Courage will follow if one’s goal is clear: Dr Rajesh Tandon

HOST

Welcome to Grassroots Nation, a podcast from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, a show in which we dive deep into the life, work, and guiding philosophies of some of our country’s greatest leaders of social change.

Born into a family of teachers in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, Rajesh Tandon went on to study Engineering at IIT Kanpur, followed by a post-graduate degree in management from IIM Calcutta. While pursuing his PhD at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, USA, he made a pivotal decision to return to India to conduct his fieldwork.

It was during this period that he closely examined how rural development programmes were being implemented, through an organisational and management lens. What he observed was a deep and troubling disconnect between the lived realities of people on the ground and what institutions and governments assumed was good for them.

This realisation shaped his lifelong belief: that people’s lived experiences must be valued, and that meaningful participation is essential if development programmes are to create lasting, sustainable change. Communities, he believed, must have a voice and a stake in decisions that affect their lives.

These insights along with three formative stories that he shares in this conversation led Dr. Tandon to establish Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) in 1982, an institution dedicated to strengthening democracy, civil society, and citizen participation across India and beyond.

Dr. Tandon is in conversation with Nikita Rakhyani, who leads New Initiatives at PRIA. This conversation was recorded in New Delhi at the PRIA office. 

 

NIKITA RAKHYANI

Good afternoon Doctor Tandon. It’s truly a privilege to be able to interview someone like you sitting here at the PRIA  office. 

RAJESH TANDON 

Thank you, Nikita. I appreciate you taking this initiative. 

NIKITA
You were born and raised in Kanpur and you also called yourself a Kanpuria. Can you share a little about your childhood? What was it like? What kind of family were you born into? What values did the elders around you emphasize?

RAJESH TANDON

I was born in the city of Kanpur in a family of four generations of teachers and I grew up in my nanihal in my mother’s joint family. My great grandfather was a primary school teacher, my grandfather was Professor of Mathematics and became the first non British Principal of Christ Church College, Kanpur and my mother was the first woman to do her BA in Kanpur and became principal of the Women’s Postgraduate College in Kanpur. So I grew up in that lot.

Another side of my family was in Lucknow and Allahabad and through that interaction, as I heard stories from my grandparents and my mother, they were all very busy in the freedom movement. But we grew up in a neighborhood where on one side are Hindus and another side are Muslims and Holi is coming and we used to play Holi, we used to go and do Eid and there was never any question of distinction across. Played together, went to school together. Summers used to be great fun because all cousins will get together and summer in Kanpur 45° Loo.

So we learned the fine art of spending six hours at home keeping ourselves engaged. So all our cousins who grew up at that age, we knew how to play hundreds of card games, carom, Chinese checker and anything else that we can create in a house. And now this later on, I realize it’s something that was very precious, growing up in that joint family and, you know, living together with lots of people, one had to learn to be accommodative.

NIKITA RAKHYANI

So I think a lot about togetherness, learning to be together, doing things together is something that came out of, you know, how you were raised in that family. But how was your education experience growing up? Did that experience reshape your value system? What was that like?

 

RAJESH TANDON

Because ours was a family of teachers,  my grandfather knew all professors of Kanpur or the  Kanpur colleges so we went to a private kind of a school but had boys and girls together and small classes. And that school used to do lots of things which were non-curricular things, you know, sports culture. I was a very popular actor, as you can tell. And I also occasionally became an actress. I was both in one play, Kishan and also Kishan’s mother and another play because the woman who was doing the role didn’t show up or something like that. So it was a, it was a, it was a good, healthy environment of playing, enjoying music, arts and studies. Then I went to a public school, BNSD Inter College, and that began to create a lot of different understanding. At that time I experienced something which I didn’t understand and understood after a few years. There were 11 sections of 50 students each appearing in high school – 10th grade – UP board, and Section 10C where I was, was expected to be taught by the best teachers with regular attendance, extra attention, and all fifty of us came first class. Half of us had three or four distinctions, and three of us were on the UP board merit list. Among the rest of those 12 sections, half of them flunked. Poor teaching, no pressure, no attendance, nothing. I felt bad about this because this was a stratification of the worst order. It was taking the brighter kids and generally kids whose families took interest in their kids’ education. Later on I realized and gave them the best input possible and they performed so well and they said these are the talented ones, these are the meritorious ones, the rest are stupid. This stratification was not innate. The other guys who failed were smart cookies. They didn’t get this. That bothered me all along and I keep returning to that bother whenever there is a conversation on affirmative action or “these are the brightest and the best” because we systematically that institution was a system of discrimination built in. I didn’t understand it like that. I felt good that I had got the merit list, blah blah blah, but later on I realized that that system was designed like that and that bothered me. The discrimination later on bothered me.

