Information Society Watch

This posting is part of a larger discussion on a list serve and is in response to a previous email which challenged the notion of ‘Right to Development’ and collective rights as a concept. This writing talks about why collective rights are important.

Rights to me are a set of basic conditions and purposes of political association of human groups. They are basic, and therefore they cannot be each and every thing which is decided by the concerned political community. However at the same time the nature of political association, and of a political community, is not static. Its members today have the same right to pull together some ‘basic’ conditions and purposes of their association as someone had in say circa 1823.

It may be easier to judge the success of a project – like Akshaya – than to judge the factors behind its success. And when I see the enormously success of Akshaya project, my mind of course goes toward seeking to explore the crucial factors that made Akshaya possible, and more, made it successful. Two factors are often mentioned in this regard. One is the level of literacy, and the value placed on literacy in Kerala. Computers appeared to many as just the next level of literacy, and truly so in today’s age.

This is a response to an email on the community radio forum, seeking reasons for slow take up of community radio among NGOs.

Excerpts from the original e-mail in response to which this posting has been written have been reproduced below.