The view of a parched Fateh Sagar continually tugged at the minds and the hearts of the seventy people who gathered for the Unfolding Learning Societies conference in Udaipur. Even those who had become numb to the dry lake beds examined the landscape with fresh eyes. Why had this happened? Local people, many of whom would be considered illiterate and ignorant, constructed the lakes two hundred years ago, without the aid of large engineering companies. After centuries of abundance how had the lakes now run dry? What human activities contributed to the current situation? The issue of what had happened and what was to be done was talked about from time to time. Fresh thoughts, ideas, energies and a desire to act, to make changes sprang from the sight of the dust outside.

Who were these people? They were a diverse group coming from across India and the rest of the world, including Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, the United States and Europe. They came together to explore their common passion to understand how best to extend ideas of learning from the school to the diversity of life, re-linking learning to real issues. While one would expect a gathering on learning to comprise its fair share of academics, welfare officials and administrators, the participants ranged widely from artists, activists, corporate consultants and to many who defied easy labelling. One might be talking to a children’s book publisher to discover that he was also a farmer, or to some actors only to find that they ran month long drama workshops on understanding self, society and education.

This gathering aspired to something radically different, to live a very different set of values to normal conferences. These values were an expression of how a learning society might emerge. At its heart was a fundamental belief in the legitimacy of different ways of knowing. Here the operating principle was that each participant was a unique source of learning - by the sheer fact of being alive.

Conceived of at Shikshantar, a not-for-profit movement based in Udaipur, the event was a culmination (but not end) of three years of research and experimentation on what a learning society might be. The conversations built on over forty five essays from three special publications of Shikshantar’s bulletin Vimukt Shiksha. As the editor’s note in the first publication explained, this work ‘represents a deep-felt desire to rediscover, regenerate and re-value different ways of questioning, of understanding, of relating, of creating, of living, in the face of larger societal concerns and impending catastrophes."

This work is explicitly not an attempt to define what a learning society was for the entire world. Rather there was a recognition that there are diverse learning societies in the world. This meeting tried to explore what learning societies might mean in South Asia from diverse vantage points and contexts. Participants from other places helped to highlight the commonalities and differences between different learning societies.

Instead of agendas and timetables the talk was of ‘flow’ where as often as not the entire group determined what kind of space they needed and what times they would like to keep. Instead of keynotes speakers the conference opened with the group all sharing the questions they carried with them to Udaipur. This expresses a belief that when such a space is opened we are free to recognise the limitations of our own truth, understanding the complexities of the diverse contexts each of us came from and finally to see our work as experiments to learn from rather than ‘best practices’ to be replicated (blindly).

In the open spaces of the conference participants talked to each other, explore their work, their personal lives and themes relating to unfolding learning societies. A key difference in the space created was a desire for real dialogue. Too often our conferences are like boxing matches, with each party trying to score points or they consists of a series of long, unconnected monologues with individual egos competing to occupy the space and make the cleverest point. At most conference we are tortured by long, technical speeches given in stifling auditoriums and then are given copies of the same speech. Real dialogue on the other hand requires a different approach. It needs individuals to be willing to expand energy on really listening, it needs a trust in letting people speak their minds without interrupting, it needs a true commitment to mutual understanding and finally it needs open spaces where people can find air, light and sunshine.

Through open spaces and dialogue a range of expressions were tied together; themes ranged broadly from public and political spaces, to rooftop organic farming to the importance of reflective silence in our lives; mediums used included poetry, drawing, painting, theatre, dance and music. The use of such media forms provided the opportunity and recognition that each of us are co-creators of our own unique learning society.

Rather than worn out discussions about literacy and enrolment rates, the participants discussed their own internal struggles, on how to rid ourselves of the traps of modern knowledge and how to live with the contradictions of our times. They raised questions such as: what is the logic of the dominant system?; what are the alternatives to television?; where do we find the courage to free our creativities and our intuitive cultures?; how to resist colonisation vis-à-vis information technologies?; what can we learn from drop-outs and those outside mainstream systems?; what if we were part of the problem?

The un-schooling advocate John Holt once said that ‘Birds fly, fish swim and people learn.’ If we’re comfortable studying the lives of birds to learn how to navigate the skies, if we’re comfortable studying the lives of fish to learn how to navigate the seas, then why not study our lives to learn how to navigate life? This radical idea, of studying the vibrant and dynamic systems of life that surround us, from the lives of our friends to the lives of cities, has been stifled. Instead we are taught to turn to the sterility of textbooks in order to ‘learn.’ Don’t we learn from everyday from simply doing things, from living our many cultures? Why is it that all learning outside of our education systems is perceived, especially by the middle classes, as something with no real value?

A bottle of water sitting on a table, against the stark brown backdrop of the dusty lake beds, symbolised the status of learning in our societies today; a natural resource sterilised and packaged for delivery to those few with the means of grasping it.

If we are to end the droughts that plague our lives then we must protest the packaging of all our natural resources, from water to learning, we must protest the various monopolies that sustain the business of packaging and the marketing of artificial scarcity. In doing so we must demand a very special kind of freedom, the freedom to learn wherever and whenever we chose.

Found all over India, a "pyaoo" is a little stall that people set up to provide water for the thirsty. People set them up because they want to and anyone is free to walk up (without any compulsion of course) and get a drink of water. The structures are simple and require no vast funds or management and yet they provide a much needed service. Drawing inspiration from such practices we can continue exploring ways of dealing with our thirst. In doing so we must recognise that thirst comes in many forms and arises at different times. To believe that the only solutions to drought are to package water, then either sell it or force it down people’s throats, is a failure of imagination. We must recognise that to drown people in a time of drought is a great crime.

In the face of such a crime it is useless to simply level accusations, few of us are innocent. Rather let us ask ourselves a simple question: what role does each of us play in a time of drought?

Reflections by Zaid Hassan (zaid@pioneersofchange.net) from the Unfolding Learning Societies Conference, Udaipur, Rajasthan 18-22 Dec, 2002.