UDAIPUR AS
A LEARNING CITY
“…cities in developing countries are expected to grow
by 140,000 people a day for the foreseeable future.” - Janice E. Perlman
“Cities take up 2% of the earth’s
physical land space, they consume 75% of the resources and produce 75% of the
waste. 27% of India’s population live in cities and produce 64% of India’s
GDP.” - Kirtee Shah
“In 1900, just 15% of the world’s
population were urban. Today it’s more like 40%. And by 2025 it’s likely to be
at least 60%.” - Vanessa Baird (in The New International: Green Cities, June
1999)
“…ecological problems are emerging
as a major source of forced migration and urbanisation. In 1996, the
International Organisation for Migration estimated that 25 million persons are
environmentally displaced world-wide. Slums and squatter settlements are now
home to an estimated 25-30% of the urban population in the developing world.”¯ - Gleeson
and Low (in Consuming Cities)
Cities are growing, it is quite
clear. However, this growth is marked by its quantity, not quality. Within
cities around the world, many are facing an astonishing decline of humanness.
Trends such as consumerism, corruption, violence, prostitution, pollution,
environmental degradation, and drug abuse are increasing alongside economic
growth. We feel the fracturing impacts of city life reflected in our
selves, in our relationships, in our families and in our communities, as we
become more alienated from one another and more dependent on the ready-made
world provided by the Market and State. Further, the city as driven by
mainstream urban planning cannot grow without feeding off the natural
resources, people and wisdom of the hinterland, often to their
detriment. Unfortunately, most development efforts are still symptomatic
and focused on rural areas with very little attention being given to cities as
holistic and healthy systems.
While the city harbors systems
destructive to the human spirit, it is also a precise reason why positive
re-generation from within is so important. As the nucleus of educational and
developmental decision- and policy-making, the city provides opportunities for
closer work on related critique, positive regeneration and other direct,
meaningful action. This is the impetus behind Udaipur as a Learning City.
The Sanskrit term, Swaraj can be translated as ‘radiance
of the self’ and ‘rule over the self’. It was re-invoked during India’s freedom
struggle by MK Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore in the early 20th century,
as a spirit, sensibility, and form of organization that would value the
uniqueness of each individual as well as the diversity of community. Swaraj means that we personally and
collectively co-create what terms such as ‘freedom’¯,
‘progress’ and ‘justice’¯ mean, and try to manifest a way of
life where one is neither controlled nor controlling. After the British
left India, the larger agenda of Swaraj was forgotten amidst the agenda of
nation-building. (See Hind Swaraj¯ by MK
Gandhi).
Launched seven years ago by the
Shikshantar Institute, Udaipur as a Learning City (ULC) is an innovative
process to explore what the practice of Swaraj means in the context of urban
India today. At the core of Swaraj is a deep commitment for people in all
spheres of society to reclaim ownership and responsibility for their own learning. ULC
aims to support this by re-valuing and re-connecting the diverse spaces for
deep learning within the city of Udaipur, based in the northwest state of
Rajasthan, India. It is an open invitation to people of all ages and all
backgrounds in Udaipur, to explore ways of living and learning that are more
balanced, more meaningful, more just and honest for them.
All of ULC’s processes are geared
towards regenerating the local learning ecology¯. By
this is meant that the city is a living organism and people are active
co-creators of meaning, relationships, and knowledge. The learning ecology
approach recognizes that an infinite knowledge exists within people and
contexts far beyond what can be documented and stored. It also recognizes that
dynamic processes of emergence are taking place within the larger system.
Principles
The four major principles or
process-goals behind ULC are:
These principles came out of a few
years of dialogue with local people, and were articulated by Shikshantar during
the process of conceptualizing ULC in the year 2000. They have been, and
continue to be, integrated into each activity that emerges under
ULC. Given the openness and the spirit of the principles, they have not
led to debate, but rather have inspired the community’s imaginations to make
them manifest in practice.
Processes and Practices
These
principles came out of a few years of dialogue with local people, and were
articulated by volunteers at Shikshantar during the process of conceptualizing
ULC in the year 2000. Given the openness and the spirit of the principles,
they have not led to debate, but rather have inspired the community’s
imaginations to make them manifest in practice. They have been, and continue to
be, integrated into each activity that emerges under ULC. Such overlapping
categories of activities include:
Intergenerational Community Reflections and Dialogues: Festivals have traditionally been
potent opportunities for deep reflection and social engagement. With this in
mind, ULC has hosted interactive dialogues on both local and international
festivals, such as Rakshabandhan and
TV Turnoff Week. Posters, cooperative games, discussions and hands-on
activities are combined to explore the meanings and life-actions of such
celebrations. Public dialogues are also supported both by hosting
conversations/events on prominent issues, like water conservation/restoration
and pedestrian-friendly roads, and by screening thought-provoking films, like Baraka and Modern Times. Producing a variety of community media not only helps
Udaipur citizens to critically and creatively look at present problems with new
perspectives, but it also builds friendships across boundaries. For example, despite
a strong national and international trend toward Hindi and English, ULC offer
opportunities for reflection and conversation in Mewari (the local language). This enables a more dynamic
sharing of peoples’ stories, songs, proverbs, etc., which in turn de-institutionalizes dialogues and takes power
back from professionals and experts.
