Stories from the grassroots | Thoughts on development
This interview had appeared a few years ago in the Cornell Policy Review, a journal of the Cornell Institute of Public Affairs, Cornell University, USA. My views on Micro-finance still remain the same.
Manikarnika (name changed both for privacy and security reasons) was a lively sixteen year old studying in a college near her village which was located 200 kms from the state capital of a eastern state of India. Being a tribal girl was not easy and she was lucky to have a father who ensured that all his four children got a decent education. Manikarnika aspired to become a nurse and dreamt of serving in a hospital located close to her village. From her young days, she was very concerned about the plight of her people and wanted to contribute in
Traditional thinking associates leadership with authority and it is intuitively interpreted as having the power to lead people and organizations to bring about the change that one desires. Occupying positions of authority reinforces this understanding and people start relying more and more on the ‘power’ that goes with the position. Over time, people tend to start having an exaggerated sense of self-importance and start having unrealistic expectations of themselves. They also begin to operate with the false conviction that they are indispensable to the ‘system’ around them and sub-consciously start taking on roles and responsibilities beyond what they are capable
Read my latest article in the August 2019 of Civil Society magazine at https://civilsocietyonline.com/column/village-voices/bridging-the-trust-deficit/