rural adivasi women in the Rayagada district of South Odisha. The appreciation of the problem stems from my experiences of being part of ongoing action research work that is an attempt towards foregrounding the lived experience (Guru and Sarukkai, 2012) of being single and being a woman by attending to the condition of singleness2 among rural adivasi women and exploring alongside questions and (collaborative/collective) processes of transformative praxis.
Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 2022
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, 2018
Here we, on the one hand, revisit the standard operating procedure in development strategies—“com... more Here we, on the one hand, revisit the standard operating procedure in development strategies—“communication (technologies) for development”—and move instead to “development for facilitating communication” through exploring questions such as: Does communication facilitate development? Or does development facilitate communication? Which kind of communication can engender development? Which kind of development can ensure communication with the “margins”? We thus tighten and deepen the connection between the nature of development and the nature of communication; in the process we see communication for development and development for communication as mutually constitutive. We also invoke the question of praxis in three forms: (a) by exploring the connection between praxis and communication and seeing communication as not just a technique but as a question of praxis—where theories of communication and practices of communication are in a relationship, (b) by seeing developmental praxis as ...
This paper builds on an 'action research' project that took transformation as an object of inquir... more This paper builds on an 'action research' project that took transformation as an object of inquiry within the context of collective mobilisation and formation of Eka Nari Sanghathan (Single Womens' Collective) in a tribal village Emaliguda in the Rayagada district of Odisha. The process of public and collective articulation, and analysis of the everyday experience and condition of singleness in rural women, gave way to the becoming of a collective where women who have been abandoned by their families, or have been widowed or have been left unmarried, have come together with an objective of paving the Sanghathan's (i.e. organisation's) own path, spelling out its own well-being, carving out its own language of empowerment, and taking charge of a possible common future. A future beyond mere and already stated and dictated developmental agendas. This is an emergent and contingent being-in-common that premises itself on the ethico-politics of relationality, and politics of pluralism, and also politics of love and friendship. As this initiative progressed towards collective (in) action, while engaging with the state, the society at large and one's own self as ethico-political subject, the attempt has been to revisit the hegemonic understanding of the discourse and practice around development through generating a critique of the capitalocentric and orientalist nature of developmentalism, and through this interrogation, arrive at a re-imagination and re-formulation of development. It also makes a move towards understanding the question of transformation in its three interrelated axes: political, social, and self. This research is a kind of reflexive writing on the process of righting wrongs, reflecting how an in-depth transformative process requires these three sites of transformation to be engaged with continuously and simultaneously in a trialogue. This paper attempts to offer a possible philosophy of transformative praxis that engenders change and collective formation among the gendered subaltern through participatory processes of selfreflection and reflection on the process of collectivisation, through an engagement with Marxist, Gandhian, and Tagorite takes on transformation, as also contemporary (trans)formations around new social movements post Laclau and Mouffe (1985).
Development, 2020
The accessibility, availability and consumption of food in food and agriculture systems are key p... more The accessibility, availability and consumption of food in food and agriculture systems are key public health and food security concerns. We draw on empirical research from members of the Community Economies Research Network from Australia, New Zealand, India and Finland to reimagine food and agriculture systems as a planetary food commons (PFC). PFCs situate food-futures in relation to a broader post-capitalist commons sociality.
2 Put telegraphically ‘action research’ is reflective writing on the reflexive process of rightin... more 2 Put telegraphically ‘action research’ is reflective writing on the reflexive process of righting wrongs. In other words, action research is both about righting and writing. It is about writing on the actual or lived process of righting wrongs – a process lived by both researcher and community. Righting wrongs is about: (a) engendering a process of necessary transformation, a process owned by communities in which the transformation process is being initiated through some kind of catalytic activity, (b) documenting the process in its infinite complexity and contradiction, and (c) generating somewhat abstract learnings and explanatory frameworks out of the experience of transformation for the community and the development sector at large. In short, action research is about (a) research-ing a problem, (b) action-ing based on research findings and problem identification and possible (re)solution, and (c) research-ing the process of action-ing retrospectively (see Dhar 2015).
