Neighbourhood Parliaments--

1
Neighbourhood Parliaments-- A Process towards
Universal Inclusion
2
Neighborhood Parliaments

• A story
• of a movement in India
• that creates
• an enabling environment
• towards achieving the aspirations of .
  

3
Neighborhood Parliaments

• To live together in peace with one another as
  good neighbors (Charter of the UN)
• 'A society for all is one in which people play
  an active role in peace and development
• Using participatory processes that involve all
  stakeholders

4
Neighborhood Parliaments

• 'Peoples participation'
• 'People must have power to make decisions that
  affect their lives'
• 'Bottom up approach' 
•  

5
Neighborhood Parliaments

• 'Participation of marginalized groups whose
  voices have not, or have hardly, been heard
• 'Placing people at the centre of sustainable
  development efforts'

6
Background

• 1970s - Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh started the
  Grameen Bank
• Micro finance emerged as a prominent financial
  service.
• provided financial services to the people living
  in poverty, long excluded by mainstream banking
  and financial market.

7
Micro Finance Self Groups

• Today micro finance has emerged as an industry
• big multi-national and national commercial banks
  are interested
• the people living in poverty and their
  collectives have been excellent in prompt
  repayment

8
INDIA

• 1980s - National Bank for Agriculture and Rural
  Development, (NABARD) India took the initiative
  of group lending by promoting self-help groups.

Kerala
Tamil Nadu
9
Tripartite initiative in Kerala

• 1990s Kerala government
• a women-oriented antipoverty programme
  built on the concept
• and strategies of micro finance
• http//www.kudumbashree.org/
• NABARD, the UNICEF, and the urban poverty cell of
  the Local Administrative Department, Government
  of Kerala

10
vision
To eradicate absolute poverty in ten years
through concerted community action under the
leadership of Local Self Governments by
facilitating organization of the poor combining
self-help with demand led convergence of
available services and resources to tackle the
multiple dimensions and manifestations of poverty
holistically.
11
Strategy

• Identifying the Poor families
• Empowering the poor women
• Encouraging thrift and investment through credit
• Improving incomes of the poor through improved
  skills and investments for self-employment.
• Ensuring better health and nutrition for all.
• Ensuring basic amenities like safe drinking
  water, sanitary latrines, improved shelter and
  overall environment improvement.
• Ensuring a minimum of primary education for all
  children belonging to risk families.
• Enabling the poor to participate in the
  decentralization process

12
Identifying the poor

• The nine factors
• Scheduled Castes and Tribes
• Only one or none of adult family members being
  employed.
• Thatched house.
• Lack of household sanitary latrines.
• Non-availability of safe drinking water.
• Family having two meals or less per day.
• Alcohol or drug addicts in the family.
• Family having at least one illiterate member.
• Family having at least one child below 5 years.

13
Neighborhood Units

• 215 local governments
• Around 175,000 neighborhood units federated at
  different level
• 40 of the "planned expenditure" of the State
  is put at the disposal of the local governments
• planning begins at these well-defined,
  numerically-organized neighborhood forums.

14
Neighborhood Forums

• Kodimunai was organized into 16 territorially
  grouped neighborhood forums of about thirty
  families each.
• These neighborhood groups discussed on various
  matters that affected their lives.

15
A shift

• The experiment at Kodimunai limited to catholic
  parishes spread to other villages both within the
  district and else where in India.
• From 1992
• A systematic effort was made to make the approach
  totally secular under an inter-religious
  leadership

16
Neighborhood Community Network (NCN)

• A Global Dream
• Gradually the initiative gave shape to a dream
  of multi-tier global federation of neighborhood
  parliaments under the banner of NCN-
  http//www.ncnworld.org/

17
Neighborhood smaller forum

• NCN insists on
• neighborhood structure
• rather than structures merely
• at the level of the village or town, because
  the bigger a forum gets to be the more the small
  voices
• of small people go unheeded
• and it all becomes a game of the big
• to alienation of the small.

18
Rationale behind the Network

• When people have their say, it will be for their
  liberation.
• when people are empowered they will not tolerate
  any slight to their dignity.

19
Rationale behind the Network

• The ability to have ones say presupposes forums
  to talk which are not available in the present
  structures of merely representative democracy
• The available talking forums are too big and not
  viable for the people living in poverty and the
  oppressed to express themselves on an ongoing
  basis.

20
Neighborhood Parliaments
The essence of the matter is that the very size
of the participatory forums or the parliaments
we have today makes it difficult for people,
especially women to feel empowered.
21
Multi-tier federation

• The power must go into the hands of the people
  with small voices at the base.
• The solution is to make the talking-forums small
  and create a global multi-tier federation of
  them.

22
Dreaming of a new world

• The whole world gets organized into neighborhood
  parliaments of about 30 neighboring families.
• Each neighborhood of 30 families becomes a kind
  of a mini-world or a mini-nation.

23
Dreaming of a new world

• Each neighborhood parliament has a neighborhood
  cabinet,
• with a chief minister and ministers for various
  concerns like
• health,
• hygiene,
• environment,
• income generation,
• childrens welfare,
• adolescents guidance,
• and others- that are relevant

24
Dreaming of a new world

• Neighborhood parliaments
• Village parliaments
• Local government parliaments
• Block parliaments,
• District parliaments,
• State parliaments,
• National parliaments,
• International regional parliaments
• The world parliament each with its cabinet.
  (mind you not United Nations but a world
  parliament)

25
Neighborhood Parliaments

• The whole process is guided
• by certain principles
• Numerical Uniformity
• Smallness of Size
• Recall
• Subsidiarity
• Convergence

26
Principle of Numerical Uniformity
certain number of neighborhood parliaments
village-parliament certain number of
village parliaments, local government
parliament
27
Principle of Smallness of Size

• The advantage
• Everyone knows everyone face to face.
• And everyones weaknesses and strengths.
• One cannot go on fooling a face-to-face community
  for long
• - Mohandas Gandhi

28
Principle of Recall

• We dont need to wait for five years to call back
  a candidate whom we elected from one level of
  the parliament to the next.
• We can convene our parliament any time we want.
• We can decide together to send someone else who
  would explain and represent our concerns better.

29
Principle of Subsidiarity

• Subsidiary units get the focus here.
• Vitality, dynamism and power are concentrated
  more at the lowest levels possible.
• No business that could be handled at a lower
  level is taken to any level above it.
• Higher levels deal only with those matters that
  the lower levels cannot handle.

30

Principle of Convergence

• Everything converges at the network.
• Everything is done through it.
• This reinforces the structures further and
  further.
• Thus whether childrens programme, adolescents
  programme, self-help groups or whatever,
  everything is referred to neighborhoods their
  representative federations.

31
(No Transcript)
32
Giving Community organizations greater
involvement in the design and implementation of
local projects, particularly in the areas
of education, health care, resource management
and social protection -Copenhagen