Unlearning and Uplearning Workshops: These particularly relate to critical
media awareness and creative expressions -- people making their own music,
dance, dramas, films, puppets, masks, sculptures, especially using so-called
‘waste’ materials. The underlying intention of such workshops is to actively
nurture peoples’ capacities to say ‘no’ to the consumeristic, competitive and
compulsory institutions/ attitudes/ behaviors/ structures that enslave us, and
to instead organically construct spaces and relationships that do serve
them. Such workshops predominantly occur within local neighborhoods and
are hosted by families at their homes, in empty lots or temple spaces. Questions
raised during such workshops include: How
can we share our feelings, stories and ideas through our own
expressions? How are our creations different from the readymade world of
mass media? What do notions like beauty, leadership, success, freedom, justice,
peace, security etc. mean to each of us? What are our creative capacities
and power (beyond institutions), and how do we unleash them to make the kind of
life we want?
Natural Living in a City: ULC is currently exploring ways that
city-dwellers can reconnect to their hands/bodies and to nature, through
organic farming on their rooftops, rainwater harvesting, solar cooking, herbal
gardens with medicinal plants, spinning cloth and other such efforts at
home. Natural living efforts also give city people a chance to ‘get their
hands dirty’. The soil and the sacred get reconnected in the most basic aspects
of human life, like health, food, water, clothing and shelter. These processes
enable city folks to link local culture with spirituality and the physical ecology;
for example, the wisdom in Mewari is
intimately connected with an ethical lifestyle and natural balance, which are
essential for challenging urbanization.
Learning Exchanges: ULC seeks to move beyond NGO/Government institutional
boundaries and agendas and directly involve local artists, organic farmers,
artisans, businesses, healers, etc. in questions and experiments related to
regenerating urban life. It also encourages youth who are not interested
in school or college (or those who want to change their career) to create their
own meaningful paths of living, livelihood and learning, by trying out exciting
apprenticeship opportunities. We encourage people to reclaim their own
learning processes by building their own learning webs (diverse networks of
co-learners and spaces) around the city.
These different elements of ULC are
geared towards regenerating the cultural commons. They stand in direct
challenge to the violence of Development, Progress and Modernization, which has
severely devalued local people and their knowledges and experiences and has led
to high levels of dislocation, isolation and alienation. We are trying to
revalue those things which are important to our collective well-being but do
not have direct economic value to the State or Market. The activities of ULC
are entirely off-line, as internet use and access is quite limited in
Udaipur. People meet face-to-face as needed, depending on the activity
(whether a publication in Mewari, a rooftop garden, a theater workshop,
etc.). No separate building has been especially constructed for ULC;
rather, we have chosen to creatively utilize what already exists: peoples’
homes, local neighborhoods, public gardens and parks, art galleries, temples,
ashrams, businesses, or local organizations’ offices. ULC focuses on families and diverse
communities. We recognize that intergenerational learning is key if wisdom is
to emerge and profound action is to take place.
All of this ensures that the Shikshantar movement, even in Udaipur,
extends far beyond one space – and therefore steers clear of the isolation and
marginalization that face many alternatives to education.
Members
“We don’t want Udaipur to become like a
Delhi or Bombay.” - Many Local
Citizens of Udaipur
There are
various levels of engagement in ULC. Shikshantar: the Peoples’ Institute
for Rethinking Education and Development, an independent not-for-profit applied
research institute and open learning community, has been the primary impetus
behind ULC. Its local team has supported the emergence of various parts of
ULC, either directly by initiating activities, or indirectly by engaging with
local people to encourage/involve them in sharing their hearts, heads and hands
in a process. Families, friends and neighbors are well involved in different
aspects of ULC (depending on their interests).
They have also been able to generate
many new relationships with individuals from a variety of local organizations
in Udaipur, including artists, craftsmen, healers, activists, farmers, story-tellers,
academicians, scientists, etc. They make an effort to partner with
individuals, rather than institutions, to stay true to the spirit of
ULC. In this way, there are no formal mechanisms for getting involved in
ULC, no compulsion and no bureaucracy. People co-create what is of
interest to them, thereby ensuring fairly strong commitments to the action at
hand.