The accessibility, availability and consumption of food in food and agriculture systems are key p... more The accessibility, availability and consumption of food in food and agriculture systems are key public health and food security concerns. We draw on empirical research from members of the Community Economies Research Network from Australia, New Zealand, India and Finland to reimagine food and agriculture systems as a planetary food commons (PFC). PFCs situate food-futures in relation to a broader post-capitalist commons sociality.
Development, 2020
The accessibility, availability and consumption of food in food and agriculture systems are key p... more The accessibility, availability and consumption of food in food and agriculture systems are key public health and food security concerns. We draw on empirical research from members of the Community Economies Research Network from Australia, New Zealand, India and Finland to reimagine food and agriculture systems as a planetary food commons (PFC). PFCs situate food-futures in relation to a broader post-capitalist commons sociality.
Porrúa and Umsnh: Mexico, 2016
This paper builds on an ‘action research’ project that took ‘transformation’ as an object of
inqu... more This paper builds on an ‘action research’ project that took ‘transformation’ as an object of
inquiry in the context of the collective mobilisation of single women and formation of an Eka
Nari Sanghathan (Single Womens’ Collective) in a distant tribal village called Emaliguda in the
Rayagada6 district of Odisha. The lived experience of being single, the condition of singleness (as distinguished from singlehood) among rural tribal women including forest societies, and the
process of the public articulation of othering, led to the becoming of a collective where women
who have been abandoned by their families, or have been widowed, have been left unmarried, or
women whose husbands’ are critically unwell have come together with an objective of paving the
Sanghathan's (i.e. the collective’s) own path, spelling out its own well‐being, carving out its own
language of empowerment, and taking charge of a possible common future, a future beyond
mere and already stated and dictated developmental agendas. This paper thus builds on a
movement – movement from being single to becoming an emergent and contingent being‐in‐common
– the Sanghathan – that premises itself on the one hand, on an ethico‐politics of pluralism, and
on the other, on the (im)possible forging of relationships, love and friendship.
Routledge, 2019
This chapter introduces ‘action research’ undertaken in the Rayagada district of Odisha, India. T... more This chapter introduces ‘action research’ undertaken in the Rayagada district of Odisha, India. The work began with the identification of the experience of ‘singleness’ among Kondh adivasi (indigenous tribes) women farmers in a village named Emaliguda. The dialectic of oppression and resistance resulting from the condition of singleness led to the emergence of a collective called Eka Nari Sanghathan (Single Women’s Collective) in 2013. Attending to single women’s lives marked by experiences of pain, violence and otherness (by the violence of hetero-patriarchy, of primitive accumulation and capitalist development) and to the adivasi life-worlds sustaining noncapitalist class processes in a largely capitalist world, this contingent-emergent collective engages in enacting a possible postcapitalist-feminist future, a future beyond dictated developmental agendas. This chapter explores connections between the rem(a)inders of resisting and negotiated gendered processes and subjectivities (‘singleness’) and noncapitalist economic processes and subjectivities (‘world of the third’) in order to work towards a possible postcapitalist-feminist praxis. Embedded in postdevelopmental thinking and praxis, this chapter largely examines how questions of economic transformation and gender work come to co-exist in the adivasi context.
Oxford University Press, 2018
Here we, on the one hand, revisit the standard operating procedure in development
strategies—“com... more Here we, on the one hand, revisit the standard operating procedure in development
strategies—“communication (technologies) for development”—and move instead to
“development for facilitating communication” through exploring questions such as: Does
communication facilitate development? Or does development facilitate communication?
