Leadership Needs Learning From Bottom-up

Learning from below situates the learners to the ecological, historical, social, economic and political context of people and the mode of their interactions in everyday life to solve their problems and achieve progress. It reflects sharing people’s experiences and self-determination of decisions without intervention.  Its main concern is how people exchange their insights from the local context of a problem or experience as a basis of intellectual life within the condition of their language of thinking, living and acting. 

Learning from below involves acquiring an understanding of the whole problematic context and knowing valuable ideas and insights to interpret the complex world through the use of inter-subjective perspective. It enhances the ability of local knowledge to refine policies and laws and eases feedback. This understanding of local problems begins with the imagination of people. When polity and development paradigm are on eternal trial, insights from bottom up entails what is desirable to people’s needs, rights and priorities and think through them. A new cognitive path can set a good fit of policy. Nepali social scientists mostly use frame, concepts and theories in a top-down way which may be alien to the experience of people and their everyday practices. 

Pool of knowledge

This pool of knowledge enriched by wealth of empirical, historical and ethnographic research abroad may not reflect the local condition of diverse Nepalis. Social world of Nepalis is composed of specific type of natural endowments, importance of inner self, faith, feelings, social genes, history, religion, culture, belief system and concept of duties to various species life, not only fads, facts, data, evidence, rationality, order and the concept of rights largely borrowed from outside. Nepalis do not extol the virtues of human progress defined by a Cartesian map of friend and foes, winner and loser, politics and institutions of law, etc. but in a golden way to stop all kinds of extremes. They harness caste, class and gender mixing in the public sphere which is crucial for democratic socialisation of people and make a sense of equal citizens. 

 Many areas including climate change have inspired Nepalis to collaborate, connect, communicate, coordinate and organise around the shared goal of sustainability. It has shifted the paradigm of politics and economy from brutal competition and efficiency to resilience and adaptation. The fear of violent conflict arising out of severe deprivation has induced social inclusivity while acute corruption of power banded together the affected Nepalis to create demands, prevent the rigging of the polity by interest groups against them and exert pressure on leaders to solve a myriad of problems.   

The cognitive template of social science theories reflects the representations of cultural realities of other nations where they are invented, not Nepal and, hence, cannot be perfectly suitable to appeal to the grassroots people to empower them, open wider range of possibilities and choices and create bridges across various disciplines to solve their problems based on the principles of subsidiarity, popular sovereignty and equity. Nepali leaders and social scientists’ socialisation in the spirit of constitutionalism away from ideological indoctrination is vital to improve the life of people as they perceive best for them. It is vital because most theories applied to solve local problems encountered one after other failures.

The history of development planning amply illustrates this. Nepali planner’s inability to conceptualise, indigenise and contextualise theories to fit Nepali world is the main reason for this failure. They remained in their mental comfort zone without any risk taking or engaging in collaborative inquiry for innovative knowledge and mindful policies. In this sense, learning from below means becoming innovative, creative, adaptive and resilient and transforming the scale of performances based on highly constructive choices. 

Nepali planners, scholars and leaders need to rediscover the nation’s tradition of resolving disputes through deliberation in the public, not legal quibbling, coercion or demonstrating the rage of mob in the street and negatively socialising people against each other — the latter does not promote civic culture of tolerance to diversity Nepalis have cultivated since long time.  Language, culture, religion and rituals are central aspects of Nepali social life. Education has to shape common core standards so that the essence of the national community — the state and civic sensibilities are not undermined by crass materialism.   

Nepali people did not own expert knowledge in the sense of social sciences as they are de-contextualised and found little creativity in their thinking except what Clifford Greeze calls “thick description,” of already existing ideas rather than permeating the core ideas and adding value in them. In Nepal the failure of each perspective plan to meet its goals has been attributed to the predecessor's faulty design, lack of resources or even problems with implementing agencies. The planners’ and leaders’ mindset of blaming culture to predecessors but unable to properly indigenise and adopt the apt vision to Nepali society as per constitutional mandate and rationally act upon the popular feedback are the main reasons for the nation’s failure to leap forward. 