NIKITA RAKHYANI

Right, and you have a very interesting academic background. I know you’ve done electronics engineering from IIT and then an MBA from IIM. How did that transition from educational background happen and you entering the development sector doing something there?

 

RAJESH TANDON

My father never had a very good regular job. And my father’s side came from the Bhind-Itawah region. And he was the only one who studied beyond graduation level. And the rest of the family was all semi-literate or illiterate and very poor. And two, three times when I went there, I could see the contrast between my maternal home, where we would have ghee, and there where we would have trouble collecting roti with vegetables. So he was a sort of self-made person,  but he never had a regular sort of a good status job. So he thought that his son should become an IAS officer. And when I was in grade 9 or 10, he brought the form and showed it to me and said Beta yeh karna tumhe, because in his eyes of his vision, you know IAS officer had bungalow, gaadi, chapraasi, and a guaranteed income which he didn’t have.

So we were in BNSD College in grade 12 in September, and somebody said IIT Ki form mil rahen hain painthees rupay. Anyway, I got my mom to give me ₹35, and the next day we bicycled to a place where we collected forms, filled the form, I think my mother signed it and paid ₹35 or whatever, and submitted. And then we went to the board exam and you know, 12th exam cleared and then entrance exam and all. And lo and behold, suddenly I was interviewed and given admission at IIT Kanpur. So then I came back and then my father learned that I’ve joined engineering and he was very upset. First he threw a tantrum that we can’t afford it. He said I have only ₹100 a month. Then I told him that I’ve got a scholarship and room, hostel room is ₹25 a month. Of course there is food and blah, blah, blah, but he was not happy, you know, and my mother sort of said go ahead. I reached IIT and given my proclivities, I studied hard the first semester, and got involved in extracurricular activities, because that was the most fun. And after a while we reached third year, fourth year, I realized that engineering is really not what I want to do. 

But as a lower middle class, middle class sort of person in the family of teachers, you know, I couldn’t say I don’t want to complete the course. Since the engineering profession was not attractive, somebody said now IIM forms are being filled.  OK, fill IIM forms and IIT was a centre, I appeared and got admitted.  Then I went to my mother and she said no. She said this so we can’t afford – ₹350 a month. So I borrowed some money from a cousin and a friend to start the first trimester of IIM Calcutta. And after entering there I realized that there is a Sriram scholarship which is given to the Topper of the first trimester. So like Arjun ki aankh aur tir… two years happiness! Return my loans and finish my…. Then in the second year you start doing placement and I was the topper of the batch. So at that time, 3-4 companies used to recruit toppers – the first five – Citibank, Metalbox and Tata Administrative Services.  So they all would come and I’m playing TT  and I was actually quite heartbroken when Rajesh Khanna married Dimple Kapadia. So we used to play more TT at that time. 

So by the time it became January more than half the batch was placed and the topper is running around in pajamas and playing TT! My director of placement was Ramu Iyer. He called me one day. He said, what’s going on? You’re not appearing for interviews or what? So I told him, Sir, I don’t want to do corporate jobs. So he said, then what would you do? Sir, I don’t know. So then the message reached the Director. So the Director called me one day. He said what do you want to do? I said if I knew I would have done it. OK, he said  you apply, told us secretary, let him apply, give him the form, there is an interview for a teaching position in IIM. So I got the job, I started my career. I phoned my mother, I said I’ve become a teacher, earning some money, I’ll bring you one Bengali saree and all that. And then I started teaching and then some colleagues in the institute said, but you better do a PhD because otherwise you have no future in teaching. 

HOST

Dr. Tandon went to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland to pursue his PhD. But within a year of his being there, a political emergency was declared in India. He wanted to return to India and he managed to persuade his department at the University to allow him to do his field work back home.

RAJESH TANDON 

I said, I’m very interested in looking at it from the organizational lens, management lens, how rural development programs are being implemented. So I want to study that. And I landed, I got a part time job at National Labour Institute here and met Doctor Mohan Sinha Mehta of Seva Mandir who said, Oh, very good topic, young man, come to Udaipur. I went to Udaipur. He said, why are you here? I said, you called me. He said no there is no rural India in Udaipur. Go to the village, and off I went in a bus full of bakris and all that. And so that one year I was looking at how delivery of rural development programs was reaching the farmers, and these are tribal farmers, marginal farmers, small farmers, and well, basically I was looking at it from bottom up.