Which kind of communication can engender development? Which kind of development
can ensure communication with the “margins”? We thus tighten and deepen the
connection between the nature of development and the nature of communication; in the
process we see communication for development and development for communication as
mutually constitutive. We also invoke the question of praxis in three forms: (a) by
exploring the connection between praxis and communication and seeing communication
as not just a technique but as a question of praxis—where theories of communication and
practices of communication are in a relationship, (b) by seeing developmental praxis as
intimately tied to the question of communication, and (c) by letting praxis emerge as the
“middle term” or the connecting link between development and communication. We
deconstruct three discourses of development: the growth-centric discourse, those offering
“developmental alternatives” (like human developmental perspectives), and those
presenting “alternatives to development” (like postdevelopmentalist positions focused on
“third world” or the “local,” etc.), to move to a fourth discourse that problematizes both
modernism and capitalism, as it opens up the discourses of communication (modernist,
dependency theory, participatory approach, etc.) for inquiry. We attempt to go beyond the
modernist and capitalist understandings of development to introduce the logic-languageethos
of “world of the third” as against third world-ist imaginations. This helps us rethink
the praxis of communication in creating, on the one hand, community- or social
movements–driven developmental futures and, on the other, engendering post-Orientalist
and postcapitalist forms of life in local or world of the third contexts. We also emphasize
the need to reflect on the question of the “subject” (as also psychoanalytic
conceptualizations of the “psyche”) and the need to learn to “work through” “groups” in
order to usher in depth and nuance in the praxis of development communication.
News Reach, 2018
This paper introduces an action research work that began in 2013 with adivasi single women farmer... more This paper introduces an action research work that began in 2013 with adivasi single women farmers in Emaliguda village in Rayagada district in Odisha. This paper narrates stories not of just pain and suffering in singleness but also stories of collective struggle, collective learning, creative joy and companionship-stories that have been 'created' and are still in the making as 'we' (single women in Rayagada and I) work together towards transforming our future. In other words, this paper is a kind of reflective/reflexive 'looking back' at the five year journey of working through (gendered) relationships (including relationships among women), collective action-ing, and co-learning.
This paper grapples with the problem of the difficult work of/on transformation in the adivasi ru... more This paper grapples with the problem of the difficult work of/on transformation in the adivasi rural, in the specific context of singleness among rural adivasi women in the Rayagada district of South Odisha. The appreciation of the problem stems from my experiences of being part of ongoing action research work that is an attempt towards foregrounding the lived experience of being single and being a woman by attending to the condition of singleness among rural adivasi women and exploring alongside questions and (collaborative/collective) processes of transformative praxis.
This work began in 2013 in a village in Rayagada named Emaliguda and is currently in the process of expanding further in six to seven other villages in and around the district. The action research work so far has generated some insight and understanding around the condition of singleness among adivasi women and in the process has helped mobilize a single women’s collective called Eka Nari Sanghathan. This paper, is also a reflection on the questions that have emerged as a result of being immersed in what is commonly referred to as developmental work in the development sector. With critiques of the discourse and practice of development at hand, the search embarked upon three years ago continues still and the questions that were important then, remain alive and unanswered till today. Having struggled with these questions on the way, what has eventually become an object of enquiry is what can be called the praxis (as against pure practice that takes the form training-skill building-consciousness raising) of transformation.
Based on this, the paper seeks to explore collaboratively (that is, with the members of the Sanghathan) possibilities of methodological transformation in extant methods of transformation. It critically engages with existing (somewhat under-theorised) practices that are hegemonic in mainstream development, and try to arrive at a reformed understanding of transformative praxis. Paradoxically, mainstream development largely claims to speak of transformation, but mostly falls short of distinguishing transformation from State-sponsored or funded developmental deliverables. This paper shows how this action research work, which could also be called gender work in and with the adivasi rural, fails to find much purchase in current developmental practices hegemonised by the women's Self-Help Group (SHG) model. It also does not find much space in current frameworks of left politics hegemonised by metaphors of (violent) class struggle or demands on the liberal State.
Thus, the particular philosophy of transformative praxis that was generated along with the action research process gestures towards departures from both mainstream developmental conduits of action (marked by collectivisation for action, collectivisation as a means to an end), and traditional forms of Marxist and woman-centered, as against gender-focused, politics that have hitherto framed dominant discourses and practices of transformation. Through a critique of the existing empirical work of transformation in the development sector, the paper argues a rethink of extant philosophies of transformation, the possible learning and demonstration of which, is in the fractured stories and in the methods of praxis engendered by Eka Nari Sanghathan.
