Mr. John D'Souza is Executive Director, Centre for Education and Documentation, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

INTRODUCTION

This article¹ draws on my long engagement with information work, especially in the field of documentation. This association goes back three decades, when in 1970 as a student I came in touch with Fr. Paul Guerieviere, whom I consider the father of documentation centres, at least in the voluntary sector in India. Even today you will find G, as he is popularly known, sitting in the far end of the library of the Indian Social Institute (ISI) at Delhi, literally peering through his thick glasses into a computer screen which magnifies its text ten times. For G, the main task was to painstakingly document current events, by collecting clippings, books and reports, and, write small essays aimed at students, activists, or any person who was interested in society.

Three decades on, the predominant role for information centres still remains the same, namely as a second fiddle to activism, move­ments or non-government organisations (NGOs). I wish to argue that given the retreating prospects of an 'overthrow' regime of social change, information centres have an institutional role of its own. And given the new globalised context of privatisation and corporate control of institutions like the press, TV, and now even academic in­stitutions, these centres will need to be placed firmly in the public do­main. They will have to be small institutions² that can run on low budgets, and keep the interests of the marginalised at its main raison d'etre.

LOOKING BACK

Three decades ago, the work of documentation centres, revolved round small study circles, which were then considered the kernel of revolutionary training for youth wanting to change society. Their role was to provide information for developing ideological and method­ological clarity for young persons both in the radical and the main-stream sections of the voluntary sector. It also provided a base to inspire and involve students, and youth in radical work.

It was in the 60s and 70s that independent youth were beginning to work with the marginalised in the villages and formed a range of groups including the Lohia-ites, the Sarvodayan, the Marxist, the Peoples' War Group. The infection also spread to welfare efforts, as youth from missions as well as Christian institutions took up long-term development programmes, and then conscientisation (awareness building) and mobilisation (into Sanghams) work. Each of these formations, termed as non-party-political-formations by Rajani Kothari and Harsh Sethi seemed to breed a variety of resource centres, particularly documentation centres. While VISTAS in Maharashtra set-up the Doc -Centre, now the Centre for Education and Documentation, there was FREA, ISRE, BUILD documentation centres in Mumbai, each belonging to different shades of political opinion. In Bangalore, several political formations revolved round the documentation centres and training centres promoted through Volken, Baretto, Stan and others around the ISI. G, who was mainly involved in the All India Catholic University Federation (AICUF), a Christian student body, inspired several local efforts both inside the AICUF and Jesuit institutions, as well as in more political circles in Chennai.

Menon and Gandhi (1995) see information centres mainly as alternative documentation groups which support movements. The purpose of documentation and dissemination of information was to be able to challenge official sources, to probe politically neglected areas and highlight academically unrecognised subjects.

In the 1980s, the spontaneous outburst of consciousness on women's issues and the emergence of new women's organisations gave rise to women's documentation centres like the Feminist Re­source Centre (at ISRE) and Akshara in Bombay, Jagori in Delhi and, more recently, Aalochana in Pune, Vacha in Bombay, and Snehidi in Madras. In addition, there were specific issue-based campaigns. They included Unnayan in Calcutta for housing rights, the Voluntary Health Association of India in Delhi which worked on health issues through its numerous state-level branches, Avehi in Bombay which concentrated on non-print materials, that is audio visuals.

The main task of these groups was to support the movements which had inspired them and raise the same issues in different ways. In order to do this, they could not function like any other conventional centre or library. The very act of support meant that the documenta­tion centre was in broad ideological agreement with the movement and that they had committed themselves to active participation for a political change towards a better, egalitarian and just society. Support in this case meant: feeding information to assist in campaigns; high­lighting its issues by encouraging debates and discussions on move­ment issues amongst people and in the media; challenging official sources, societal myths and prejudices through propaganda and re­search. This commitment of support, therefore, inherently changes the documentation centre's nature and functioning. On the other hand, conventional documentation centres or libraries take a politically neu­tral stance and claim that they collect material without being partisan to any one stream of thinking.

CENTRE FOR EDUCATION AND DOCUMENTATION

The CED had its beginnings in 1975. The DOC CENTRE, as it was popularly called in the seventies, began during the Emergency with a few files and books available in VISTAS, among friends and a few or­ganisations like the ISI, Bangalore. The information covered the de­bates facing action groups at that time namely mode of production and the nature of class struggles and class organisations like unions, conscientisation, anti-emergency movements, civil liberties, broad left alliance, and so on.

As the Emergency was lifted, the DOC-CENTRE was involved in civil liberties and student activities. Often documentation, considered less activist, took a back seat. The collection was also highly specific to the interest of the existing circle. In 1978, the CED was registered separately and sought to have a predominant documentation identity. It developed its classification system where the emphasis were on is­sues of civil liberties and human rights, development debate for ex­ample, Operation Flood, the Green Revolution, Health, Multinational corporations, simple environmental issues. It also developed its gen­der perspective and, started separating out issues relating to reproduc­tive rights, and other issues being taken up by the women's movement in India.

The CED, thus, evolved its systems of classification, selection, and files oriented retrieval based of the actual evolution on social issues and problems of the day. The sources of information were regularised from a pool of newspapers, magazines, journals and papers. Slowly, the CED began to see itself as a social institution in the public domain, and not merely as a support organisation to NGOs or people's movements.