But I realized that the system was designed to actually not serve their needs. It was designed at a macro level, universal design and not responding to the specificities of the needs because there was no participation. And these programs used to be called Farmers Functional Literacy program,Lab to Land program. These were the programs. So I reached the conclusion in my analytical work, intellectual work, that without participation, engagement with the delivery system will not result in sustainable ownership of any benefits. They will be hijacked or wasted. And that I realize also is partly a design problem, an organizational design delivery problem and a problem which we can now call an HRD problem. But basically the frontline government officials were trained in a culture to deliver. They had no orientation to engage with them.

So in fact, they used to get flustered if you took them to the village and I would do that because I could negotiate. And so it’s not that all the government officials were stupid or crooked. This was the kind of thing that I can contribute to. But the other side of, matlab the personal side, not the intellectual side, was that I was, I faced great discomfort in spending that one year in the village. And my discomfort came from the realization that I am so heavily formally qualified at that time in Kherwada block of Udaipur district, 5-600 kilometres there couldn’t have been anybody with IIT Kanpur, IIM Calcutta, about to finish a PhD in US background. And I didn’t know the reality. I didn’t know how to cope with that reality. And then I said, why is it this? It’s not that I grew up in a very, you know, pampered family cut off from the world, but why is this knowledge, this skill set, not accessible to people? This bothered me a great deal.

I didn’t analyze it intellectually. I’m talking about personal botheration. And the second thing that bothered me even more was that I used to think formal education is knowledge. And here these people, most of them illiterate, some semi-literate, grade 2-3-4 maximum, and they are exceptionally knowledgeable. They’re knowledgeable about land, water, cattle, trees, they’re even knowledgeable about worms. And that’s why they were with their gamcha filtering well water, which I didn’t know anything about. So again, you know, what is this? What is this mindset? What is this worldview I have developed? Yes, I came from a family of teachers, educated, fine. But why were these thinking that those who didn’t go to school or didn’t make it in the formal world were stupid? Why would I call them stupid? Why would I imagine that they don’t know? They may not know some things, but they know a lot which I have no clue about.

So this personal part I think had a lot of impact in my choice next.

NIKITA RAKHYANI
PRIA was started 42 years ago in 1982, but what happened between, you know, you getting all bothered with what you were going through and then starting this organization?

 

RAJESH TANDON

I’ll tell you three stories which were between this realization and the start of PRIA. The first story was that George Fernandez had become the industry minister. I knew George Fernandez from my IIM Calcutta days as a firebrand Labour leader and one day we went to his room where I was in the National Labour Institute and all 2-3 researchers and he said that public sector undertakings were set up as a strategy for the development of hinterlands. I want you to do a little study – “you” meaning the group and I was one of them. So I went to HEC Ranchi and I went to the BHEL Trichy and I went to Plastic, Chemical and Fertilizer in Maharashtra. These three places I went. This is ‘78-’79 and because my lens has shifted, 1st, of course, I will go inside the factory and meet the general manager and you know, sarkari gaadi and all that. Then, I will go wander around and in my usual way go to a tea shop or paan shop and I will ask ‘yeh log idhar rehte the, woh kahaan hain?’. And I learnt about brutal stories of displacement. And here inside the HEC campus all facilities are available and vast tracts of land are lying underutilized. But those people have been displaced and nobody knows where they went. And this happened repeatedly in all three locations.

So I came back and I was disturbed by this and I wrote a paper and gave it to George Fernandez in one meeting. I said this strategy has been a strategy of displacement of rural poor and better life for pada likha log babu log who have gone inside. Unke bache padrahe hain,  hospital yeh sabko milgaya, gaadi hain. Some other people got very upset. Anyway I you know, as you can tell I get passionate and blow my top sometimes. 

So this is 1 episode. 

The second episode was this National Adult Education Program just started in ‘79. Bodhi Ali was in Delhi designing the program and he knew me from Udaipur. Rajesh, I heard about your participatory training with farmers there. Can you write the manual and these two people are going to assist you. So I said, OK. Now they gave me government documents of training Prior to 79. It was not training, it was indoctrination. The principles of learning, adult learning, lifelong learning, pedagogical principles were missing. The training manuals were dumping content on, in my view, unsuspecting trainees. That bothered me. I said I knew the pedagogical process. I knew the learning principles, I had learned this in my program and I said what is going on in the name of training? So anyway, Bodhi Ali was nice enough. He took the entire training module that you read in my PhD thesis and some more and published a booklet which his officials never used. And the third was the experience I had in Delhi, living in Delhi. And those were the days of the first round of public discussion of dowry deaths in South Delhi. 