The paper advocates for ways that may help us to learn to learn from them, largely through (a) rethinking methodologies of actioning research and researching action simultaneously, keeping connections between theory-practice alive, (b) revisiting concepts such as woman, community, collectives, gender work, power and political, some of the concepts that have been conveniently co- opted by the discourse of development and are loosely deployed without much attention to what the concepts actually imply and the kind of implications these can have on our practice, (c) traversing the difficult and largely deferred path of exploring both the overt and the secret language/logic/ethos of adivasi life worlds and life forms as also gendered subaltern histories and worldviews that have hitherto been foreclosed, and finally (d) exploring impossible collaborative praxis of transformation, distinct from mainstream practice of development, that are geared towards rethinking the ethical and the political through the non-violent reconstitution and rehabilitation of desire and through re-subjectivation.
This paper is on what Spivak calls, “necessary absurdity”; a necessary absurdity that deconstruct... more This paper is on what Spivak calls, “necessary absurdity”; a necessary absurdity that deconstruction brings to the praxis of transformation (namely transformation along the axis of what would provisionally be called the ‘subject’, the ‘social’ and the ‘political’). In the light or perhaps shadow of the deconstructive, this paper poses a problem; a problem that the work on/of transformation is faced with in the specific context of singleness among rural adivasi women in Rayagada district of South Odisha. This work is a part of an ongoing action research which is an attempt towards foregrounding the 'lived experience' of being single and being woman by attending to the condition of 'singleness' among rural adivasi women and exploring alongside questions and collaborative collective processes of transformative praxis. This work began in 2013 in one village named Emaliguda in the district and is currently in the process of further expansion to other villages in and around the area. The work so far has generated some insights and understandings around the condition of singleness among adivasi women and in the process, has helped mobilize a single women’s collective called Eka Nari Sanghathan (Single Women’s Collective).
The problem that has opened up with this action research work, which is an attempt to work on the question of subject, social and political transformation (the three axes of transformation that stand in mutual constitutivity), is how to bring these three axes in dialogue with each other. In other words, if these three axes of transformation are mutually constitutive, then how does this mutuality and constitutivity translate into praxis? What does it do to the question of praxis? How does one account for their simultaneity (transformations in subject, social and political taking place in tandem with each other)? And how does it respond to the question of the (im)possibility of transformed futures? What is it to work and think deconstructively; what is it to engage with the problem(s) at hand is what seems to me as of now “my heightened sense of necessary absurdity”; and this paper is an attempt at exploring deconstructively, the above mentioned questions. The exploration however, takes me to psychoanalysis.
This paper builds on an ‘action research’ project that took transformation as an object of inquir... more This paper builds on an ‘action research’ project that took transformation as an object of inquiry
within the context of collective mobilisation and formation of Eka Nari Sanghathan (Single
Womens’ Collective) in a tribal village Emaliguda in the Rayagada district of Odisha. The process
of public and collective articulation, and analysis of the everyday experience and condition of
singleness in rural women, gave way to the becoming of a collective where women who have
been abandoned by their families, or have been widowed or have been left unmarried, have
come together with an objective of paving the Sanghathan's (i.e. organisation’s) own path,
spelling out its own well‐being, carving out its own language of empowerment, and taking
charge of a possible common future. A future beyond mere and already stated and dictated
developmental agendas. This is an emergent and contingent being‐in‐common that premises
itself on the ethico‐politics of relationality, and politics of pluralism, and also politics of love and
friendship. As this initiative progressed towards collective (in) action, while engaging with the
state, the society at large and one’s own self as ethico‐political subject, the attempt has been to
revisit the hegemonic understanding of the discourse and practice around development through
generating a critique of the capitalocentric and orientalist nature of developmentalism, and
through this interrogation, arrive at a re‐imagination and re‐formulation of development. It also
makes a move towards understanding the question of transformation in its three inter‐related
axes: political, social, and self. This research is a kind of reflexive writing on the process of
righting wrongs, reflecting how an in‐depth transformative process requires these three sites of
transformation to be engaged with continuously and simultaneously in a trialogue. This paper
attempts to offer a possible philosophy of transformative praxis that engenders change and
collective formation among the gendered subaltern through participatory processes of self‐
reflection and reflection on the process of collectivisation, through an engagement with Marxist,
Gandhian, and Tagorite takes on transformation, as also contemporary (trans)formations
around new social movements post Laclau and Mouffe (1985).
