Even from his initial visits to the different corners of the North East, Sanjoy recognised the potential for growth and progress, that was there in the people he met. This feeling and knowledge got reinforced after deeper interactions. And so he began to explore through thought, word and action, different ways of creating forums and possibilities for this latent force to come out into the forefront.
Sanjoy Ghose

Voluntary action in India has existed both alongside and in opposition to the State. One can attempt to map that space ideologically as a continuum, with spontaneous peoples' movements that emerge as a reaction to a perceived or real threat, on the left, to the fundamentalist assertion of group identity on the right. To illustrate: the AASU/ULFA uprising, the popular and sustained Naxalite movement in Telangana and Naxalbari would be on the left. On the right would be the community or religion specific organisations and programmes that we are so familiar with; trusts for the education of a particular sect, institutions that portray supremacy of one religion over another. One can also think of the space as a continuum of views between the standpoints of basic 'rights' to basic 'needs'. The first view puts the perception of the

individuals involved in the struggle at the centre, the other locates the individuals as beneficiaries in the process of development. If we attempt to draw this space, it would perhaps resemble this:

The middle ground between the two opposite streams of voluntary action, between confrontation and welfare, is occupied by two quite different currents. The first is that of Gandhian constructive work, with its unshakable faith in democratic processes and values, and the subjugation of the needs of the individual to the imperatives of the community. It is not by chance that the strongest proponents of the Panchayati Raj 73rd amendment were the Gandhian institutions. This is what has been categorised 'self-motivated' service delivery in the model above.

Ironically, the middle ground is shared by what is today an undoubtedly more pervasive form of voluntary work, that of the sphere of 'non-governmental' action. The space taken by these initiatives has emerged largely from the 'market', provided in terms of improving access to service delivery. Here again it is important to note that at the organisational level, these are not exclusive categories. Many organisations play a variety of roles across the space, with changing emphasis over time. MYRADA (Karnataka) for instance trains farmers to help them manage their rainfed agricultural lands in a more scientific manner — filling the gap in agricultural extension services. At the same time though MYRADA has promoted ('franchised') a new model of self-help groups. Gram Vikas in Orissa probably built more

bio-gas plants than the government, but they have also promoted very vibrant

women's groups that manage successful enterprises based on minor forest produce. SWRC, Tilonia was widely known as a 'water development' project in Rajasthan,

but was also responsible for filing the first public interest petition on minimum wages in the State.

This brings one to the central hypothesis that if the middle ground could be developed, there is enough space in our plural society to raise fundamental questions of structure, as well as use the energies of youth in a meaningful constructive way to build the region.

The span of voluntary action in the North East seemed to be concentrated at the welfare end of the spectrum, and embedded in the institutions of State, drawing its sustenance from state power. Though there was a niche for such agencies in service delivery programmes of government, the conscience-keeping role, with longer term horizons than that demanded by the present electoral processes, is still to be opened up. Also it appears that voluntary agencies at present represent a class interest of the middle and upper classes. This may be why in spite of the profusion of NGOs in Manipur, none feel that they have the credibility to broker, or even attempt to broker a peace between the rival tribal factions. As mentioned earlier, an interesting model of voluntary action exists in Mizoram. There are three membership organisations, all promoted by the Church initially, but with very large constituencies. These are the Young Mizo Association (YMA), the Women's Association (MHIP) and the Elders' Association (MUP). The YMA claims fifty per cent of the population of the State as its members! However, all these have functioned more or less in conformity with other NGO action in the North East, much more service-oriented than raising uncomfortable question of State and society. They are also, like the NGOs described earlier, managed 'part time' with only a skeletal staff, and most persons volunteering on a regular basis. Unlike the other smaller groups though, they have managed to institutionalise their work and presence, and there are YMA and MUP and MHIP branches all over the State. And because of the large membership that they have, are able to play an important role at policy level as well. In the last assembly elections, the YMA set forth a code of conduct, which many of the candidates and parties voluntarily endorsed.

At the same time though, the middle ground in the North East is replete with the kind of potential that does not exist anywhere else in this country, both material and human. There is a tradition of concern for the community among young people, and if the students have had popular support, it is because they have taken up issues that were important to all the people, but that a compromised local elite were unwilling to take up. There is at the same time an exquisite tradition of functional craft, incredible biodiversity, and rich natural resources. It is surely an irony that six of the seven north-eastern states are net food importers, and that Assam should still depend on Andhra Pradesh for supply of fish. In Tripura every year pineapples rot in tonnes in the fields and on roadsides, with no access to markets. The same is true of oranges in Arunachal and Mizoram. The answer is not as simplistic as in setting up cooperatives of craft producers, or agricultural processing or export industries, but that these are all opportunities that can be harnessed in a systematic manner to give some space to young people who can find in this an opportunity to express themselves creatively.

Some models exist that can be borrowed. For instance, in education, the innovation of training local boys and girls to manage the basic primary education curriculum has been tested and found effective. The 'barefoot doctor' model of primary health care was derived from the experience of Dr. Raj and Mabel Arole in Jamkhed, and is now accepted as a standard form of being able to provide quality care at low cost. But in the north-eastern region, the contests of primary health care and education would be very different. We have here very sophisticated systems of medicine, which are little known and documented, and which undoubtedly are much more suited to the conditions here, having evolved from the needs and capacities of the people themselves. Voluntary action needs to occupy that space of research, documentation and dissemination: the dissemination part is particularly important because of the sense of pride that it has the potential to instill in young tribal youth in their culture and identity. Similarly in education, any system that ignores the rich craft tradition, and the manner in which it has been kept alive in the North East (as in fact the formal systems of education have done everywhere, and the North East is surely no exception to this) cannot be relevant to the people and the conditions. Voluntary action needs to play that bridging role of moving the ethos from one of 'preservation' to one of survival, and identity. A similar role needs to be defined by voluntary action groups in promoting people's initiatives to retain and manage their common properties: land, water and forests since this area (the management of natural resources) is likely to be the next theatre of conflict in the region, and a sensitive building on community initiatives could change the scenario dramatically.

On the economic front, an opportunity has manifested itself in the recently concluded agreements with the US and the EEC on the export of additional handloom and handicraft items into these blocs. This represents an opportunity for the building up of peoples' organisations around economically viable activities. The challenge before the voluntary sector is to ensure that these so-called benefits of liberalisation are in fact widely shared.

If the form in which production was to be organised was through an industrial house, weavers and craftspersons would continue to get second class treatment, as the intermediaries made the profits, an all too familiar tragedy of the North East. On the other hand, if the essentially cooperative nature of tribal society could be harnessed to form vibrant organisations of producers themselves that were linked into the production process, with access to credit, design and marketing expertise (all possible spaces for voluntary action), the real benefit to the producers would increase many times over.

The North East represents a new frontier for development work. Very little that has worked in the 'mainstream' has been tried here, and rightly so, because the context of life and work here is so different that it calls for a completely different approach.

Perhaps the most exciting role for support agencies would be in the development of advocacy, both for the region, as well as within the region. For the region, work would focus on analysing the failures of national policies and programmes in integration, and work towards creating, over a long period, a policy environment that is non-discriminatory, and can deal with the root causes of insurgency and secession. Within the region, the issue of governance, autonomy and resource raising and sharing, combined with the expansion of voluntary action, would lead to long term, sustainable development. The strength of advocacy would come from grassroots experience.