The results of the just concluded assembly election have thrown up some very interesting discussion. The results also indicate a major change.
While people are expecting a lot in the country to change, what do these results mean to humanitarian action in India?
Mihir Bhat, fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Director of the All India Disaster Management Institute tells rediff.com’s Vicky Nanjappa that the youth of the country will swing into action to see what gets done on the ground.
The assembly election results have made every political party sit up and rethink its strategy.
The state-to-citizen relationship is under rapid transformation. Governance and economic development are top on the citizen agenda. These changes are not limited to the political arena alone. It is also changing the way victims -- poor or other -- see political parties and the power they hold in government to save life or act in humanitarian interest.
What can humanitarian agencies, like those offering flood relief in Uttarakhand or cyclone relief in coastal Odisha learn from the results? Five trends seem to be emerging.
Youth will swing into action. It is the young, men and women, -- in schools, colleges, their first job in cities or small towns, waiting for National Rural Employment Guarantee Act payments, struggling to get registered to receive cash transfer -- who will give a push one way or the other to see what gets done on the ground.
The youth as humanitarian actors will play a far greater role in giving relief, using relief goods and recovery opportunities, and monitoring humanitarian action by the outsiders in their communities.
The power of large organisations and agencies is eroding. Size did matter to deliver large scale relief across districts and cities, but citizens seem to be demanding new, local, grassroots, direct, and agile agencies to take up service delivery of water, or building road out of villages, repairing damaged bus stops. Large organisations are assumed to be slow, wasteful, less watchful, and hard to reach out to.
Dissatisfaction with authorities and agencies in power is increasing among citizens. Those who have offered relief in the past to the community will have less chance to be accepted in the same community if their relief performance was not satisfactory. Gratitude as a first and long lasting response is gone. Level of satisfaction matters more over well-worded policies.
State level performance matters more than new far rehearing national policies and proclamations. It is of little interest to victims what the central guidelines and mechanisms are for humanitarian action. What victims will look at now is how these intentions are turned into action, how it affects their lives in terms of their restored income, rebuilt asset, and access to disrupted water or health.
Direct touch with victims is now even more important. Humanitarian victims want their voices to be heard. They know what they want, how they want, who should deliver it and when. Just because relief is a charity it will not be taken up with everlasting thanks. In fact, humanitarian action is seen more and more as on important role of the state and the civil society.
In an increasingly connected India elections and humanitarian action, ability to elect who should lead and the need to serve humanitarian victims, cannot be separated easily anymore.
The above five trends may not be linear in the coming months. It will grow branches in new directions but none of the trends seem to be dead.
These trends will continue and affect humanitarian agencies and their action not only in Odisha and Uttrakhand but also in hotspots of floods, droughts, cyclones, salinity, and landslide areas of India.
Humanitarian action from now on will be more effective when it is not just a charity or relief but a well governed development and a participatory democratic benefit to the life of the victim.
