Neighborocracy – A step forward from democracy

By Varuvel Robert

Title: Hello, Neighbourocracy!
Author: Edwin Maria John (edwimjohn@gmail.com)
Pages:64
Pay as you wish at https://childrenparliament.in/project/hello-neighbourocracy/

Way back in the 1960s, Edwin M John, as a seminarian, was an ardent and avid reader of Christopher Movement publications.

The spirit and principles of the movement as represented by books like “You can change the world” fascinated him. He liked the organization’s slogan: “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” He conducted the Christopher Leadership Courses in which one of the exercises for participants was a one-minute talk under the title, “If I don’t, who else will?”

Imbued with the same spirit and principles on the importance and power of individual accountability and initiative, he went on to act in whatever way possible to change the world.

Eventually, he came to realize the power of groups. Especially small groups. He realized Individuals brought in changes better when in groups than when left as isolated individuals. He took interest in small-group-oriented movements like Young Christian Workers (YCW), Young Christian Students (YCS), Young Students Movement (YSM) and Christian Life Communities (CLC). He was particularly fascinated by the title of the book “Groups alive, Church alive”.

The Basic Christian Communities (BCCs) in Latin America that he read about around the time of his priestly ordination in 1970 added yet another dimension: groups themselves brought in better changes when they are linked together. The BCCs were territorially inclusive and federated at various levels giving wider reach for change-oriented discussions, When appointed parish priest of Kodimunai, a coastal parish in the southernmost diocese of Kottar, he started organizing the entire parish into BCC units of about 30 families. That marked the beginning of a movement that today claims nearly one hundred thousand BCC units in India making the parishes participatory.

But it is not enough to make the Church alone participatory, he reasoned. He wanted to ensure that the whole world is participatory. He dreamt of a world where everybody feels that he or she counts, that he or she is a powerful co-ruler. Hence he started promoting Basic Human Communities which he called Neighborhood Parliaments. And to bolster this up he promoted also Inclusive Neighborhood Children’s Parliaments. Eventually, he gave shape to a new political system, a new dream for new political and socioeconomic world order.

His new book, Hello, Neighbourocracy is about this new world order.

Neighborocracy is to be a step forward from democracy which, for Winston Churchill, is “the worst form of government except for all the other systems that preceded it.”‘

The present form of democracy with its huge election-constituencies, argues the author, ends up as the rule of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. In such huge forums, the small voices of the economically and socially “small people” go unheard. Such culturally, and politically small people, considered just numbers and votes, shoulder the economy of the nation by bearing the brunt of a variety of indirect taxes of the government.

Deeply concerned about the sorry plight of the people, he proposes the structures and guiding principles for a world where all could be equal partners, equal participants and equal beneficiaries. He pitches for governance by people, for direct democracy versus representative democracy, and for a world government from below.

Another irritating aspect of democracy as it is practiced now, he points out, is that it is rule-by-majority. Every time an election or collective decision-making is made people get divided, and in this game of numbers, divisions and divisive loyalties are promoted and sustained. As a solution, he integrates into his dream, the consent-based – not consensus-based – decision-making and election procedures of sociocracy. He explains how in this Quaker-initiated approach of Sociocracy how people can get united, rather than divided, with each election and collective decision.

In all these, he is a visionary with missionary zeal who does everything in his power to popularize and propagate this vision to the ends of the earth. He has addressed social activists, politicians and universities of various continents, and at the UN.

The booklet, with just 62 pages, carries a lot of insights and convincing arguments bolstered by narratives related to the pioneering efforts at “neighborhoodization” in the above-mentioned in Kodimunai and elsewhere.

The author corroborates further by narrating the experiments of Neighborhood Groups (Ayalkoottams) and Neighborhood Assemblies (Ayal Sabhas in Ward Sabhas) in the federal state of Kerala in India. He points out that some 300,000 neighborhood groups (Kudumbashree) vibrantly and successfully function there as of February 2020.

The booklet is challenging and changes our attitudes and goal in life.

The language is simple and touches our hearts.

After reading the booklet one will be convinced that a new world is possible and that “small people” can change indeed the world through neighborhood communities and their multi-tier federations. ensuring new world governance from below.