Local Commons: Bridges Across the Digital Divide

The epicenter of the current information economy is without question, located in the North. New forms of knowledge, pioneering applications and all contents of social, political and cultural discourses are emanating from the North. Is this a case of a well scripted storyline going awry? When the winds of technological change began to sweep across the globe in the early ‘90s, there was considerable hope in the South that the new paradigm would finally bridge the growing chasm between the rich North and the deprived South. But a decade long experience in the information super highway has brought home the truth that the emanicipatory potential of new technologies has been a Pentium powered fantasy. The old hegemony continues, albeit in new forms. Digital Divide is more than an embarrassing semantic. It also implies shrinking opportunities, threatened livelihoods and growing “invisibility” of the disempowered and the marginalized. Globalization with its overt economic rationale and a scant regard for local autonomy is ruthlessly opening up new markets and exposing marginalized communities to the full force of global greed propelled by faceless distant actors.

A key casualty in this defining moment is the age-old concept of “commons” – the physical and social space where knowledge was traded free of cost and the site where local realities and possibilities were reviewed and contested for larger public good. The commons have become commercialized and co-opted into the rampaging neo-liberal bandwagon. And in many instances, technology stands out as the villain – facilitating this crass commercialization with its ability to cut across geography, polity and economy with a click of a mouse. Instead of standing mesmerized on the sidelines in the South, can we conjure up an alternative - a purely homegrown one - to appropriate the technological possibilities to our advantage and plot a new discourse on the evaporating commons? Far from being a conceptual paradigm, we believe that that this response is key to the survival of the South. This short note is an attempt to explore the idea of local commons as an emanicipatory space where technological possibilities are critically interrogated within the prism of local realities and capacities, and solutions are derived in a participatory and empowered process wherein technology is a tool integrated within a holistic perspective.

What are Local Commons?

While Global commons refers to the public spaces available to all, local commons is the public space at the village / local political unit level. Local commons in physical terms refers to community assets, resources and spaces that are available in the unit, including rivers, ponds, grazing lands, common agricultural land, forests and religious places.

They are also spaces that connote not just physical “realms” – “commons” are niches where the community interrogates political, economic, cultural and social developments and constructs contextually relevant meanings and applications. These “commons” have existed throughout in history and provided a vital node to codify new knowledge and transmit the same in the form of oral and visual narratives. The knowledge societies which charted the progression of human civilization have always revolved around the “commons”.

In the new economy, parallel to the erosion of the traditional constituents of the “commons”, there emerges new and potent variants – the scope of which remains largely unexplored. One such enabling idea is that of Community Knowledge centers. The knowledge resource center at the village would record and maintain information on community assets and resources including its knowledge assets. The ‘asset registers’ would track usage, maintenance, life of the asset, information on users, costs and revenues. The community / village level Geographic Information Systems (GIS) would also record and track resources such as water bodies, grazing lands etc that are in the public domain. The centers would equally coordinate the knowledge assets, in various areas, some of which are listed below:

 Health

• Information on health practices
• Traditional practices - Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha etc
• Availability of medicinal plants & herbs
• Work processes at the government health centers.
   Education
• Local School
• IT education
   Livelihoods
• Agriculture
  • Local cropping patterns, diseases, etc
• Industry
  • Local industries
• Fisheries
  • Traditional Maps of oceans and rivers
  • Currents & wind flow patterns
     Traditional knowledge / Local knowledge
• Water divining
  • Local practices / culture / stories / narratives
     Local Governance
• Public works management
• Public assets management
• Transparency in public processes
  • Meetings
  • Bids and tenders

The Role of ICTs in the Architecture of Local Commons

Digitizing knowledge is important in the building of local commons. The benefits of digitization of information in the local commons allows for access to knowledge ‘on demand’ as and when required. Classification mechanisms, search engines and hyperlinks mean that the specific content that is required can be accessed quickly. Once the resources at community/village level are recorded in GIS, then it would be a basis for developmental activities. There is however, immense potential in the use of alternate technologies such as the Community Radio/ Video to allow for sharing of experiences and knowledge in the local commons.

Just as locating local commons in the governance structure is essential to lend it legitimacy, in a similar manner, the use of ICT resources / software in the public domain would be required to prevent the threat of holding the commons ransom to private / proprietary interests. Use of Open Source is a necessary component and this is also a must for ensuring scalability of the local commons.

Monitoring the state and usage of the ICT assets is important to ensure that they become instruments for social welfare. A fragmented approach to different sectors means that resources are not optimally utilized. There is a need to leverage ICT assets towards maximum use, since that would help in making them viable and also reduce the impact due to obsolescence.

Who will build the local commons?

The site of the commons has to be the socio-political center of the local government. Local governments need to initiate collaboration amongst stakeholders, plan and execute the formalization of the local commons and thereafter maintain it in perpetuity. Government plays an important role in social change and in owning and developing social capital.

The effectiveness of local commons however, hinges on partnerships. Even as local government becomes the facilitator and manager of the community resources, including the knowledge assets, civil society organizations would need to play a central role. They can help in the building of capacities and facilitate the development of content by the community. Research Institutes / Private Sector will need to supply ICT hardware and software resources and maintain them. Notwithstanding the need and role of multiple players, the ownership and control of local commons should always be in the public domain and not entrusted to players not accountable to the commons.

The local commons need to be seen as spaces that can enable the marginalized communities and women to conserve their knowledge, and access new knowledge. The centrality of the participation of marginalized communities and women in the local commons is critical to redefine power relations in stratified societies. These spaces will have to be created and structured in ways that strategically subvert traditional relations of oppression, exploitation and subordination of sections of society by those who have controlled knowledge. They will also need to evolve as alternatives to prescriptions and (non)–options of the ideologies of global institutional power structures.

Local Commons and Global Commons

The local commons are not spaces distinct from the global commons. They co-constitute and determine the global commons. They infuse into global spaces, perspectives and agendas from the local. In a sense, the commons are layered, with local level commons at one end, linking to the global commons through layers at territorial levels. In another sense, while the global commons are really the sum of all local commons, the global commons are not a hierarchical setup, rather a set of peer institutions. And given the current possibilities of transnational solidarity movements such as globalization, the link between local and global commons is an essential countervailing force against rampant markets and recalcitrant states.

The link between the local and global commons need not necessarily be online. Given serious infrastructure issues, we would need to rather use mechanisms that allow for regular off-line refresh, such as CD-ROMs, which can hold rather huge amounts of information and be cheaply manufactured and on a large scale. However, to apply the knowledge and resources in the global commons, there is a need to make it context-specific before making it part of the local commons.

The building and strengthening of the local commons in the South would help in correcting the North-centric biases that currently dominate the global commons and would function as an antidote to the digital divide.