By Chris Cusano
On a forest path in western India, two groups of villagers meet, exchange the greeting "jai adivasi!" and continue on their way. Hardly remarkable, except that the greeting – roughly, "power to the tribal people" – speaks for a new consciousness taking hold among the region's tribal population: an expression of solidarity for people whose bare survival has been under constant threat by the economic, social, and political forces of modern India.
Defiant but not militant, revolutionary but not subversive, potent but not partisan, their solidarity is creating opportunities for people at the margins of public life to participate in "human rights membership associations." From Mumbai (Bombay) to Jakarta to Cape Town, people are joining such groups to campaign for the rights promised to them – security, participation in government, equal treatment under the law, livelihood – but seldom delivered without a struggle.
By signing up large numbers of people to push for social change, educating members about their rights, and attacking a problem – anything from corrupt government to domestic violence – with an inexorable voice from the grassroots, these associations generate solutions that address both the immediate problems of members and their larger legal, cultural, and economic causes.
