Whose Reality Counts ?
Ashok Khosla

The world has for so long been run by those who have usurped the power to run it, and in the manner that is to their best advantage, we frequently forget that they have no more right to do so than anyone else. 

Worse, even those who are ruled often fall into the trap of assuming that the proper goals of society lie in perpetuating and even intensifying the present order of things.   Thus comes about the common paradox that groups whose interests lie in direct opposition to each other actually wish and work for the same social goals. 

It is not only history that is written by the conqueror or the dominant group.  Science, too, has its elites who, as Thomas Kuhn and others have shown, can long delay the acceptance of new ideas, even though the body of empirical evidence is very much in favour of change. 

The theory and practice of Development suffers more from this syndrome than most disciplines.  Robert Chambers, in his wonderful recent book Whose Reality Counts?  vividly shows how even researchers with little local commitment can project their mindsets and preconceived notions far more effectively into the design of development programmes than can the people with and for whom they ostensibly work. 

The divergence that exists between the perceptions, aspirations and even mindsets of various development constituencies is, of course, at the root of the systemic rot that besets many of our societies today.  Corporations produce more and more goods and hard sell them to consumers who do not really need them.  Paternalistic governments create policies, without consultation, to promote the welfare of the poor and end up benefiting the rich.  Academics construct more and more abstruse theories and research methods, getting further and further from the realities of life of those they seek to analyse and support.   The voluntary sector may well have a better handle on the reality of the people it works with but often cannot cope with the reality of its own inadequacy in mobilising the resources it needs to make a major impact. 

So, by default, those in power continue to stay in power and make decisions “for the good of all”.

But what kind of good, and for whom?  Whose reality really counts?  The 10 percent or so people whose economic status enables them to get all the benefits of participating in a globalised economy, or the 60 percent who do not even know what it is?  The 1 percent who own cars and want freeways or the 80 percent who cannot aspire to much more than a bicycle and need bicycle tracks?  The handful of people who can afford bottled mineral water or the multitudes who need clean tap water?  The employers or the workers?  The foresters or the tribals?

The well-fed or the hungry?  The hunters or the hunted?

So far, the winner has always been one who comes first:  the employer, the forester, the well-fed, the hunter.  And it is invariably the perspective of the winner that drives the decision processes of society.  This is why we invest in large, centralised, high technology projects instead of building community institutions that can find their own  small, local humane solutions to everyday problems.  And why we have adopted methods of governance that have simply substituted one system of feudalism with another.   

Even without getting into Marxist or other ideological polemics, it is not hard to see that where one stands in this debate largely depends on where one sits. 

But, given the rapid disintegration of our society, the destruction of our environment and the disappearance of our value systems, the seat is beginning to heat up.  The hunted are beginning to fight back.  Soon they will become the hunters.  The days are numbered for those of us who have to share with those who do not, either voluntarily or by force.   q

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