LokVidya IT KaryaShala - July-August 2008

[Nagarjuna]

Dear Sunil,
Attached below is a first draft :

Proposal for a LokVidya IT KaryaShala and Manthan - July-August 2008

The digital era as we know it, the age of Computer Science and
Information Technology as a fundamentally un-emancipatory and neo
colonial / Westernized supra and unifying layer over ordinary human
and societal activities, can be traced to the era of post Second World
War when a large number of scientists and engineers, who previously
had been engaged in seeding science and technologies of immeasureable
warfare and geopolitical domination, were in danger of being rendered
politically superfluous.

Epistemic activities, questions of knowledge and fundamental concerns
of the academic world, were transformed by the digital era in a manner
that rendered a new phase of human civilization, (that we will
presently refer to as post globalization, for lack of a better term) .
The underlying basis of human activities however remained the same,
the common man was isolated, alienated and distinct from the people,
processes and artifacts of those who engaged with questions of
knowledge.

The medieval European capital accumulation, the very Industrial
Revolution of Europe, and the subsequent colonial plunders which
provided the gunpowder for the complete domination of Western thought,
knowledge and civilization of last 400 years - over non Western and
indigenous peoples was being slowly overturned, much to the
consternation of large sections of people who selectively benefitted
from the Industrial Revolution and its various internal ideologies,
thought processes, structures and practices like Westernized
democracy, underpinning legal systems, Marxism, economic liberalism,
and trade globalization.
The so called humanities disciplines, within or outside university
sites were forced to adopt surrogate roles, refashion and redesign
themselves in the absence of direct linkages with knowledge,
resistance, and sustained struggles of excluded common people.

The process of exclusion and selective inclusion, was being structured
in manners and on a scale never seen before in history of human
civilization.
Below the surface, large sections of people, predominantly in the non
West and pockets of the West, were however surviving against all
odds and accumulated knowledge ideologies of Industrial Revolution,
Western imperialism, debacles of violent liberation struggles,
globalization and the post-World War II Digital Era.

"The idea of lokavidya is a result of long struggles by a large number
of people, over more than 15-20 years, through their engagement with
people's movements.
The organisations one can specifically name are PPST Foundation,
Mazdoor Kisan Niti Group, and Nari Hastkala Udyog Samiti, which
engaged with questions of knowledge, from an emancipatory out look,
and which developed processes, like Congresses of Traditional Sciences
and Technologies of India, the unity of peasants, traders, artisans ,
women, and adivasis as swadeshi samaj, the carrier of new light for a
new world, and Nari vidya as the ultimate basis, for women to find
their feet in this world, and a possible new one.
Lokavidya belongs to ordinary life.
This is life without condition, and therefore, it is not possible to
privatise lokavidya, not even by the mightiest of the empires." -
Sunil sahasrabudhey

The proposed first LokVidya IT KaryaShala and Manthan - July-August
2008 is aimed at exploring and evolving, an understanding of the
basics of the responses available to LokVidya in this digital era.
LokVidya IT is not a utopian enterprise just as common life is not
utopian.
It does however seek to patiently and determinedly, restore balance to
competing knowledge traditions as relevant to ordinary life, from a
position of caution, resistance and unbounded optimism.

Warm Regards,
Nagarjuna