Dear Archana, Jyothi & Raj, and other friends,
Heartiest congratulations for a very successful conclusion of Manipur CERI meeting. "Deliberative Democracy" is a new thing I have heard about. I did a bit of googling and found much more information about it. Here are some useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliberative_democracy
http://www.deliberative-democracy.net/
Many more can be found from the internet.
It got me into thinking that BUDDHA (Bottom Up Democracy for Development and Happiness of All) democracy is a process that can be used to facilitate "deliberative democracy" and creatively carrying out developmental work including doing things via microsavings.
Under BUDDHA democracy one can make groups of 10-20 people (R0) at the grassroots level (L0) and elect some (for various reasons I suggest half of the group) to the next-level (L1) of representation (R1). 10-20 Representatives (R1) at level L1 would also get together on their own volition and elect half of them to the next level L2 of representatives R2. The process can be carried on any number of times to form a pyramidal structure of representatives. The structure could be purely a deliberative structure wherein each of the groups could send results of their deliberation to the top, which could communicate those that may be of general interest in the downward direction. As the reports of any project of general interest percolate downward, various groups could decide about joining the project, if the said project can absorb more participants. Best project originators could be rewarded in one way or another. Some others could be rewarded at random. The idea would be to induce people to get together periodically and "deliberate" about various things including investment of their microsavings.
One must remember, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead. If we could just induce people to get together periodically and "deliberate" about various things, they would become committed citizen and then small groups from among them can work towards changing the world!
More about these things at a later time.
Please allow me to take this opportunity to include all your names into a list-serve called "PR-forum", which we may soon name as "CERI-forum," so that we may be able to continue our deliberation on the Internet group and everybody's input will be suitably archived for future references. If any of you are worried about too many emails, your membership can be easily changed to "no email" type. In case you would just not like to be included in the list any way, please do let me know within the next two days. I would make sure of not including your name. If by mistake your name does get included in the said list, it is very easy to delete the name from the list – you would be able to do it yourself or ask me to delete your name.
With best regards,
Satinath Choudhary
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--- On Wed, 27/5/09, Jyothi and Raj <jothiraj12@rediffmail.com> wrote:
From: Jyothi and Raj <jothiraj12@rediffmail.com>
Subject: Replenishing Energy - Manipur
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Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
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