HOST 

In the late 1970s women’s groups and activists in India began to publicly challenge the growing violence around dowry, bringing what had long been treated as a “private” family matter into the political arena. In South Delhi, a cluster of young feminists, students, lawyers, and social workers documented cases of suspicious “kitchen accidents,” burnings, and suicides of newly married women, exposing how dowry demands often escalated into lethal abuse. This concerted activism laid crucial groundwork for the legal reforms of the early 1980s, reframing dowry deaths as a systemic form of gender violence rather than isolated tragedies.

 

RAJESH TANDON 

And I got involved with some other people of that era, most of whom are gone now… Pramila [inaudible], Kamla Bhasin. So I began to sort of talk about creating a mechanism which allowed me to do what I really wanted to do with some other like minded people. And so the idea of us we were anyway running a network newsletter based on those cyclostyled newsletter of participatory research in Asia. And when I mentioned in July ‘81 in that newsletter that we want to set up an organization, everybody said keep the name alive. So it became Participatory Research in Asia, PRIA for short.

And then I didn’t know anything, so I went around on my scooter and applied for the Society Registration Act and lo and behold, paper came on February 6, 1982 and the first registered office was my rented flat in Safdarjung Enclave. So that’s how it started.

[RAJESH TANDON ON PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH AND ITS ORIGINS] 

NIKITA RAKHYANI
And like who are the people supporting you? Who are those critical partners? Who were, you know, supporting you to take this path forward? And what was your family’s reaction with, you know, you doing all that and now coming to the sector?

RAJESH TANDON
The people who supported me, first of all Bhaisaab, Dr Mohan Sinha Mehta of Seva Mandir and I continued to do pro bono work with them for many years till he was alive. Then 2-3 colleagues in the International Participatory Search Network like Budd Hall from Canada, Chris Duke was in Australia and this Yusuf in Tanzania. So these were the people who were involved in the participatory research network in their own context and we used to exchange, you know, letters and mail and all. And then when we had that forum –  International Forum of Participatory Research in 1980, I met for the first time John Gaventa from the Highlander Centre who was doing similar work. And so I had a dream of, you know, Highlander Centre kind of place and then here in India, other than that, Lalita Ramdas in Lodhi Rd. They were doing this non formal education project and somebody told her that Rajesh Tandon is a good facilitative evaluator. So I was hauled up and that’s where I met Martha Azulo. Then Joe Madiath Gramvikas. We were attending a meeting called by our common friend Father Bogart. Father Bogart was a Belgian priest, completely Indianized and was XISS Ranchi director. And a whole bunch of people in the 70s, 80s and 90s are students of XISS Ranchi all over the development sector. So Bogart one day said we need to do a workshop on this participatory thing which is coming up and he talked to Walter Fernandez of ISI, you know both Jesuit priests, you know and Walter  I knew had agreed to be on the 1st board of PRIA. So Walter said Rajesh let’s go. So we went to Ranchi and in the evening near XISS outside I asked some participants and a couple of local people bhai mithai kahaan milti, you know, I have a sweet tooth. Tho hum log rasgulle kha rahe they wahaan pe so one big fellow came and he said you should be careful, it can cause diabetes and so I said you also have rasgullas with me and it turned out to be Joe Madiath and he said whatever you were saying in the session today, it was very important and good. But I don’t know who is this fellow who is youngish, sort of somebody introduced as an MBA, I hate those types! So we became friends, Joe. then our friend MYRADA – Al Fernandez – who used to hang around first in Delhi in my early days before PRIA was home. Then he ran to MYRADA from the Canadian High Commission and then he was another one out there and so people like these, Ela Bhat of SEWA… Incidentally, I knew her husband first before I knew her because Ramesh bhai was a trade union organizer and in IIM Calcutta days, we used to do training of trade union leaders. That’s how I met George Fernandez, T. Thangappan, Ramesh Bhat, but he was the organizer of a textile union in Ahmedabad. 

So this this set of people were a source of collegial conversation and in bumping along and sort of figuring out those were the early days and and and then the anti Sikh riots in Delhi in October 1984. That the whole boradri of people got together here and not only here, but in Kanpur in Ranchi in several 5-6 places where this riots had become very serious and so the peace grouping, peace movement, you know, I got to know many other people who were not running NGOs, but they were thoughtful, well meaning citizens who wanted to do something in the face of this adversity. And that was very important.

