Village Empowerment !!

The problem with 'village empowerment' is that empowerment is a verb derivative. And implies an empowerer. Do we mean ourselves ??

We from the modern framework are only equipped to destroy. Every city stands testimony to this. A madness. Of consumerism gone crazy. And of excesses leering at poverty.

The only space which can empower us to regain a direction to a simpler, saner, sustainable way of living and being is the village.

But in infinite hubris, we create the word Village Empowerment. And consider ourselves as the Empowerers.

And in that heady mix of arrogance and ignoranc, we can never grasp the opportunity to learn from a community infinitely superior to ourselves. As we instead set ourselves out to be their teachers, their saviours !

This is my only learning in 20 years in a small interior village. Of landless agricultural labourers. Wise, rooted in their gods and their customes. Anchored in simple contentment, and sustainable ways of being. Slowly being attacked and overpowered by the modern world. Mainstream wallahs and alternative wallahs. Out to 'develop' this other world. In their infinite arrogance. 

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Looking for an alternative to the word 'village empowerment'. Please suggest.

We cannot empower those who feed us, labouring on their own tired bodies. It is an invalid term.

Kavya Menon It should be "don't loot villages" or "learning from basics"

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Why do all NGOs go to rural India to 'help villagers' ?

When the source of all the problem is urban India and its insatiable appetite.

• Mark Johnston Because tackling our own overconsumption and the exploitation it causes would make us challenge our privilege and entitlement? Easier to think our education and intelligence mean we know what is needed better than people who have lived on the land for many centuries. Thinking we are more clever than others often illustrates our remarkably high level of stupidity. Plus middle class Europeans and Americans will pay a fortune to NGOs to host them on a "gap year" where they will eat all the villagers food, run off all the carefully managed water and badly build an unwanted toilet or something equally inappropriate.

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  Aparna Krishnan The arrogance is only matched by the ignorance. Fools running wild ... Entitled fools.