social capital - possibility is in our hands

Another long-standing topic that I am finally getting around to putting on my blog... and a good follow-up for the previous blog. It struck me one day in Delwara as I found myself trying to stop two 'community leaders' from neighbouring communities - one a tribal (Gameti) the other a scheduled caste (Meghwal - traditionally tanners/leather-workers).

The fight was over some misunderstanding/miscommunication rather than any real transgression though there were some territorial undertones. I was standing on top of a pile of sand on top of the hill upon which the tribal community has built their basti. It's a beautiful location and the houses there have the best view of the whole village - including the Devigarh fort. Of course, it's cramped up there, there's no water supply (a real problem for the women and young girls who fetch it), and the community is one of the poorest in the village so - relative freedom aside - life is pretty tough for the inhabitants.

I once watched an 80 year-old man on top of that hill crushing rocks next to a 4x6 foot stone cubicle with no roof (which, I discovered later was his home). This involve hammering a 6" iron nail into the rocky ground by banging it with a big stone. In the corner of the cubicle was a little hand-made earthern stove with some ashes at the bottom of it. The old man was too old to really earn any money through labour work. He got most of his meals from the neighbours - which they gave up with what seemed like a mix of reluctance and obligation. After the community sent an application to the citizen's forum, roofing was arranged - just in time to keep his home dry as the monsoon rains started a few days later. By the time we went to put the roof up, he had expanded his house to around 7x6 feet using the stones he had been crushing right there on the spot. Amazing.

In any case, back to the fight. So, there had been some miscommunication. The meghwal chap was working as a mason on the construction work of a water tank. Some mistrust had emerged over the issue of whether work was properly being distributed between therespective labourers of the tribal and the Meghwal community. By the time I was at the site, the situation was pretty bad. There was shouting, throwing of insults, angry faces, high BP, and people throwing their hands up in the air. It reached the point where the parties were shouting that no water tank would be built in that location. Well, there goes the reliable, convenient water source for about 50 families.

As I stood on top of that hill and calmed the people down, shifted the blame onto myself and my team (we did have an unfortunate hand in propagating the miscommunication - it happens sometimes that false information circulates unintentionally in the messy, complex chaos that gets called 'the community') , calmed the two people down, and re-established the fact that the water tank really was a good idea and that everything was going to be ok I found myself thinking about social capital... and my thoughts went something like this...

Social capital is a form of 'the commons'. It is, perhaps, the most fundamental form of 'the commons'. Traditionally 'the commons' has referred to natural resources - initially pasture lands on which shepherds could graze their cattle and later it has expanded to include things like the climate or biodiversity. But my sense is that we really need to start talking about what it is that holds all these things together - what it is that we need to restore if we want to address the tragedy of these commons. And that thing is social capital: our relationships and the potential they represent for enriching lives.

Social capital is the common resource that has been most ignored and most overlooked in the general discourse on the commons. It is like a vast, untapped - almost infinite - sea - like the internet - source of potential for creating the world in new and wonderful ways. If we have high levels of social capital - deep, meaningful relationships with each other that are bursting with opportunities for collaboration - jointly making things happen in ways that are mutually beneficial - then what can't we achieve?

Unlike the traditional and modern commons - our grazing lands and the ecosphere for example - social capital (can we venture calling it community?) has a direct link with our assumptions, biases and prejudices: the way we perceive ourselves, others and the relationship in-between. For example, do we distinguish people - either consciously or unconsciously - according to religion, caste, gender, age, class, education status, appearance, position within an organisation? Do we assign different levels of trust/mistrust based on this? Do we open or close opportunities for working together or, for that matter, even talking to each other based on this?

Every time I make a judgement based on identity and foreclose an interaction, an opportunity to understand, listen, engage and build a relationship, I am simultaneously denying myself and the other person an opportunity to acquire social capital. And this appears to be the most defining feature of what still seems to get called 'community' in this communally dilapidated age. Walls exist everywhere, between everyone, and the result is a bunch of isolated people who can't even have the conversations that they need to have to begin thinking about what it would take to change the world for the better.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to get at here but I think the main point is that if we want to ever start the process of addressing the world's biggest problems we need to engage in a very real way with some of the very smallest. Why do I call it the smallest? Well, given my (perhaps naieve) sense of how the world works - one's own behaviour is the only thing that one really has any control over. I'm not trying to say that it's easy and I don't mean to sound corny but it really does make sense. So it seems that part of saving the world is helping people to realise that they can have control over themselves, and that collectively, if a group of individuals can wake up to this call for taking responsibility for their own behaviour, they can access a vast sea of social capital just waiting to be unleashed as a force for creating a better world together

Create the opportunities - the spaces and the call to get inside them and tap into the source of community. Let them do it!