 

NIKITA
When you started PRIA , what was the, what was the vision you had for, you know, how you wanted the organization to be like? What kind of people were you looking for this organization, you know, and you coming from an MBA background, doing your research study around organization behaviour. So I’m sure you would have a particular perspective in your mind that I want these kind of people, this, this flow of process that should go these kind of policies. So what was that like?

Dr Tandon

 

Well you know we after six months of running the place from my house, on 1st of July 1982 found a ₹700 a month cottage in Sainik Farm where which became PRIA headquarters. But, main interest in the first 4-5 years was reaching out to people where they are and doing work with them. Some of it is training, some of it is hand holding, some of it is conversation about how they are organized. And the best part in the first few years was that many these, the grassroot level organizations were doing work in a way which can be classified as participatory research.

They wouldn’t call it learning, but learning by doing, learning by exposure, learning through reflections. Collectively, you know, these practices were there, but they didn’t have a theory behind it.. My initial interest was promotion of participation. Those who are called beneficiaries should become active agents in designing and implementing development program for their benefit. And the problem was not limited to government by the way. Even large, larger NGOs were also doing the same way as government. If we have pre designed programs, they won’t dump it and then they will say oh it’s not sustainable, nobody is looking after this etcetera, etcetera. The idea of participation was new at that time and it’s behavioural practice nobody knew. 

 So the National Primary Health care program, expected community participation and a project in with government of Madhya Pradesh and government of Tamil Nadu said the purpose of the project was to train doctors and nurses of Primary Health care to facilitate community participation.1983-84 I’m talking about, you may think, what is so difficult to understand? Actually, the concept is not very difficult. The practice is a problem. Why? Because in your socialization as a doctor, you are the expert and you, sitting in front of me are the patient. You don’t know, I know. I have to tell you and fix you. And when I am telling you and fixing you, you are on your knees begging for help from this almighty expert. That’s the problem, the power relations. Because I don’t value your knowledge and you don’t value your knowledge yourself. You think you’re stupid as far as medical doctors. So they got hold of me to train these people.

I said, OK, I’ll do pilot workshops, but along with the trainees, one of you sitting in state headquarters will also attend. You will not be observer, you will be participant. In those days, I used to be very strict with all these people. No observer. You either participate or you facilitate. So 5 day program, experiential learning in a residential area outside Gwalior, some health department’s training center. And every day in the afternoon after lunch we will go to the field and next morning we will discuss what happened. Then this escalated up to Mussoorie Academy. They wanted to learn community participation. 

Tumse nahin hoga tum community seh bahut door ho. Sundar Bora was the deputy director who passed away recently. So he insisted. So I went with a couple of colleagues. But you have to unlearn. You have to unlearn and you have to understand that you are sitting in a position of power and the persons in front of you have a lot of knowledge and experience. But they won’t speak till you create conditions. Nowadays we use phrases like safe space and all for conversations to happen so. That’s all. It’s not very complicated, but unlearning is both complicated and painful.

MUSIC

HOST 

Dr Tandon speaks of his association with the late Anil Bordia, an IAS officer , who in his own words, he calls, a champion of education and an activist civil servant. Anil Bordia was passionate about bringing education and literacy to all Indians, and worked tirelessly with academics, activists, journalists, educationists and many others from all walks of life to make this a possibility. Dr Tandon first met Anil Bordia in 1977 during his early fieldwork. 

RAJESH TANDON
My association with Anil Bordia is slightly deeper because I went to his home, his home in Udaipur and his father and doctor Mehta are bum chums and they jointly started Vidya Bhavan, which is a teacher training institute in Udaipur and Seva mandir. So when I was hanging around Seva Mandir, my dissertation, Anil’s father used to hang around with me. And then Anil’s sister Renuka, Anil Bordia and in that same neighborhood, Kamala Bazin used to hang around. So these are all Udaipur hangers on of that era. And then they all sort of gravitated to Delhi, but that’s how I knew them. So I knew Anil Bordia from that time and he knew the methodology of my training marginal farmers in Udaipur because of his connection to Seva Mandir. I didn’t know him and then he called me one day.

He said we are putting together a training manual for NAEP because NAEP was a first national program, fairly revolutionary in terms of perspective. 

