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Civil Society and Human Security
By Tejal Chandan and Sankhya Krishnan
September 18, 2007
Human security in simple terms refers to the well being of the citizen and encompasses economic, environmental, social, political, food, health and community security according to UNDP. Various opinion polls in India seeking to prioritise the public perception of a wide range of security threats have consistently ranked threats relating to human security ahead of threats relating to the security of the state. Human security is not only freedom from war but also the freedom from fear, freedom from want, and freedom of choice. Safety leads to freedom from fear, while well-being results in freedom from want. Human security is thus also linked to human development.
Civil society plays a critical role in enhancing the various dimensions of human security both directly and indirectly by providing an interface between the public and the two other actors, state and market, and acting as a pressure point on them to display greater transparency and accountability. Civil society's vital role in developing, advocating, building and implementing human security is evident from its involvement in key issues such as governance, human rights, justice, poverty alleviation, empowerment of the underprivileged and peace and stability. Moreover, globalization coupled with enhanced media penetration has rapidly spread knowledge about civil society, which in turn has led to increased appreciation of its role. Conceptually, civil society has emerged as a subject of trans-disciplinary discourse. While community groups, churches, the media or political interest groups have long played an important role at the local and national level, it is the more proactive involvement of the civil society on the global landscape that has gained momentum in recent times. Transnational networks of civil society groups are raising a louder voice as to how governments run countries and how corporations do business. Developing countries are witnessing the growth of an active civil society, which has been beneficial not only for local and national governance but also for enhancing human security.
The Centre for Security Analysis (CSA) has been focusing on issues relating to Civil Society, Security and Governance. As a first step, the CSA organized public lectures from Indian and US perspectives on the subject of Religion, Civil Society and Governance. This was followed by a national seminar on the theme Civil Society and Governance in Modern India. In August 2007, the CSA organised a two day international seminar on the theme Civil Society and Human Security: South and Southeast Asian Experiences to bring together the experiences of civil society in enhancing human security in South and Southeast Asia. The state and civil society work towards providing human security but at different levels. This seminar explored questions such as: How has the relationship between the civil society and the state improved? How has this relationship improved human security? How has it influenced the civil society, the state and human security? How does the civil society cope with regional organisations such as ASEAN and SAARC? How is the relationship between the state and civil society likely to evolve in the age of information technology and the Right to Information? How has the civil society itself undergone a change? How has it coped with the reality of ethnic, religious and other conflicts in the region?
Mr. N. Vittal, IAS, (Retd.), former Chief Vigilance Commissioner, delivered the keynote address at the seminar. He defined civil society in the words of Peter Drucker as the space that exists between the family, the state and the market and that which is non-governmental in nature and is not against the welfare of the citizen. Security, in his words, is related to the needs of the citizens. Quoting from Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he noted the four most important needs are life; food (which includes not only providing food but also access to food); clothing and shelter (which includes environmental security); and employment (which includes economic and financial security). The insurance of these needs is the exercise of security. Religion was one of the first institutions to provide people the guarantee for these needs but as time went by there was a separation between religion and the state. Today when the state fails to provide the basic security the civil society takes over. In the context of globalisation, Mr. Vittal questioned whether the role of civil society was to supplant or supplement the state and set the tone for the deliberations that followed.
Dr. Yashavantha Dongre, Professor, University of Mysore, in his paper Civil Society in India: An Overview, posited that civil society in India is neither a well-defined terrain nor accessible to mere structural, operational and institutional definitions. The pre-colonial setting in India had much greater space for people's (civil society) initiatives and the colonial rule apart from many things brought the 'individual' to the centre stage and made 'rugged individualism' a virtue. The post-independence era has seen greater institutionalization of civil society. In the institutionalised space, the civil society came to include both formal and non-formal (incorporated and unincorporated) entities that play significant roles in reforming and reframing our societal space. In the non-institutionalized space, civil society in India needs to be juxtaposed in terms of religion, caste, class, language and regional contradictions and harmonies. Dr. Dongre addressed the basic questions regarding the contribution of civil society in India, how it brings compatibility between the State interest, individual interest and the interests of the space between the two and the future of civil society in India.
Dr. Joseph Liow, Head of Research, RSIS, Singapore, gave an overview of the civil society in Southeast Asia and explored the role of the civil society in Malaysia. In his paper "Uncivil Society?": NGOs and the Narrowing of Religio-Political Space in Contemporary Malaysia, Dr. Liow noted that the increasingly important role that the NGOs and civil society organizations play in Malaysian politics and society has, to some extent, compelled the Malaysian state to provide room for them to articulate their priorities. In the Malaysian case, it is noticeable that, paradoxically, the proliferation of voices has not really resulted in any discernible expansion of the parameters of debate. He added that obvious instances of this paradox can be found in the debates over apostasy, freedom of religion, and the primacy of shari'a in Muslim life as well as the question of moral policing, where a sizeable number of vocal Muslim civil society groups and NGOs have at times championed positions even more hard-line and conservative than those taken by the state. He explained that a close perusal of the dominant civil society agenda in Malaysia offers discourses that in fact impose limits on debates about Islam, unlike Indonesia where a "cultural Islam" emerged in the 1980s and offered a trenchant critique of the prevailing political agenda of the country's Islamist parties and sought to redefine Islam's relations with the state.
