Over a decade back, when making my first forays into international consultancy, I was lucky to listen to a remarkable idea which was then in its infancy and had just been rolled out. Two motivated individuals with vision, brimming with energy, had just launched the ‘Horizontal Learning Programme’ in Bangladesh. Mark Ellery and Shantanu Lahiri, who worked with the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme then, planned to energise Bangladesh’s local government’s system to strengthen capacities and improve efficiency.

Bangladesh’s local government system broadly followed the pattern of sub-national governance prevailing in the sub-continent. While local governments were formally in charge of many local responsibilities, true power and government finance rested with the vertically integrated civil service. At the district level, the administration was still headed by a District Commissioner, by whatever designation termed, a position inherited from colonial days.

Thus, Bangladesh’s local government system was high on good intentions, but bereft of, like in India, finances required to enable local governments to perform the formal mandates devolved to them.

Again, like in India, there was a government institution – the National Institute of Local Governance – which was tasked with the responsibility of delivering training to elected members and officials of the over five thousand local governments in the country. The same routine was followed, of training programmes designed and delivered from the top, with the pedagogy and content both determined with little consultation with local governments.

Mark and Shantanu intended to change all that. They were convinced that because of decades of NGO and government action at the local level, there was sufficient inherent capacity to perform some of the devolved tasks. All one needed was to identify champions in the system and then, a system of peer-to-peer learning could be initiated and expanded, they felt.

They called this paradigm, the Horizontal Learning Programme.

Identifying champions, investing them and promoting them as evangelizers can yield benefits. People tend to learn the best not when they are associated with outside champions, but when they meet their own peers, who are slightly better than them.

The Horizontal Learning programme rested on the premise that local government elected representatives were not empty headed receptacles into which government generated enlightenment could be poured. They came with considerable grassroots-level experience and they had successfully overcome the gauntlet of elections. They were well aware of the need to satisfy the expectations of voters and were anxious for real solutions, not to listen to homilies.

The key was also to realise that some of them had already worked out their own solutions to the problems encountered in running a local government and put these into practice in their own local governments. However, these good practices remained insulated from the outside world, due to two reasons.

Firstly, the local governments did not have a community to share their good practices. Secondly, and more significant, because they worked insulated from other local governments, they were often not aware that some of the remarkable things they were practicing were good practices; after all, one needs to compare oneself with others to realise that one is doing things better.

The Horizontal Learning Programme commenced with a process known as ‘appreciative enquiry, where in each Upa-zila (the equivalent of a ‘Block’ in India), the Union Parishads (i.e. the equivalent of Gram Panchayats) were assembled to discuss their activities. Discussions would ramble, as Union Parishad elected representatives used the forum to vent their grievances against government process dysfunctionalities. However, after all the complaints were expressed, discussion would focus on their practices; what we call their jugaads of governance. The exercise ended with the group voting on the five practices that they considered to be the best within the group.

These good practices were meticulously documented by teams that interviewed the Union Parishad and its member concerned, and reduced to simple fact sheets. The progenitor of each such practice was enabled to evangelize about the practice in peer learning sessions.

The result was impressive. The appreciative enquiry process threw up many hitherto unheralded champions of good practices. Many were unaware that they were doing something special. With support from the HLP programme, many were taken into the system as resource persons. Their speaking of these practices to their peers from other local governments had a dramatic effect as here was no lecturer speaking theory. But here were practitioners who had the vision and staying power to think up and innovation and execute it.

The HLP programme has many lessons for those who wish to run an effective capacity development programme. Yes, while broad brush programmes that touch all stakeholders are necessary, they often suffer in quality when run at scale.

Identifying champions, investing them and promoting them as evangelizers can yield benefits. People tend to learn the best not when they are associated with outside champions, but when they meet their own peers, who are slightly better than them. Their peers have overcome the impediments their followers face, to run their reforms effectively. That gives strength and assurance to the aspiring learner. There is also the feeling that if something goes wrong, the peer who is just ahead will have worked out the answers as to how to tackle such issues.

Yet, investing in champions is a small scale operation. Would it be possible to upscale that, without losing the personal touch and the quality of content? That is a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.

T.R. Raghunandan is an Advisor at Accountability Initiative.

Also read: India’s Capability Building Framework and the Reshaping of Panchayat-level Training

Also see: Our learning tool for grassroots civil society leaders in India called Hum Aur Humaari Sarkaar