HOST 

The National Adult Education Program was launched in 1978, as a large scale government initiative to eradicate illiteracy by educating 100 million adults in five years, focusing on literacy, numeracy, functional skills for work, and social awareness, aiming for socio-economic development and self-reliance, heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas and Paulo Freire’s pedagogy. 

RAJESH TANDON
It said awareness raising,  constitutional values and functional literacy and the program ran for some time on the shoulders of NGOs and even government delivery mechanisms. It was a good program and it was you know, the change of government and usual tamasha happened and and and so the training manual was basically the training I was doing in Seva Mandir’s field area, which he came to know through his contact at Seva Mandir. 

MUSIC 

You asked me NIKITA, about people who helped you and supported you in the early days… in the post emergency situation there was a lot of enthusiasm among young people, students around the country to do something about improving the lives of our people, to make it make democracy work for everybody, not just a few, kind of thing. And the Janata Party experiment which failed within two years or so, left a large number of young people disillusioned from formal politics and therefore they began to gravitate towards informal ways of doing this work. Social change you call it social development, transformation, whatever.

And so a large number of, you know, people who came out of JP movement and people who came out of trade union movement, with post post railway strike kind of frustrations, they all were looking for ways to continue to contribute to society, but not through joining formal politics. And so one of the interesting phenomena of that time was in Sevapuri near Banaras,  Sevapuri has a Development Health Center still going on there and people started finding that place for a conversation. So every year around this time, for 2-3 days, in late February, early March, when the weather is nice and you can sleep with your own chaddar, you know, bring your bed, bring yourself, and three days, no structured program, but every time they would have one or two topics discussed by somebody who came in. And I remember I spoke once about participation. Kamla spoke on gender, Anil Aggarwal spoke on environment and  60-70 people will gather there for three days. Food will be served free. Garam garam jalebiyan khao, mazey karo…but we used to have conversations about issues. A lot of my own thinking around that emerged from those conversations and that process then decentralized. It used to have conversations of that variety in Madhupur in Jharkhand, in Gwalior, in Mirzapur, in places like Mysore, Pune, you know these places, whoever is working will periodically call people over, no funding required. Find your own train.

And that model was the same as it was in my growing up. In summer vacation, kids who came, cousins who came, parents will buy ticket to come and where they came, they will buy ticket to go back. That was the model, food was made available, we made some contribution of ₹50, we brought our own gamcha, our own chaddar and they provided gadda and we brought our own sabun-wabun.

So that flexibility of conversation, you know MYRADA mein host hua, Gram Vikas mein host hua, Kerala mein host hua, aur sab bore hogay to Dilli mein humne host kar diya…  so this was throughout the ‘80s, right up until ‘92-’93. This was a very regular practice, very regular. And that led to actually that whole campaign which gave birth to VANI [VANI (Voluntary Action Network India]. That was that in 1986, an Act of Parliament was going to be passed to regulate voluntary alliances. And two, three of us got wind of it and the people in whose name the Act was being passed were of the likes of Prem Bhai of Sevapuri, Ila Bhat of SEWA and Bunker Roy. And other than Bunker Roy, who was Rajiv Gandhi’s batch mate in Doon School and advisor to him on voluntary agencies, other people didn’t know. And many of us thought that this is, you know, deliberately going to the government and saying patta lagao gala pakdo hamara, because they were going to define what is this work, what is not this work… you can’t be paid for this work! And so volunteering was equated with voluntary action. So, we campaigned. I travelled to 20 cities over six months and same problem –  I didn’t have money, but somebody bought ticket ab Calcutta jao… like that and we coalesced. We had a convention in ISI. ISI gave the hall and we had some 2-3 hundred people on September 26th, 27th, 28th, 1986 and we campaigned with the MPs in the Congress government and it was stopped. But that brought the whole fraternity together. Many people we didn’t know each other, but we got to know: at least we got to know 200 organizations in 1986. And so this you know, in 1983, I think I went to Sevapuri – first time I met a number of people. They were mostly of Gandhian ilk and people who came from Jayaprakash movement because the Jayaprakash movement people are mostly Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal, that side you know. This opportunity was very important, catalytic! We didn’t discuss, you know, fundraising or project planning or monitoring evaluation. We discuss issues of our times, nationally, internationally, and because people came from all different directions, we learned about issues.

You know, I remember in the early days we talked about, you know, Bhumi Sena movement and Samik Sangatana from Maharashtra and Thane and all that. And in Kanpur, the organizing of textile workers and this, whoever came told the story. Shankar Guha Niyogi came and talked about the exploitation of mine workers in Chhattisgarh. And when he was assassinated, very few of us knew. So we couldn’t stop his assassination. But we learned about the plight of workers there and we stood in solidarity. 

