Un/Making CSC
India

India

The research partner in India was the Bengaluru-based civil society NGO, IT for Change (ITfC), and as well as their field office in Mysuru, Prakriye ( see Partners). Since its inception in 2000, ITfC has worked to promote feminist and Global South perspectives on digital technologies, critiquing Big Tech, advocating for gender equity, and integrating information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) within education systems and rural communities to empower marginalized women and girls. Prakriye was established to actively experiment with alternative ways of using media and communication technologies in collaboration with communities, rooted in practices of action research. Their work ranges from an adolescent media, to support to women’s collectives to establish infocentres, and community video and media productions and screenings. 

ITfC receives significant funding from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), or perhaps more accurately, corporate philanthropy, which is mandatory for any corporate with operations in India earning over a certain threshold. In this way, the funding situation is intricately connected with corporates and capitalist profit, triggering a range of critical political-economic questions. Yet the research finds that relationships with CSR funders are longer term, reasonably predictable, and comparatively secure, with perhaps more slightly higher degree of funding-stress in Prakriye compared with the Bengaluru office. The research here offers an insight into how communication for development and social change work can look when the stress of funding and interference is reduced.      

Gallery

paper with pompoms and paperclips folded as a soundwave to represent a collective voice
This is a hammer, representing the common idea that tech is like a tool. Also calling to the idea of tech being like a hammer in search of a nail, a solution in search of a problem, which happens quite often in tech. These two pieces do not really easily fit together, which is like the nature FOSS [Free and Open Source Software] in the real world where not all the parts easily fit together: in fact these pieces actually broke when trying to fit them together. This hammer doesn’t really look like a conventional hammer. Stakeholders, for example, teachers, sometimes find this tool - which doesn’t look like a normal hammer and doesn’t fit easily together - a bit frustrating. So we always have to start with what is FOSS, and why it is valuable.
Community media is a like a mirror, it is a mirror that reflects what is happening in the grassroots. It is reflecting a collective experience through the media. This gets taken and given back to the community to understand, realise and to empower, and to mobilise.
Empowerment is a bit like a rubrics cube. You need a tactics to reorganise it properly otherwise it will keep going and going. You have to invest a lot of effort. In spite of doing it, many times you may not get a proper result, unless you are clear with the processes and procedures. The different colours represent the different stakeholders. Every time you try to move something, something else changes, there are unintended consequences all the time.
Our approach has different strands, meaning different teams, different themes, which each look distinctive but all strands are working together. We are always flexible, changing and evolving, but maintaining connection, and maintaining the core.
This a community media/ social media strategy. For that to bloom to emerge we constantly have to be grounded, represented by the terracotta bead. The glittery bead is the social media - things are constantly changing, hashtags, trends, viral content – we don’t always know what’s coming - but what is constant is the terracotta. We can’t just keep the glitter and forget the context. We always have to be grounded in the context of the audience we have in mind. We have to bring them along. So we use the glitter of social media grounded in the principles of social justice and equity. The terracotta will always be beneath the glitter, and the glitter doesn’t overpower that. That’s what makes it bloom.
Sustainability is like a strong, complex structure, everyone needs to come together. The actions we take are the bricks, and the community that participate are the glue that holds it together by glue. And that’s what keeps it strong, the actions and the participation of the community – without the glue it would fall over, so both the bricks and the glue are needed. You also have to make sure the bricks are appropriate to the community, the community will only participate if it is appropriate. We could also link it to the CSR, where we use our strategies to encourage the funders to provide the raw resources that our organisation makes into bricks with their strategies and processes. What about sustainability of different programmes, for example, comparing Media Champions and the Infocentres. Media Champions are so young they don’t have any decision making power, no money power, they are under the control of parents. Without the backup support of the organisation they can’t mobilise themselves. They are not even allowed to leave the home themselves. The model is sustained only after a few years when they see that these girls who participated have done well, then they have confidence in that model. But when it comes to the women’s group, they are strong, and they can independently run it and manage it successfully.
Our approach is like a mirror. It involves a constant cycle of doing and reflecting, doing and reflecting. Our work is a reflection of where we are as an organization at any given time. A mirror helps you to see things you wouldn’t otherwise see. It can also be about helping others to be critically reflecting through the work. The gaps between the mirror shapes could also be showing that it is always a work in progress. Social change is also like a mirroring process. With social change we’re trying to enable positive attitudes shifts, and that gets mirrored back to enrich the approach of our organisation.
This is an unfinished, imperfect structure made of mixed materials. And on top is a nest, and inside the nest are some small things that may grow. We are always working with structures that are not always fully formed, in a state of unfinishedness, a state of becoming, in terms of, for example, public sector, democratic values etc. These are working structures, they are not really robust. The construction is not just a spatial arrangement, it is slow and needs time. The construction using different materials is not always fully connected as it is being built. But we work with what we have. The nest on top is a delicate, a life giving space; a space that nurtures things that are small and that will become bigger. So we try various things (the objects in the nest), they are far from perfect, they are small changes, and they are not always very clearly connected, but maybe they may grow.
CSR is like one of those old coir mattress. The structure on the outside is the project and the CSR funding is the coir on the inside. Although it is not very soft, it gives us some cushioning - we’re not approaching multiple funders so it is comfortable - and it also provides some structure. It does have some give or flexibility where we can add our work - we’re able to communicate with the funders and tell them what we have in mind and because of that it is more cohesive. The white cover is because all these interactions are not usually visible on the surface, they happen behind the surface.
The CSR loop around the outside is like an enabler, it enables the social change to happen. The dark pompom is the visibility requirement. The yellow pompoms are the focus of the social change goals. The colourful ones are interventions that happen. The visibility is a darkish thing, it is constant. But if we deal with it, we get all these other good things. The size of the yellow social change is double the darker one, and it is not distorted by the dark one. The dark one is soft, not hard, so we can deal with it.
We have a good linkages with all the governments departments and other agencies working in the area. This is about cross learning between the departments. Representing the values, commitments of the organization. The chain is always in rotation. It also represents the teamwork of the team, who work closely together. We can also see how many of the meetings, most the communication, takes place in a circle. So there are different sizes of circles in our work.

All objects are available as a dataset under CC BY-NC 4.0 and can be accessed via Loughborough University repository or click below to download and cite.