The idea of justice, to my mind, is tied to the practice of development and respect for human rights.
Development is inextricably linked to ethics. In any attempt at defining ‘development’ one is caught up in moral and ethical dilemmas of various kinds. In a globalized world with blind superimpositions of changes in the name of ‘development’ on traditional spaces, Gandhi’s conception of sustainable development and indigenous technology gains importance. Who decides what to change and how? How does one define development, and for whom is one defining this concept? The premise for development is change. Change from an existing social order to a supposedly more sophisticated one.
In my last year in high school, I volunteered to teach English to students in rural schools. It was around that time when I also started studying theories propounded by environmental thinkers like E. F. Schumacher, M. K. Gandhi and Arne Naes, coupled with environmental activism in school, I began to comprehend the complex web of cause and effect that shapes this word: development. Human displacement, environmental degradation, involuntary poverty, warped priorities, and myopic vision and goals were some of the issues I first began to encounter and understand at that time.
I confronted another dimension of development during my internship with the International Justice Mission in Manila. Working with victims of human trafficking introduced me to conflicts concerning the exploitation of the human body and gender-related problems. This brought to my attention the all-pervasive nature of the concept of human rights.
Working with Tibetan refugees as a part of my internship in Dharamsala over this summer, my understanding of human rights and social development grew manifold. This has led to my active and ongoing involvement with Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), a non-governmental organization that uses non-violent direct actions to attain its goals. I was involved in their advocacy work, outreach campaigns, action camps and non-violent public protests. Through my individual interest and activism I have grown to acquire a leadership role in the capacity of President of the SFT Delhi chapter, where I am engaged in organizational and networking tasks, which have sharpened my skills as a worker in a large organization, setting long-term and short-term goals, identifying targets, brainstorming, taking decisions, strategizing, and planning the little details of campaigns to make them most effective.
With this powerful exposure to understanding some of the worst methods of systematic violation of human rights, I have now become sensitive to debates concerning human rights, the state and the citizen, and seek to question our understanding of the concept of development. It is this internship that first made me think of pursuing a vocation in development, human rights and justice. It is quite reasonable to believe that a fight for a perfectly just society appears to be an utopian ideal. It is the injustices that can easily be resolved that demand our urgent attention. It is such injustices that we ought to avoid and question in our analysis and practice of ‘development’.