So we may disagree with these people, but they brought a perspective to our understanding which gives us wholesome roots to the work. These opportunities were very, very important. And for the first ten years, at least when I was involved, I used to have annual, bi-annual, once in two years, VANI meetings all around the country, But that is missing now that that that opportunity for NIKITAs of this world, that opportunity is not there. People don’t realize that transformative change is all about changing relations of power and they are embedded in the family, in the community and in the institutions that we participate in, including corporate and democratic accountability of public institutions is an essential purpose. 

I see a lot of passion in younger people, the NIKITAs of the world, who want to do something very… they are really committed, they haven’t come here just for a pass time, but they don’t have the opportunity for that conversation, to meet their peers and say – look! I have these questions…the only time they meet them is in a formally structured seminar… webinar…

NIKITA

To bring this whole idea of working with people, trusting them, is difficult to get started. And you know, that unlearning, you said, takes a lot of time and courage and acceptance. So I just want to know what were those, some of the challenges that you would have faced and even starting an organization which is promoting this whole idea of people’s knowledge, you know, trusting them, working along with them. How did you deal with that? What were those challenges?

RAJESH TANDON
Well, you know, the biggest challenge is for us to be who are professionally trained, academically qualified experts to be able to have the openness to listen, listen to other points of view, listen to other stories and not listen with an already predetermined theoretical framework. Because we listen, we collect data, but we collect data to hang it in our framework somewhere because we have a framework. So the biggest challenge was to go visit in the field and learn what people are trying to do first. And we invented a tool because of the necessity of the times. It’s called writing annual reports. By the way, that need also exists today. So, PRIA They must have helped write some 5-6 hundred annual reports, mostly around the coastal Andhra and north of Vindhyas belt. And in the name of writing your report, you hang around 2-3 days. They will feed you, put you up because you are being useful to them and you will write a report, a version of it in English, which they can’t do. And in a way you will understand their story. And we used to train our people to because I went with them. They will come and the younger lot will learn all that, that how I ask questions and my asking of questions was to help the organization think for itself. And nowadays we call it strategic planning, when those days we just did it. I would ask questions like but why did you change from this program? Oh, you got money. All right. If you got money for that, would you do that? And we are writing their story. So this was 1 standard. The other was visiting and saying we’re doing a workshop on participatory methods, a participatory process, how to mobilize the community and, and that spending time there with, with this kind of a listening orientation, facilitative orientation. We learned a great deal about that context and there and it also began to clarify to our team that we don’t know everything. 

I’ll give you a story. This happened to me and there was a younger person in in Thane district way back and we went to a local sangaten and they said today we are our women’s rally is taking place. And I think it had to do with access to forest rights. So you you join and we will sit with you tomorrow for that other discussion. So we joined. We sort of saw with did some narrabazi at the back. We were odd men among those. But in the evening I asked those I said don’t mind, but these women are dressed in their fineries, their lipstick, their, you know, jhumkas and best shining dresses.These other looked like they were going in a baraat and you know what he said? He said for them, this is an even more important occasion. They are dressing themselves up to stand up for these rights. And it completely blew my mental frame. So I was used to the trade union movement who would go in phati chappal and phati shirt. So let’s go with openness.  Listen and understand from their vantage point what it means to go on a protest. We dress up the protest. It’s wonderful. 

NIKITA 

I’m also curious to learn from you. You know, our name is Participatory Research in Asia. We just have one office which is in Delhi. And I want to know that we’ve worked in so many locations on so many issues. Did it never come to your mind to sort of establish, you know, field offices or having presence in different locations? you’ve sort of pushed the idea of working together with local organizations, building capacities of local organizations.

RAJESH TANDON
Partners of PRIA  catalysed by PRIA , promoted by PRIA in those locations will be more responsive to the local context and local trends and they will therefore add capacity to local context. We scale up. I always say, you have heard me, We scale up through partnerships, not by doing it ourselves alone. We have deliberately not open branches. 

So in PRIA , our name is international and our work has been so international. Our compensation is entirely local because we can’t open our branches and yet be true to our belief system, local capacity, local leadership, local organization. An organization based in Bengal is better equipped to deal with the government’s accountability there than a branch office of PRIA .We are building capacities, the principles and frameworks of which could evolve centrally, but the practice and adaptation and rootedness will have to have locally local languages, local idioms, local culture, local capacities, local forces that operate. 