Structural View of Information

The CED works from the premise that there is no shortage of informa­tion and that we are only alienated from it. We believe we have to fight the notion of information as power where withholding it gives one a sense of one-upmanship over the other, so that one day you can bring out a book or a pamphlet or report. We have moved away from the propaganda model or the 'push' approach, to inquiry or 'pull' model. We believe that it is this push system of propaganda, which perpetuates the top-down, hierarchical system of communications, which in turn is a reflection of the social structure.

Information, in any form, is an important pillar of the body politic. It is part of the socialisation process within society. Its structure, use and sources betray the kind of society it operates within. In modern society, we have information handled in ivory towers of academic in­stitutions. We also have simultaneous and mass propagation of com­mon images, through space communications or morning laxatives called newspapers. Now the Internet promises to be the PROZAC of cyber-junkies. Alongside is this apparently decentralised but highly codified information be it from the district or international databases, in electronic circuits available to bureaucrats, planners and corporate managers. Despite its apparently popular spread, we have seen how mass communications like TV feeds on the present system of ineq­uity, violence and ecological disaster and in turns breeds it.

Also, the whole of the information superstructure is involved in the politics of 'manufacturing consent'. Today, every TV channel and newspaper takes it for granted that we have agreed to the New Eco­nomic Policy. And that it is consensus decision. A few years ago the International Advertising Association, ran hourly commercials in most television channels telling us that 'Advertising' was important because it represents our 'right to choose'. Even the development rhetoric and debate has been taken over.

Et Tu?

Several development cooperation organisations (basically funding organisations) have begun to accept the 'market' as the main social mediator. The August 1995 discussion paper of Geemeenschappelijk Overleg Medefinanciering³ which speaks of 'strengthening civil soci­ety in all its diversity', accepts the increasing role of the market as a fact and goes further to say that the Governments have a duty to make the market function properly, 'including' in social terms.

The same language and thought of market, and indeed practice pre­dominates the information system. The information institutions which are on behalf of the poor, see it as their duty to 'make' the infor­mation market function properly, so that social terms are 'included'.

Given this development in the voluntary sector and its dependence on such agencies for its finance, the questions that remain are:

• •   Does not strengthening civil society mean working to consolidate the hold of finance capital?
• •   Does not including social terms mean keeping the dominant forces in 'civil society' intact and in fact reducing the space for the poor as a contending force?
• •   Or does it mean that an alternative system is contending and seeking to establish itself? And if so, how should the alternative system be established in the here and now?

Changing Role

a process of institutionalisation of both the rhetoric of organisation and empowerment, and the methodology of work into what we call delivery systems of the 80s and the 90s.... In the absence of an immediate Structural Change movement, and the emergence of international institutions apparently concerned with development, the radicalised NGO seems to be drowned in the world of Structural Adjustment. (Mendoza and D'souza, 2000)

Left action groups and NGOs working in the organisation mode are now into projects for poverty alleviation and advocacy for better policy within the dominant system. Documentation centres are ex­pected to continue play the support or second fiddle role.

Rajani Murthy (1997) sees it as a capacity enhancing role which must address the need of the NGO. On the positive side, most support organisations do' attempt to address needs of NGOs engaged in con­crete development activities at the micro level (development NGOs): community organisation, perspective building on gender concerns, sustainable development and local self-governance, participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation, budgeting and financial man­agement, and participatory research and training are the focal areas of most generic support organisations. Theme-specific support organi­sations have focused on strengthening capacity of development NGOs in specific areas such as savings and credit, health, education, enterprise development, and wastelands development which are im­portant to reduce the vulnerability of the poor. Strengthening and pro­moting an approach to research, training, planning, monitoring and evaluation within NGOs has been another area of concern of support organisations, particularly the generic oriented ones. Given the in­crease in space for NGOs, the few support organisations in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have made an important contribu­tion by providing access to information on statutory and administra­tive requirements of running an NGO, as well as practical tips on how to handle bureaucratic hurdles.

On the other hand, few support organisations have sought to sys­tematically strengthen understanding of implications of structural adjustment programmes, trade agreements and regional trade or­ganisations, the decline in the powers of the United Nations and in­crease of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the decline in powers of the state and the increase in power of the mar­kets, the rise in fundamentalism, casteism and gender violence and criminalisation of politics and de-politicisation of society. Strengthening capacity of grassroots NGOs and NGO networks to address these issues through campaigning, advocacy and lobbying at the macro level; or mobilising people at the micro and meso level on a large scale around emerging issues has received little priority. Use of human rights instruments and public interest litigation has been focused upon only by a handful of support organisations in India.

What we have seen in the nineties, is a slow and sure drag on all kinds of support organisations which schools them into the predomi­nant development agenda. Consider the increasing funding to high profile 'think tanks', 'social watches', policy studies, best practices literature. Witness the freezing of the development agenda under the most radical rhetoric into the agenda21 after a spate of junkets called summits. Challenge the notion of civil society which seeks to equate all kinds of efforts under the sanitised 'sum total of individual and col­lective initiatives for common public good'.

CONCLUSION

It is my belief that information centres must be able to stay away from the turbulent tides of development fashion. While it is operating within the NGO environment and the voluntary sector as a whole, it must stand on its own and develop a role and function that makes free and easy access to development, analytical and critical information an institution.

To serve as an institution, information centres will have to get out of their ivory towers, the boardrooms of NGOs, and its tendency of talking down or making 'information packages' or IEC materials for the people. They must be founded on the belief that relevant develop­ment and social information just needs to be organised, and made ac­cessible. That a person of whatever training, can and will understand what we consider are 'technical' issues, as and when it affects them. Thus, a key to accessibility is to shun academic or project terms, in fa­vour of classifications, which correlate to the problem, and not its ab­straction, as most library science would.