The session on civil society and social security covered the issues of social protection from poverty, disability, corruption and unemployment. Dr. Sharit Bhowmik, Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, in his paper Civil Society and Urban Poverty, examined urban poverty in the context of the changing position of labour in the cities and covered the changing employment patterns in the large cities, especially Mumbai, and its effect on housing. Slum dwellers comprise a majority of Mumbai's population and they contribute to its economy in a number of ways. However when urban land is available at a high premium, it is these people who are targeted as the villains responsible for the growing urban crises. Slums are projected as the causes of most, if not all, urban problems. He noted that NGOs have emerged as powerful bodies in influencing the city's bureaucracy and its policies and they have been active in eviction of slums and street vendors, leading to greater insecurity and poverty among the marginalized. Dr. Bhowmik sought to examine how the situation can be altered to have world-class cities for all with inclusive planning for the working poor.
Dr. Mokbul Ahmad, Assistant Professor, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand and Mr. Jeevan Thiagarajah, Executive Director, Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, Sri Lanka addressed the challenges to civil society in bringing peace in conflict situations. Dr. Ahmad posited that the failure of the state to assist the poor or reduce poverty led to a dramatic growth of NGOs to fill the gap. Some of the activities of the NGOs have been opposed by religious leaders and organisations. Most notably, NGOs involved in micro-credit have been the target of fundamentalists as charging interest is forbidden in Islam. Some NGOs have shown success in promoting human rights particularly women's rights but this too has been accompanied by a backlash from the local elite, religious leaders and organisations. In a country like Bangladesh with 90% of the laws being secular, 87% of the population being Muslim and Islam being the state religion, there are legal problems from unresolved conflicts in the law. Women's independence and women's empowerment programmes are against the beliefs of many orthodox Muslims, but 'gender-development' is a leading concern of Northern donors. Dr. Ahmad suggested that the donors and NGOs need co-operation or at least a non-conflicting attitude from the religious leaders and that the donors and the state in Bangladesh should formulate their policies keeping in mind this problem of the NGOs and their clients in Bangladesh.
Mr. Jeevan Thiagarajah noted that the conflict-affected regions lagged behind the rest of the country in key economic and human development outcomes. He enumerated four pre-conditions for political stability in Sri Lanka including a negotiated political settlement, demilitarization of the conflict, social and economic reconstruction and intercommunity reconciliation. Drawing on Amartya Sen, he said that an adequate concept of human security must place a clear focus on human lives, enlarge the understanding of human rights to include the social dimension, and encompass the role of social arrangements in enabling human security. He called for the development of a common civic culture that would transcend the various ethnic cultures and provide the meeting ground for people to interact across cultural borders, a key requirement for nation-building.
The civil society also plays a critical role in advancing human rights and catering to social justice. The session covering these issues included presentations by Ms. Braema Mathiaparanam, Visiting Research Fellow, ISEAS, Singapore and Dr. Lalit Kumar, Deputy Adviser (Voluntary Action), Planning Commission, New Delhi. Ms. Mathiaparanam noted the need for protection and empowerment of communities to occur from a rights-based approach. She gave an overview of the migrant workers phenomenon and the role of the ASEAN and the individual countries in promoting human rights and stated that although there has not been a clear response with regard to the rights of the migrant workers at the ASEAN level, responses from individual countries and groups within them have been more fruitful. Her presentation further exemplified the various civil society organisations (CSO) involved in securing the rights of migrant workers and highlighted the importance of not only public- private partnerships but also CSO unions, employer associations, recruitment agencies, foreign governments and off-shore NGOs. She further highlighted the challenges of tensions between the citizens and migrant workers.
Dr. Lalit Kumar noted that the civil society has been serving as an effective non-political link between the people and the state and has been providing innovative solutions to poverty, deprivation, discrimination and exclusion. Civil society organisations create social capital by binding the village communities as a whole, while working for common developmental causes in the areas of education, health, sanitation, environment or micro-credit. Further, CSOs enhance social justice through the mobilization of citizens to encourage changes in government policy and in business behaviour. In order to empower independent voluntary organisations (VOs), he noted the need for creating an enabling environment for VOs that stimulates their enterprise and effectiveness and safeguards their autonomy. This would enable VOs to legitimately mobilize necessary financial resources from India and abroad, encourage them to adopt transparent and accountable systems of governance and management, and identify systems by which the Government may work together with VOs on the basis of mutual trust and respect.
In the closing session on civil society and governance, Mr. Ramesh Ramanathan, Co-founder, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, Bangalore, noted that India's growing urban population, which would encompass a majority of the country within the next two decades, has brought with it a set of complex challenges, for which we are ill-prepared. In his presentation Civil Society: An Inflection Point in India he stated that in order to address these challenges, we must first come to terms with the phenomenon of urbanization rather than treating it with suspicion. He traced the political apathy of the middle class to the fact that democracy had preceded the emergence of the middle class in India which hence took political rights for granted. However, he suggested that middle class activism through the space of civil society could aggregate into a potent political force and encouraged the concept of the Area Sabha to bring citizens into a formal political process of collective decision-making. He argued that the role of the state as a regulator for the market could also be extended to regulating the functioning of civil society organisations to ensure that they are harnessed towards positive outcomes. He added that civil society organisations could be the catalysts for the deepening of democratic processes in India by adopting an approach of constructive engagement.
The seminar thus covered the subthemes of civil society and governance, social security, human rights and social justice and civil society in conflict situations. The proceedings of the seminar will be published as an edited volume. Keeping in view the growing importance of NGOs in bringing peace, the CSA will organise a seminar specifically covering the theme of Civil Society in Conflict Situations on October 5-6, 2007. India faces a number of internal security challenges across its entire land mass ranging from insurgency movement in Kashmir to the ethnic conflicts in the Northeast and the Naxalite inspired violence spread across various states in the so-called 'red corridor.' The Indian state has used various instruments to address these conflicts including military force, political negotiations and economic packages but with only partial success. If these conflicts are to have a chance of being resolved, a bottom-up approach involving the participation of civil society is equally important.