NIKITA RAKHYANI
And how do you enable this local capacity, this local leadership, How do you do that?

 

RAJESH TANDON
Well, you you work with them for many, many years. The ultimate trust of partnership is trusting relationships. And trusting relationships are predominantly between people. Institutions only add a framework to it. So investing in relationships is no longer funded if you don’t believe in partnerships. If you believe in partnerships, you have to build trusting relationships over a long term. When in order to build trusting relationships, you have to invest time. 

NIKITA RAKHYANI
And what are what is the future vision about PRIA ? Where do you see it heading?

RAJESH TANDON
When I began talking about participatory research with that academic background, I had as already a PhD, heavy duty. Most academics said this is voodoo science, this is riff raff this is not knowledge. 40 years later, National Education Policy, University Grants Commission, UNESCO, UNDP and 200-300 academic institutions around the world are teaching participatory research. That vision requires practical translation. You know there are four crore young people in colleges today. Many of them are from rural backgrounds, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, minorities etc. but what are they studying in those books and how are they learning? That is what i want to influence.I want to influence that they learn by going to the community and learning with the community. Because the curriculum is not fit for purpose.

It’s not fit for who they are. If the curriculum of sociology in Dumka is the same as the  sociology curriculum in Delhi University, there’s something wrong because the Dumka students are not going to make it to Silicon Valley. It’s a mirage that they are chasing. So how do we enable the young people to learn in the context in which they have grown up, add value whatever they want to add value to, but not be dismissive of their context and the knowledge that comes from that? I’m happy it is now legitimizing policy. So now I want to push practice. You know, more and more teachers, more and more students. You know, I want tribal students who have finished their undergraduate to go back to their communities and their elders and systematize tribal knowledge about land, forestries, water and use both. 

Personally, I think PRIA  should take this principle and framework in a two different ways.
And that’s a pria OF YOU and not pria of me. One is I think we should and I you know, I believe in this very strongly that we should take a lead in creating spaces for conversations.
You, your generation of young people deserves that opportunity. 

And second, I think not lose sight of the fact that even though we are a large country, diverse country, that we are part of the larger global reality. And increasingly, you know, I grew up with global connections, even though I came from Kanpur. And PRIA’s starting point we have a strong international participate research network and we have done a lot of things internationally. We still do, but we don’t relate to the rest of the world as if we belong there. And that requires a shift in the way we design our programs, our work.

I have learned that what I pride in my culture, there’s a lot of things to be proud of in other people’s culture also outside the country, from Africa, from Latin America, from other Asian countries. So that build say it’s sort of a global solidarity. It was that idea of global solidarity that I gave my blood and sweat to, found CIVICUS and ran it for the 1st 10 years.

 

NIKITA RAKHYANI

Yes,  hopefully, yes, we definitely will do it. Take your wisdom, take your passion forward. And also before we wrap up, what is that one final piece of advice or wisdom that you would like to give to young people who are just entering, you know, the development sector or for that matter, any field?

 

RAJESH TANDON

Well, you know, 45 years later, if you ask me, how would I have done anything differently? Perhaps not. Yes, some small changes in all that…the reason is that when you decide to take action that includes others, that includes the well-being of others, you always take a risk. And risk taking gives you courage. People put it the other way around. Courage gives you risk taking. No, in my experience, the courage comes from risk taking, not the other. And the risk taking in my experience is because I decided to include the well-being of others as my goal as my goal, as my…whatever… commitment. Organizations tend to lose sight of this fact after a few years and the well-being of the organization becomes the important thing. We exist not because of ourselves, but we exist because we want to support other people’s struggles. And putting it like that encourages risk taking and risk taking gives courage. And therefore, in my view, all people, all young people in today’s context have the instruments, if I may use my engineering, have the instruments needed to take the risk, provided that no, don’t worry about courage and all that will follow if that that goal is there and clear you have more instruments to take the risk than I had. You know, by doing this work we are helping others. But I think I always felt I am fulfilling my values.

NIKITA RAKHYANI 

I’m very fortunate to have this conversation with you today and thank you for sharing. You know your experiences, your journey, your wisdom with us, and I’m sure it will inspire a lot of people whom, I mean, just are listening to you…You will never get to even meet them, but I’m sure you’re inspiring a lot of them. And a lot of people will resonate with the conversation that we had today and probably give them a lot of hope as well.

RAJESH TANDON

Thank you, thank you. You took me to parts of my history that I was not ready to talk about, but it did work out. Thank you – thank you guys.

HOST

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