For this engagement to happen, it
has been important to invite each person to be a co-creator in ULC. This
means seeing leadership in an entirely different way -- a leadership that every
person innately possesses, that builds upon their own strengths, and that is
not about having followers. The core team of Shikshantar and the core
volunteers in ULC have had to be ready to listen and to ask engaging questions,
in order to discover where they might connect with new people. They have
had to maintain a high level of energy, as this becomes contagious and excites
others to open up and get involved. And they have to keep a creative mind
and open heart, in order to support the emergence of multiple processes
--farming, Mewari language, music, festivals, etc. -- which often crisscross in
fantastic ways.
In this way, people join ULC either
through an existing activity, which has been initiated by the interests and
questions of others, or by sharing their own curiosities to start something
new. It is self-organizing, and the core team of Shikshantar plays a role
in fleshing out, supporting, and deepening the emergent activities. This
is why the work of ULC is so broad and deep, spanning everything from
vermicomposting to anti-globalization campaigns to learning with local
artists.
This is a fundamentally different
orientation from many other learning city projects in the West, where the focus
is on expanding technology (computers and internet usually). In those
cases, the definition, purpose, means, and ends of ‘learning’ are often rooted
in the military-industrial paradigm of development and rarely ask questions
about the direction of this paradigm. ULC is also very different from the
popular notion of public-private partnerships, where ‘public’ only refers to
government bodies, and ‘private’ only to corporations. ULC is trying to
transcend these categories of public and private and to appreciate and integrate
the authentic concerns and strengths of local people.
The principles behind ULC lie in
paradigms of abundance as opposed to deficit and scarcity driven frameworks. In
practice, this means beginning with an appreciation of what people have and an
openness to any and all to join in co-creating. These activities evolve
naturally from ‘ordinary’ peoples’ own unique gifts, questions and dreams, to
connect to larger systemic issues and concerns. This approach actively
nurtures peoples’ capacities to say ‘no’ to the institutions/ attitudes/
structures that do not serve them, and to instead organically construct spaces
and relationships that do serve them. Much of the approach is built on
exploring how to do things with as little money as possible. This not only ensures
sustainability and honesty of efforts but also encourages innovation and
imagination.
In other words, in Udaipur as a
Learning City, individual people and intergenerational relationships are the
starting point -- not abstract ideas, pre-determined projects or results-based
indicators. ULC enables us to be alive to surprises and to feel a constant
excitement in journeying into the unknown.
Udaipur as a Learning City has
provided a space and an opportunity for people who have a greater vision of
their future and of the future of Udaipur. Both within this city and with
others from India and abroad, they have been building a network of concerned
and motivated people and organizations, committed to rethinking and
experimenting with urban living.
Over the last seven years, the team
at Shikshantar have been astonished and inspired by the directions ULC has
taken. They have realized that they work more closely with individuals and
families in neighborhoods rather than with formal institutions, and that motivation
which comes from within is far more invigorating and self-sustaining than
forced action. They have found that interactive dialogues in public spaces such
as parks have been very effective. It allows them to work at a different
scale and increases interaction with a much larger network of children and
families (beyond normal NGO circles). They have also been excited by how
such resourcefulness of space and materials reminds people that you do not need
a lot of money to do wonderful things to start to transform your life and
community.
Their stress on the regeneration of
Mewari language has helped to build up a relationship with local people
(particularly artisans and farmers). The several intergenerational story books
they have published in Mewari have been widely appreciated by people especially
in the surrounding villages and towns. They have reached around 4000 families
and have started to generate a new sense of self-confidence in many people,
that they have the know-how, wisdom and capacity to face the challenges before
them and create something different from the rat-race. They know there is
tremendous untapped potential in self-organizing communities such as local
businesses, local community media and local caste groups, and are continuously
trying to find new ways to involve them in ULC.
Lastly, ULC is continuously
re-energized by a strong team of youth volunteers. Their involvement in many
different workshops and activities has helped to shape where ULC goes and how
it sustains itself. They have realized that work with youth needs to be
more focused on ‘practical activities’¯ that
gives them more self-confidence and encourages their creative powers. ULC
offers them a space to create their own concrete projects in specific contexts.
It is also important to support them with adult and elder mentors/practitioners
from their diverse communities.
Overall, Udaipur as a Learning City
has been (and continues to be) an exciting journey. Shikshantar invites
you to share your reflections on new possibilities for urban living.
Many more details, stories and images, from the Udaipur
as Learning City process can be found at www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/udaipur.html