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Papers by bhavya chitranshi
inquiry in the context of the collective mobilisation of single women and formation of an Eka
Nari Sanghathan (Single Womens’ Collective) in a distant tribal village called Emaliguda in the
Rayagada6 district of Odisha. The lived experience of being single, the condition of singleness (as distinguished from singlehood) among rural tribal women including forest societies, and the
process of the public articulation of othering, led to the becoming of a collective where women
who have been abandoned by their families, or have been widowed, have been left unmarried, or
women whose husbands’ are critically unwell have come together with an objective of paving the
Sanghathan's (i.e. the collective’s) own path, spelling out its own well‐being, carving out its own
language of empowerment, and taking charge of a possible common future, a future beyond
mere and already stated and dictated developmental agendas. This paper thus builds on a
movement – movement from being single to becoming an emergent and contingent being‐in‐common
– the Sanghathan – that premises itself on the one hand, on an ethico‐politics of pluralism, and
on the other, on the (im)possible forging of relationships, love and friendship.
strategies—“communication (technologies) for development”—and move instead to
“development for facilitating communication” through exploring questions such as: Does
communication facilitate development? Or does development facilitate communication?
Which kind of communication can engender development? Which kind of development
can ensure communication with the “margins”? We thus tighten and deepen the
connection between the nature of development and the nature of communication; in the
process we see communication for development and development for communication as
mutually constitutive. We also invoke the question of praxis in three forms: (a) by
exploring the connection between praxis and communication and seeing communication
as not just a technique but as a question of praxis—where theories of communication and
practices of communication are in a relationship, (b) by seeing developmental praxis as
intimately tied to the question of communication, and (c) by letting praxis emerge as the
“middle term” or the connecting link between development and communication. We
deconstruct three discourses of development: the growth-centric discourse, those offering
“developmental alternatives” (like human developmental perspectives), and those
presenting “alternatives to development” (like postdevelopmentalist positions focused on
“third world” or the “local,” etc.), to move to a fourth discourse that problematizes both
modernism and capitalism, as it opens up the discourses of communication (modernist,
dependency theory, participatory approach, etc.) for inquiry. We attempt to go beyond the
modernist and capitalist understandings of development to introduce the logic-languageethos
of “world of the third” as against third world-ist imaginations. This helps us rethink
the praxis of communication in creating, on the one hand, community- or social
movements–driven developmental futures and, on the other, engendering post-Orientalist
and postcapitalist forms of life in local or world of the third contexts. We also emphasize
the need to reflect on the question of the “subject” (as also psychoanalytic
conceptualizations of the “psyche”) and the need to learn to “work through” “groups” in
order to usher in depth and nuance in the praxis of development communication.
This work began in 2013 in a village in Rayagada named Emaliguda and is currently in the process of expanding further in six to seven other villages in and around the district. The action research work so far has generated some insight and understanding around the condition of singleness among adivasi women and in the process has helped mobilize a single women’s collective called Eka Nari Sanghathan. This paper, is also a reflection on the questions that have emerged as a result of being immersed in what is commonly referred to as developmental work in the development sector. With critiques of the discourse and practice of development at hand, the search embarked upon three years ago continues still and the questions that were important then, remain alive and unanswered till today. Having struggled with these questions on the way, what has eventually become an object of enquiry is what can be called the praxis (as against pure practice that takes the form training-skill building-consciousness raising) of transformation.