A propensity exists to cover up both prosaic and profound flaws, not opening to reflect the fundamental causes to minimise them. It can be attributed to a lack of their humility to easily recognize that the internalization of external concepts, theories and ideologies became flawed too. The causes of failures are well documented but the new ones did not change the path and political culture owing to the lack of institutional learning and habits of self-justification. Obviously the utility of cognising from below lies in learning from failures and devising adaptive strategies. Nepal has yet to develop education to work towards life-long learning opportunities for an adaptation to accelerating change taking place in many spheres of life. 

Likewise, the central challenge of Nepali state is how to optimise the return on educational investments at a time when a squeezing job opportunity at home is forcing educated youth to migrate abroad. The flowering of knowledge begins when a diverse people tends to see their problems  from a variety of angles and set to optimise  the solutions by bringing into the middle where each has to offer the other insight and construct overlapping values. There is no need for intellectual authority to feel threatened by locally evolved innovative ideas or only tolerate those fabricated in an entirely different cultural context for fear of its transformational effects. Nepalis articulate their voice and act on their conscious experience, adapt to change and acquire maturity to gain a good life. Their imagination releases change and relishes unfolding opportunities. 

The velocity of learning from the grassroots offers leaders, planners and scholars a greater level of efficiency of their knowledge and its validation and escape from the backwater of local blindness. It helps them to widen disciplinary lenses, escape from the crisis of irrelevance in a complex and interconnected environment and learn from other disciplines. Empowering people requires technological and other tools for planning, resources and leadership quality beyond the existing style of uncritical pumping of ideas, aid, technology, skills, tools, consultancy, etc. that serve the upper echelon of elites, not the people. The effects are: growing dependency, debt, lack of local confidence and ability to plan for change in the process of using self-innovation. 

People working in local bodies and self-governing communities can thus clean solutions offered by bureaucratic planning, civil society programming, market institutions, etc. In Nepal, synergy of these actors in policies is vital to foster common good and enable the state to stand for people. Capacity building of local self-governance can improve people’s faith in the constitution. Similarly, trust in leadership grows with its responsive capacity. It, however, requires connecting resources and opportunities to the people, overcoming many challenges raised by local representatives and fostering greater good to them, even those at the rock bottom of society lacking adequate livelihood means.

Mandate

 Local representatives view that the federal and provincial authorities treat them paternalistically as infants, legislators allocates plans and resources to expand their electoral constituencies not align with local priorities, indulge in power-centric budget allocation, teachers and authorities refuse to abide by the mandate of the constitution that health, high school education, drinking water, irrigation, infrastructure building, social development, etc. are decentralised at local bodies, undue exploitation of local resources -- sands,  boulders and forest products, upper layers not coordinating development plans, low allocation of  equalisation fund, reckless distribution of conditional grant, interest groups’ bent on free riding, party leaders espousing partisan mentality, etc. 

Learning from below is a vital part to develop the virtues of Nepalis, keep a balance among shared and self-rule and debunk an illusion that local bodies are only executing bodies. Strengthening the local economy that is caring of nature, productive and catering peoples’ needs can retain youth within the nation and offset the shortfall of critical mass of development agents. Nepali leaders, planners and scholars to learn from people depends on how they can provide grit, self-driving motivation and platforms for them to engage in sharing of knowledge, information, resources and remaining accountable to their use. It enables people to self-determine, exercise freedom, decolonise mind, unleash their self-confidence and potential to engage in worthy initiatives. 

The dividends of youth bulge in the nation can take care of aging population, revive anaemic economy and mend social fractures created by divisive politics and negative effects of globalisation through moral and spiritual roots. Only then Nepalis can find a deepest sense of community everyone longs for -- solidarity, connection, collaboration and healthy interdependence, not find an escape in deserting the family, society and the nation leaving them desolated and inviting the crisis of national identity. Learning from bottom up enables leadership, planners and scholars to capture voice, visibility and articulation of people’s interests affirming popular sovereignty.

(Former Reader at the Department of Political Science, TU, Dahal writes on political and social issues.)