[Imc-india] training Indian grass-roots activists

[Boud Roukema]

Hi, someone asked me in a more-or-less private email:

> The idea of training people is great, but what if they don't have
> the outlets? indymedia is an Internet outlet, that not many have
> access to in India.

Definitely a good question!

Here are some ideas:
- immediate
- short-term
- medium-term
- long-term

immediate time scale:
---------------------
Many grass-roots activists on many of the sites listed at

> >http://www.zmag.org/southasia/southasia1.htm

have email addresses. This means they already have access of *some*
sort. Chances are they are using this limited access in inefficient
ways - e.g. they may not realise that 

* on a browser, by invalidating the auto-image-load option [very
deeply hidden in recent versions of Netscape and MS IExplorer] they
can get rid of a lot of junk and get 98% of the useful stuff [no
offence intended to www.sarai.net!]

* GNU/GPL stuff is virtually zero cost and often better than MSoft
[OK, OK, not everyone agrees on the latter - this is a non-expert
opinion only]

* by disallowing java and javascript, they still get most of the
useful stuff (IMHO), and they only lose out on very commercial stuff
(IMHO).

* etc. 

Suggestion: Simply by training existing users in these sorts of
things, their existing (possibly costly) use will be more efficient. 

short-term
----------
See the statistics I cited in two posts at:

> >http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-india/2001-August/thread.html

38% of Indian internet users are students, i.e. half a million or so.

(a) Students have their own political aims - opposing fee hikes,
opposing privatisation - I think this is a very valid subject for news
items on Indymedia.

(b) IMHO, most of the students I met in India are sensitive to
grass-roots problems, many have already done some things to help, but
due to the pressure of studies and money, they're too busy trying to
survive to be able to help. (And many believe in the "trickle-down
theory", intending to be the "up" from which the water "trickles
down".)

Suggestion: So, how about some sort of one-to-one pairing relationships?  

Get a bunch of students with e-access to sit down together with a
grass-roots group (adivasis, women's group, dalits, whatever), talk,
and see if people are willing to commit themselves to one-to-one
student-to-g.roots-activist working relationships, where the two
members of a pair work out some arrangement for meeting up regularly
so that the student can be the go-between between internet and the
activist. The meeting could be in front of a computer screen, or
elsewhere (with printouts, paper to write etc).

Surely this would be a good learning experience for both, would not
involve too much time commitment, and would not oblige students to
necessarily agree with the activists' viewpoints - helping someone
communicate without necessarily adopting their point of view is
perfectly reasonable.

So it's certainly possible, but requires some non-virtual
people-to-people contacts!  Which only Indians in India can do...

The idea is from the "Republican god-parentings" done in France
since 1993, during the Revolution:
http://www.bok.net/pajol/concerne/assoc/droitsdevant/parrainages/parrainages.html
(I could briefly translate to English if this were useful.)

medium-term
-----------
The French govt is going full steam ahead to coopt the
"anti-global-capitalism" movement. Chances are the short-term aim
of ATTAC:

http://www.attac.org 

i.e. having a 0.05% (yes, that's 1/2000th) tax on international
financial transactions ("Tobin tax") might be achieved within a few
years. After all, govts typically apply income taxes of 10-50%, it's
not *that* revolutionary to have a new tax of less than 1% ! This is
reform, not revolution. (But it may be a non-reformist reform, i.e.

> [a reform] designed precisely to be part of a broader project,
> leading to fundamental change, ..., creating the conditions from
> which more [reforms] will be won in the future.  [Michael Albert]

http://www.zmag.org/Instructionals/RTInstruc/id66_m.htm
)

If this happens, then $US100 billion or so will be raised.  
($US1.5 trillion crosses borders every day.) The big question is how 
to spend this tax. In principle, ATTAC invites open debate on how to
do this, and says it should be to offset the damage created by global
capitalism and does *not* want it to be decided by a bureaucracy like
WBank etc. (Check the site for full details.)

My personal opinion is that a few billion dollar spent on public
internet access - libraries, universities, schools - in developing
countries should be one of the ways to use this money.

Suggestion: start an Indian branch of ATTAC and propose public Indian
internet access for the Tobin tax budget spending.

long-term
---------
This is the question of general campaigning for Indian govt money 
(and/or private money??) to be spent on broad-band public networks
available to village-based Indians, and in libraries, schools, 
universities.

For example, precise analysis of govt internet policies and
precise responses on better policies and media campaigns around
this would be required.

Suggestion: http://members.tripod.com/india_gii  
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/india-gii/
seems to me the logical place to coordinate this.

Definitely a link for the Indymedia site left-column!


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary:

- immediate
Suggestion: Simply by training *existing* users in these sorts of
things, their internet use will be more efficient.

- short-term
So, how about some sort of one-to-one 
e-wise-student-to-grass-roots-activist pairing relationships,
(inspired from French revolutionaries 1793, 1997-2001)?  

- medium-term
Suggestion: start an Indian branch of ATTAC and propose public Indian
internet access as a non-reformist way to spend the Tobin tax budget. 
http://www.attac.org

- long-term
Suggestion: http://members.tripod.com/india_gii  
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/india-gii/
seems to me the logical place to coordinate govt policy on 
internet development. A "must" for india.indymedia left-column!

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