Based on this, the paper seeks to explore collaboratively (that is, with the members of the Sanghathan) possibilities of methodological transformation in extant methods of transformation. It critically engages with existing (somewhat under-theorised) practices that are hegemonic in mainstream development, and try to arrive at a reformed understanding of transformative praxis. Paradoxically, mainstream development largely claims to speak of transformation, but mostly falls short of distinguishing transformation from State-sponsored or funded developmental deliverables. This paper shows how this action research work, which could also be called gender work in and with the adivasi rural, fails to find much purchase in current developmental practices hegemonised by the women's Self-Help Group (SHG) model. It also does not find much space in current frameworks of left politics hegemonised by metaphors of (violent) class struggle or demands on the liberal State.
Thus, the particular philosophy of transformative praxis that was generated along with the action research process gestures towards departures from both mainstream developmental conduits of action (marked by collectivisation for action, collectivisation as a means to an end), and traditional forms of Marxist and woman-centered, as against gender-focused, politics that have hitherto framed dominant discourses and practices of transformation. Through a critique of the existing empirical work of transformation in the development sector, the paper argues a rethink of extant philosophies of transformation, the possible learning and demonstration of which, is in the fractured stories and in the methods of praxis engendered by Eka Nari Sanghathan.
The paper advocates for ways that may help us to learn to learn from them, largely through (a) rethinking methodologies of actioning research and researching action simultaneously, keeping connections between theory-practice alive, (b) revisiting concepts such as woman, community, collectives, gender work, power and political, some of the concepts that have been conveniently co- opted by the discourse of development and are loosely deployed without much attention to what the concepts actually imply and the kind of implications these can have on our practice, (c) traversing the difficult and largely deferred path of exploring both the overt and the secret language/logic/ethos of adivasi life worlds and life forms as also gendered subaltern histories and worldviews that have hitherto been foreclosed, and finally (d) exploring impossible collaborative praxis of transformation, distinct from mainstream practice of development, that are geared towards rethinking the ethical and the political through the non-violent reconstitution and rehabilitation of desire and through re-subjectivation.
The problem that has opened up with this action research work, which is an attempt to work on the question of subject, social and political transformation (the three axes of transformation that stand in mutual constitutivity), is how to bring these three axes in dialogue with each other. In other words, if these three axes of transformation are mutually constitutive, then how does this mutuality and constitutivity translate into praxis? What does it do to the question of praxis? How does one account for their simultaneity (transformations in subject, social and political taking place in tandem with each other)? And how does it respond to the question of the (im)possibility of transformed futures? What is it to work and think deconstructively; what is it to engage with the problem(s) at hand is what seems to me as of now “my heightened sense of necessary absurdity”; and this paper is an attempt at exploring deconstructively, the above mentioned questions. The exploration however, takes me to psychoanalysis.
within the context of collective mobilisation and formation of Eka Nari Sanghathan (Single
Womens’ Collective) in a tribal village Emaliguda in the Rayagada district of Odisha. The process
of public and collective articulation, and analysis of the everyday experience and condition of
singleness in rural women, gave way to the becoming of a collective where women who have
been abandoned by their families, or have been widowed or have been left unmarried, have
come together with an objective of paving the Sanghathan's (i.e. organisation’s) own path,
spelling out its own well‐being, carving out its own language of empowerment, and taking
charge of a possible common future. A future beyond mere and already stated and dictated
developmental agendas. This is an emergent and contingent being‐in‐common that premises
itself on the ethico‐politics of relationality, and politics of pluralism, and also politics of love and
friendship. As this initiative progressed towards collective (in) action, while engaging with the
state, the society at large and one’s own self as ethico‐political subject, the attempt has been to
revisit the hegemonic understanding of the discourse and practice around development through
generating a critique of the capitalocentric and orientalist nature of developmentalism, and
through this interrogation, arrive at a re‐imagination and re‐formulation of development. It also
makes a move towards understanding the question of transformation in its three inter‐related
axes: political, social, and self. This research is a kind of reflexive writing on the process of
righting wrongs, reflecting how an in‐depth transformative process requires these three sites of
transformation to be engaged with continuously and simultaneously in a trialogue. This paper
attempts to offer a possible philosophy of transformative praxis that engenders change and
collective formation among the gendered subaltern through participatory processes of self‐
reflection and reflection on the process of collectivisation, through an engagement with Marxist,
Gandhian, and Tagorite takes on transformation, as also contemporary (trans)formations
around new social movements post Laclau and Mouffe (1985).
