By -K.L.Khanna, New Delhi :The concept and term of empowerment has been in vogue for quite some time. Different people have tried to explain this concept in different ways, but the point is that we have to fix it. Keeping the concept vague may serve individual purposes. But concretisation too has its dangers. Here I must begin with my own experience of working with people in my organization. My organization called Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS) is a body of the Ministry of Youth Affairs that has a country –wide network of 500 offices in as many districts and a quarter million village level youth bodies called youth clubs. Many of these youth bodies show good sustainable signs of institutions. Many others exhibit episodic-institution-like qualities. The question of Empowerment and Development- as concepts and practice, specially in the contexts of youth and adolescents, have always been in the fore front of our concern and working. Therefore NYKS has no intention of keeping a popular and oft-quoted concept in a fluid state of understanding and individual usefulness. One may find a concept too rigid in a certain context where the available parameters and social imperatives can be prohibitive to follow the concept to its pristine meaning and application. Many have defined the term in the older vein of giving and receiving power; or in the manner of much celebrated laissez faire type of inclusion of the poor; that is, trickle down of power in the manner the economy has trickled down to the poor and is desperate to take them above the poverty line (!!). But it is not yet visible. Some have taken the term to mean a stage of creating wherewithal for applying choice mechanism with the newly empowered person. However, universalization of a concept in a rigid form may not serve the purpose of its universal application in various cultural, economic and political contexts. For our purpose of defining empowerment as a concept and then testing its applicability on our different programmes, we cite below the learning points from three case studies—all of which belong to the knowledge and intervention areas of our mandate and related work:-
Case Study no. 1:
Different people- officers and workers were asked what they meant by the term when they used this in their contexts of work. Various things were said. By and large, reducing their statements and contents in short clauses we get to know the following understanding of the term “empowerment”:-
1.1. Giving the subject of the exercise of empowerment, certain power to do what he wants to do;
1.2. Upgrading his skills so that he is confident and is skilled to make his life better;
1.3. Power means strength, therefore empowerment means strengthening a person with various qualities and skills;
1.4. Empowerment means enabling a person for making sound decisions about himself;
1.5. Investing some authority in the person being empowered;
1.6. Empowerment is creation of choices and making people aware about those choices and to enable them to make use of those (Definition offered by Commonwealth Youth Programme).
Case Study no. 2:-
NYKS records from its field of 2,50,000 youth clubs, the following observations which will help in defining the concept in an empirical and categorical situation:-
1. Community and Family are the basic and strongest units of behaviour formation for an individual. We see it happening in a routine way of our dealing with the working of a youth club;
2. Understanding of one’s status and the connected role within the family and the immediate community is seen to be the fundamental marker for accepting, rejecting or modifying behaviour;
3. Politics, more than governance is perceived to be the carrier of power to make changes or of obtaining certain advantages. Politics also is perceived to be a force for dealing with macro level religious, cultural and classificatory issues that shape or change shapes of identity;
4. Youth club is a new institution and is perceived (by its members and the community) to be associated with the values of education, modernity, volunteerism and idealism. Youth Club as an institution has a friend in the institution of Panchayat. There exists a continuum between a youth club and the village Panchayat. And this is one reason that has not allowed the youth club movement to catch high speed and shape. History and politics have not helped the Panchayati Raj system as much as the latter deserved or demanded. Youth Club movement gets rub of this betrayal. An institution when finds no space for expansion tends to go convoluted or it shrinks. This is what is happening with youth clubs. To an extent they form themselves, they grow, and finding no space to expand, or to transform, they like the yellow smoke in a melancholic café curl once about the house and fall asleep.
5. In the tribal areas mostly, the youth club serves as solidarity of the tribe behind the young persons who are members of the youth club in the village. In multi-ethnic or multi-tribe villages, as in Manipur, each ethnic group has its own youth club. So a village in Manipur may have several clubs, each belonging to a different tribe and ethnic group. Here, the youth club serves the purpose of asserting and strengthening identity of the ethnic group within the larger village community that is plural in nature but is bound together by a contract of living together. Similarly, in a multi-caste village, where the population of backward caste/s or of the scheduled caste is dominant, the latter tend to have a separate youth club for the obvious reasons of inclusion-exclusion principles of castes or/and when that is not an issue, then because of the reasons of emerging exclusive leadership in the dominant groups of “backward” castes.
6. Except for some cases (when the youth club is not transformed into a CBO or an NGO) when a youth club is “given” a programme of youth development or the community development by the NYK or by a sponsoring agency, it generally behaves like a reserved force, and exhibits nature of an episodic institution.
7. Teen clubs are still very young and are formed for the adolescents. Their fate is invariably linked with the youth clubs so far as long-term sustenance is concerned. However, in the context of learning and participation of their members, the teen clubs have started off well.
