Decolonising your approach as a public servant

This article was written by Kirthi Jayakumar, the Founder and CEO, The Gender Security Project, India

• The problem: Colonisation is very much a part of our everyday lives, manifesting in our mindsets and interactions with one another.
• Why it matters: Shifting away from colonial thinking is key to building inclusive, non-extractive, and impactful spaces.
• The solution: Start from where you are and build a practice of decolonising your approach as a public servant.

Understanding colonisation and decolonisation

The terms ‘colonisation’ and ‘neocolonialism’ can feel like academic terms and perhaps rather disconnected from everyday life and work. However, colonisation is very much a part of our everyday lives – starting from our mindsets, to how we work and interact with one another – and quite often, without us knowing it.

In simple terms, colonisation is the action or process of settling among and/or establishing control over the indigenous people of an area. It involves the appropriation of a place or domain for one's own use, without the consent of the original owners of the place or domain. In history, several European powers travelled far and wide and made ‘colonies’ out of regions across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This led to the imposition of Eurocentric systems, infrastructures, languages, laws, and policies in the name of ‘development’, a trend that continues to date. This resulted in the othering and discrimination of communities indigenous to the colonised lands, which often took place on racial lines.

Though it manifested in, among other things, the occupation of land and extraction of resources. Colonisation is essentially about territorial control. The term ‘territory’ can lend itself to any kind of territory – including our mindsets. For example, the assumption that a particular race is the norm, or that one group gets to use their power to make decisions for another without their consent, agency, or participation. The imposition of a Eurocentric world order in terms of politics, society, and economy is another example. Neocolonialism is a modern-day form of colonisation, where practices in the social, economic, and political domains reinforce colonial ideas, mindsets, and approaches.

"Originally, aid was envisioned as a way to redistribute economic capital. However, with time, it became clear that aid imported the same colonial dynamics that underpinned the former world order of coloniality."

At the end of World War II, the world witnessed a global wave of ‘decolonisation’, where former colonies emerged from under colonial rule, becoming independent states in themselves. However, colonial rule had left several former colonies impoverished, paving the way for their continued dependency on their colonisers and other wealthy nations for economic support. This state of dependency normalised a power dynamic where the wealthy became wealthier. They retained their power by widening the chasm through policies and laws that served the power dynamic, including the provision of aid, deployment of migration policies, and permanent membership in the UN Security Council.

From macro to micro

At first glance, colonisation can seem like a large structure that supersedes all actors. For all practical purposes, this is an appropriate understanding. However, colonisation and coloniality have found ways to exist and thrive in everyday life in ways that keep the larger structure going. In our personal and professional lives, colonisation can manifest in the form of racism, colourism, casteism, rigid migration policies, workplace dynamics that benefit some over most and dynamics of power and privilege. A clever visual by Sylvia Duckworth, the Wheel of Power and Privilege, explains this.

We may not necessarily be conscious of the privileges we hold – and often, the positions we occupy and privileges we enjoy are not absolutes, but are determined by contexts, circumstances, and our positionality. However, conscious or otherwise, our power and privilege produce impacts that can also look like harm. As a first step, it is important to acknowledge that it exists and that we can play a part in furthering it.

Effecting shifts: From the personal to the political

A good place to start is to recognise your positionality. Your positionality reflects where you are located, in relation to your social identity. For example: a queer-identifying migrant woman of color with a disability. While working as a public servant, your positionality can impact how you envision and effect policy change. For instance, it can influence your worldview, interpretation of a challenge or problem, and understanding of a possible “solution” for the issue. For example, as a non-disabled person, you may not have a full understanding of the limitations to accessibility in a piece of public infrastructure you set up. However, you may still go ahead with your interpretation of accessibility needs and likely design the infrastructure with that limited interpretation. This may wind up leaving many people out because the output might be inaccessible. A good way to go is to acknowledge your positionality and privilege as a non-disabled person and open up spaces to consult with a range of people with disabilities to understand their needs, expectations, and accessibility requirements.

Even as positionality grounds you in the present, some of your identities and related attributes have historical connotations that can come into play in the power dynamics you become involved in. This is particularly common in cases where race, nationality, and citizenship status are involved. For instance, as a person living and working in a wealthy country classified as part of the “Global North,” you may likely engage in programming that is outward facing – that is, one that concerns the people of another country, likely less wealthy by comparison, classified as part of the “Global South,” and likely a former colony of your country. This automatically creates a power dynamic that likely continues the coloniality that existed in history.

While it’s definitely true that you, the individual in the here and now, are not personally responsible for colonisation, you have benefited from the privilege and power that comes with the identity of being from the former colonising country. These benefits could look like racial privilege, ease of mobility without visa restrictions and greater accessibility to education, healthcare, and employment. To address the power differential, a good way to go would be to **acknowledge the history of colonisation, perhaps apologise for the impact it’s had and to educate yourself on the colonial dynamics at play. **

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A common tendency for most wealthy nations in their interactions with less wealthy nations involves the provision of aid. Originally, aid was envisioned as a way to redistribute economic capital. However, with time, it became clear that aid imported the same colonial dynamics that underpinned the former world order of coloniality – where the provision of money came along with control over decision-making in relation to what those funds can be used for and continued to widen the chasm between the wealthy and economically disadvantaged countries. If you are engaged in work that centres on the transfer of money, shift the focus away from centring aid, instead moving toward making reparations. Unlike aid, reparations do not involve any room for control over the use of money. Unlike aid, reparations do not carry a power dynamic.

At all points in time, it is important to acknowledge that lived experiences are as varied as our identities, and that while there may be some overlaps, there are significant aspects of one’s lived experience that we may never fully know, understand, or experience first-hand. This automatically makes it essential for a person in a position of relative power and/or privilege, to centre the agency of those who are most likely to be affected by the framing and implementation of a policy. One way to do this is to involve the people likely to be impacted in shaping the policy, informing the direction(s) of the policy and implementing the policy over time. This involvement should be substantive, not tokenistic, meaning that there should be a commitment to deep listening, gathering data and insights, and implementing the learnings so gathered in shaping the and implementing the policy.

Conclusion

As Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang explained, decolonisation is not a metaphor. It’s not a practice anyone can tokenise and reduce to a checklist, nor a practice one can adopt and discard at convenience. It’s an ongoing commitment that starts from shifting one’s mindset at the personal level, to effecting change in the way we do things, at the political level.

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(Image Credit: Unsplash)