inquiry in the context of the collective mobilisation of single women and formation of an Eka
Nari Sanghathan (Single Womens’ Collective) in a distant tribal village called Emaliguda in the
Rayagada6 district of Odisha. The lived experience of being single, the condition of singleness (as distinguished from singlehood) among rural tribal women including forest societies, and the
process of the public articulation of othering, led to the becoming of a collective where women
who have been abandoned by their families, or have been widowed, have been left unmarried, or
women whose husbands’ are critically unwell have come together with an objective of paving the
Sanghathan's (i.e. the collective’s) own path, spelling out its own well‐being, carving out its own
language of empowerment, and taking charge of a possible common future, a future beyond
mere and already stated and dictated developmental agendas. This paper thus builds on a
movement – movement from being single to becoming an emergent and contingent being‐in‐common
– the Sanghathan – that premises itself on the one hand, on an ethico‐politics of pluralism, and
on the other, on the (im)possible forging of relationships, love and friendship.
strategies—“communication (technologies) for development”—and move instead to
“development for facilitating communication” through exploring questions such as: Does
communication facilitate development? Or does development facilitate communication?
Which kind of communication can engender development? Which kind of development
can ensure communication with the “margins”? We thus tighten and deepen the
connection between the nature of development and the nature of communication; in the
process we see communication for development and development for communication as
mutually constitutive. We also invoke the question of praxis in three forms: (a) by
exploring the connection between praxis and communication and seeing communication
as not just a technique but as a question of praxis—where theories of communication and
practices of communication are in a relationship, (b) by seeing developmental praxis as
intimately tied to the question of communication, and (c) by letting praxis emerge as the
“middle term” or the connecting link between development and communication. We
deconstruct three discourses of development: the growth-centric discourse, those offering
“developmental alternatives” (like human developmental perspectives), and those
presenting “alternatives to development” (like postdevelopmentalist positions focused on
“third world” or the “local,” etc.), to move to a fourth discourse that problematizes both
modernism and capitalism, as it opens up the discourses of communication (modernist,
dependency theory, participatory approach, etc.) for inquiry. We attempt to go beyond the
modernist and capitalist understandings of development to introduce the logic-languageethos
of “world of the third” as against third world-ist imaginations. This helps us rethink
the praxis of communication in creating, on the one hand, community- or social
movements–driven developmental futures and, on the other, engendering post-Orientalist
and postcapitalist forms of life in local or world of the third contexts. We also emphasize
the need to reflect on the question of the “subject” (as also psychoanalytic
conceptualizations of the “psyche”) and the need to learn to “work through” “groups” in
order to usher in depth and nuance in the praxis of development communication.
This work began in 2013 in a village in Rayagada named Emaliguda and is currently in the process of expanding further in six to seven other villages in and around the district. The action research work so far has generated some insight and understanding around the condition of singleness among adivasi women and in the process has helped mobilize a single women’s collective called Eka Nari Sanghathan. This paper, is also a reflection on the questions that have emerged as a result of being immersed in what is commonly referred to as developmental work in the development sector. With critiques of the discourse and practice of development at hand, the search embarked upon three years ago continues still and the questions that were important then, remain alive and unanswered till today. Having struggled with these questions on the way, what has eventually become an object of enquiry is what can be called the praxis (as against pure practice that takes the form training-skill building-consciousness raising) of transformation.
Based on this, the paper seeks to explore collaboratively (that is, with the members of the Sanghathan) possibilities of methodological transformation in extant methods of transformation. It critically engages with existing (somewhat under-theorised) practices that are hegemonic in mainstream development, and try to arrive at a reformed understanding of transformative praxis. Paradoxically, mainstream development largely claims to speak of transformation, but mostly falls short of distinguishing transformation from State-sponsored or funded developmental deliverables. This paper shows how this action research work, which could also be called gender work in and with the adivasi rural, fails to find much purchase in current developmental practices hegemonised by the women's Self-Help Group (SHG) model. It also does not find much space in current frameworks of left politics hegemonised by metaphors of (violent) class struggle or demands on the liberal State.