Case Study no. 3:-
Under the National Service Volunteer Scheme (NSVS) of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, about 5000 young persons are selected every year as National Service Volunteers (NSVs) and are put to work in the network of 500 district level NYKs in the country. They are given formal and institutionalised training in three phases, which cumulatively comes to 28 days. They are deployed in the NYKS field to work along with youth clubs or the NYKs in all fields of its work ranging from preparation of a small-time guideline for a youth club to being a member of the task force for organizing a mega event like National Integration Camp or a special programme like the great march of 2007 in memory of 1857 war of independence. We have the following feed back from their working in the field:-
1. Not all of them show individual strengths and aptitude for service to the people; but those who recognize their individual strengths quite early and build on those strengths; they succeed in creating certain niche for themselves in the community. After they have finished their tenure of mostly two years they:-
1.1.Enter into sustained relationships with the NYK; the network of youth clubs they had served in the tenure of their volunteer ship; political network of local and bigger political leaders; and a particular youth club whom they turn into a Community Based Organization or an NGO;
1.2. They keep improving their individual strengths in terms of leadership, personality up-gradation, communication skills and personal charm or assertiveness;
1.3. They are not static. They show a lot of practising physical mobility, within the village or the community in terms of leadership in society at large; and,
1.4. Earn money, and name, and many times certain political post at different levels of the PRIs or the legislature etc. They “feel” successful, and are considered by their immediate society as successful.
2. Many times, the youth club leaders and the active NSVs get in close cooperation with each other and they behave in a similar manner. This is natural in view of the fact that they grow in similar circumstances, opportunity-structures and guidance.
3. When they prefer to find a job, they get settled in the job. But when they get into a selected role of leadership, the process of their hold over the community keeps alive.
Definition of empowerment:-
All the three case studies given above help us in knowing how the youth think, how they behave and how they improve their lot in the medium of youth work being done by the NYKS and its field.
Case study no 1 shows that “power”, in the popular sense is perceived to be non-transferable status-based capital. One either has it or doesn’t. There is practically no perception of difference between power and authority. People generally do not believe that power can be shared. But the terms of sharing of authority (that too is perceived as power only) too rest on a zero sum game. If I part with some of my authority, I am likely to lose that to the extent the other person has gained it. “Give power to the people". This slogan too betrays the same popular understanding of power. A clear division between the giver and the taker. Some one is there that gives; someone waits there at the kerb of the street or the history who yearns to receive. I would rather use the new slogan: Empower people. But with the understanding of the term that is contained in this paper.
Sometimes, strength is perceived as power. This understanding of equalizing them emanates out of the popular notion of individualization of power. Strength is an individual entity. It is the property that is inherent in the character of an object or a person. But considering it to be synonymous with power only proves the point that people generally perceive “power” to be something inherent in the personality of the person, or the office, or the tradition through an authority. This notion of power becomes dangerous when the origin of (delegated) power (political) is perceived to be the result of charisma of a person or a family etc. In all such cases, the main function of power is seen as the one to dominate or to control or to rule. Empowerment with this general understanding will only mean giving power to some one by some one as a matter of delegation and that is meant, again, to control or to dominate or to act in a powerful way to others.
Is that the right way of understanding the Development principle of Empowerment!
In fact, the classical American notion of empowerment rests on the principle of “investing someone with a certain authority”. But that was in the eighteenth century when the American constitution was being written and its context was defined.
The definition offered by the Common wealth Youth Programme is much closer to the intention of Development in which “empowerment” is considered not just a matter of improving the personality of an individual or a group but that which demands of society or the government to create choices for an individual or the group that is subject of the action of empowerment. For sometime, we keep this definition before us as the entry point for finding the true, empirical and practical shape of empowerment. Some may not agree with the author of this note that a definition of an intervention strategy should beg its aspects from the empirical situation of human development. Apologia here is that a concept need not be ideological or esoteric to begin with. If it is based on the practice of a notion, that may lead us to equip the concept based on that notion in much easier and approachable manner; and if that explains the idea as it in reality takes shape because of, or with, the dynamics of society, then that is the true definition. Hence this exercise.
Observations given in the case studies above, though put forth in a very cut and dried manner for the sake of developing this argument, suggest that empowerment cannot be defined if we have the understanding of power in the terms given in these observations. Nor should it fully depend on the efforts of intervening agency for equipping an individual or the group with a certain knowledge base, or skills to exercise her choices (if those are available in society).
In order to define empowerment then, it is necessary to divest the concept of power of its generally understood transactional or delegated nature. There has to be something generative or transformational about power, which will help us in knowing the nature of empowerment. Or else, it will either be equated with skill-generation, or with delegation; and both of these will make no sense in the context of defining empowerment as one most important term of human development. My early lessons in the study of linguistics come rattling before me in helping me out of this dilemma. Do I have the skill to make bigger sentences out of the smallest ones like : I go; or, He goes!
Yes I have, when I am in the process of socialization to learn the language. I as a toddler listen, generalize, form and apply the principle of sentence construction and generate sentences. After about thirty days of listening and understanding the meaning of “I go”, I transform that basic learning, and generate a longer sentence like : “ I go to my room to sleep”.