Thus, the particular philosophy of transformative praxis that was generated along with the action research process gestures towards departures from both mainstream developmental conduits of action (marked by collectivisation for action, collectivisation as a means to an end), and traditional forms of Marxist and woman-centered, as against gender-focused, politics that have hitherto framed dominant discourses and practices of transformation. Through a critique of the existing empirical work of transformation in the development sector, the paper argues a rethink of extant philosophies of transformation, the possible learning and demonstration of which, is in the fractured stories and in the methods of praxis engendered by Eka Nari Sanghathan.
The paper advocates for ways that may help us to learn to learn from them, largely through (a) rethinking methodologies of actioning research and researching action simultaneously, keeping connections between theory-practice alive, (b) revisiting concepts such as woman, community, collectives, gender work, power and political, some of the concepts that have been conveniently co- opted by the discourse of development and are loosely deployed without much attention to what the concepts actually imply and the kind of implications these can have on our practice, (c) traversing the difficult and largely deferred path of exploring both the overt and the secret language/logic/ethos of adivasi life worlds and life forms as also gendered subaltern histories and worldviews that have hitherto been foreclosed, and finally (d) exploring impossible collaborative praxis of transformation, distinct from mainstream practice of development, that are geared towards rethinking the ethical and the political through the non-violent reconstitution and rehabilitation of desire and through re-subjectivation.
The problem that has opened up with this action research work, which is an attempt to work on the question of subject, social and political transformation (the three axes of transformation that stand in mutual constitutivity), is how to bring these three axes in dialogue with each other. In other words, if these three axes of transformation are mutually constitutive, then how does this mutuality and constitutivity translate into praxis? What does it do to the question of praxis? How does one account for their simultaneity (transformations in subject, social and political taking place in tandem with each other)? And how does it respond to the question of the (im)possibility of transformed futures? What is it to work and think deconstructively; what is it to engage with the problem(s) at hand is what seems to me as of now “my heightened sense of necessary absurdity”; and this paper is an attempt at exploring deconstructively, the above mentioned questions. The exploration however, takes me to psychoanalysis.
within the context of collective mobilisation and formation of Eka Nari Sanghathan (Single
Womens’ Collective) in a tribal village Emaliguda in the Rayagada district of Odisha. The process
of public and collective articulation, and analysis of the everyday experience and condition of
singleness in rural women, gave way to the becoming of a collective where women who have
been abandoned by their families, or have been widowed or have been left unmarried, have
come together with an objective of paving the Sanghathan's (i.e. organisation’s) own path,
spelling out its own well‐being, carving out its own language of empowerment, and taking
charge of a possible common future. A future beyond mere and already stated and dictated
developmental agendas. This is an emergent and contingent being‐in‐common that premises
itself on the ethico‐politics of relationality, and politics of pluralism, and also politics of love and
friendship. As this initiative progressed towards collective (in) action, while engaging with the
state, the society at large and one’s own self as ethico‐political subject, the attempt has been to
revisit the hegemonic understanding of the discourse and practice around development through
generating a critique of the capitalocentric and orientalist nature of developmentalism, and
through this interrogation, arrive at a re‐imagination and re‐formulation of development. It also
makes a move towards understanding the question of transformation in its three inter‐related
axes: political, social, and self. This research is a kind of reflexive writing on the process of
righting wrongs, reflecting how an in‐depth transformative process requires these three sites of
transformation to be engaged with continuously and simultaneously in a trialogue. This paper
attempts to offer a possible philosophy of transformative praxis that engenders change and
collective formation among the gendered subaltern through participatory processes of self‐
reflection and reflection on the process of collectivisation, through an engagement with Marxist,
Gandhian, and Tagorite takes on transformation, as also contemporary (trans)formations
around new social movements post Laclau and Mouffe (1985).