Exercising of this inherent skill of generating a meaning through articulation of symbols and facts, I suppose is the first exercise in the empowerment of a child towards acquisition of language. In this process of empowerment, the power is g e n e r a t e d. My parents do not give me the power to acquire the first language. They help me finding relationships and generalizations, and in making my rules, which create power in me in knowing and mastering a language. I do not copy them in every sentence they speak. I make sense of sounds and the rules and apply them in generating sentences. This is just one dimension and one discipline of power generation in the context of empowerment. Adult human life is more complex that involves various dimensions of life which come under the purview of various academic disciplines. Empowerment, thus does not operate on a single aspect of life but on various dimensions with various disciplines. In the example given above the intellectual parameters are studied by the practitioners of linguistics. When applied on youth work the parameters will belong to the science or practice of youth work or social work or communication or training.
Power, as the following observations too will show, apart from being given or delegated, can also grow and can also be generated. It is precisely this understanding of power that can help us in understanding the concept of empowerment. Or else, the term will keep enjoying an elusive nature of interpretation by every one according to his convenience that will make every one happy akin to the understanding of five blind men appreciating different sides of an elephant and defining the animal in five different ways. That is a case of a total diversity of opinion.
Youth club as a group, or the youth leaders or the NSVs –as peer groups or as individuals show certain characteristics which lead to what can be seen as “empowerment” of those individuals or groups. They with a continuous practice of meeting people, participating in youth programmes; and over a period of time while building on social relationships, create a place for themselves in society where there was none earlier. They create a situation of power for themselves individually or for their youth club-turned CBO as a group, or as a peer group when they are together in the profession of social service and volunteerism as NSVs or the youth leaders. Nature of the power thus achieved is that it is not meant to dominate, it is shared, it is based on the natural strengths of the individual, and it has the spontaneity of life in it. It is not divisive but is of collaborative and co-optive nature. All the situations taken together indicate the directions of the definition of empowerment. Let us put them in order:-
– It is a process, which has various dimensions. This process operates on the values, behaviour, practices and the individual strengths or the group strengths; and this process can connect to different academic disciplines, concerns and practices;
– The process develops power in the individual or in the group. The power grows out of one’s relationships with others and working on those relationships; and not on a certain delegation. This power is defined not in terms of zero sum but as grown or created out of the development of social and other useful relationships.
– Power gathered thus helps the empowered individual or the group in exercising rights over the choices available in society. These choices can be of various order- interactive, transactional, behavioural, negotiational, career-oriented, rights and justice oriented etc. etc.
All the three statements taken together make a definition of empowerment.
Let us make the definition more crisp:-
Empowerment is a multi dimensional and multi-disciplinary process by which the inherent or cultivated strengths of individuals are honed along with expansion of their relationships by which they generate and grow power for themselves for making right choices and right designs in their individual lives.
When applied to a group or an institution, the individual is to be replaced with the group or the institution.
If members of a teen club or of a youth club are put in a vehement process of understanding personal strengths, and they undergo a process where they can strengthen their relationships and learn, then they are likely to be in a process of empowerment. Since learning constitutes an important aspect of the process of empowerment, therefore this process has the capacity to show itself as the process of socialization and re-socialization. Continuity of action on part of the subject of empowerment is the most essential component of the process of empowerment. Since the above definition of empowerment is shaped entirely on the empirical understanding of the process, its spontaneity and naturalness within the dynamics of society provide certain policy implications which when applied to different contexts of intervention may be useful. As for example:-
-It will be useful to institutionalise volunteerism among the young people of the country in a fairly prolonged period of say one or two years;
-It will be useful to structure the training of youth for entrepreneurship with the understanding of extra socialization and social enterprise; etc. etc.
Every training given to an adolescent or a youth, and especially the type that deals with her inner strengths and realization about her individual personality, individuality, status within the family and her role in society; and a training that makes her aware about her creative and vibrant place in the web of relationships, ushers her in the process of empowerment which is open ended, unlimited and all consuming. But not just the training in isolation. The training ought to be the beginning of a process of intense interaction and progress.
Youth Empowerment, Youth Development and Life skills:-
Youth Empowerment is thus a dynamic position, which can be used as a strategy for the ends of Youth Development, which, in most general terms, is competency formation. Life Skills is another strategy towards youth Development or say, competency formation, but not in that general a way which the Youth Empowerment takes up. Life Skills constitute only one dimension of youth development in which the process of empowerment is involved in the rendition of life skills to the youth.
Secondly, delivery of life skills to the adolescent must stand on the need and facility of expansion of relationships of the subject vis a vis her family, neighbourhood and society at large. Doing that would provide the important dimension of instrumentality of life skills in the routinization of self-generated power and the resultant competency formation.
Author is
Jt. Director (Research, Evaluation & Training) Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan,MoYS, GOI
khannakl@gmail.com phone: 09968264512