How to Make a Community Safe
We usually think of safety as protection from other people: locks, walls, guards. Madhyasth Darshan defines it the other way round: safety is what people give each other. Here is how a community can build it, in six steps.
Ask what makes a neighbourhood safe, and most answers are about keeping people out: better locks, higher walls, a guard at the gate, cameras, more police. These have their place. But many people live behind every one of them and still don’t feel safe.
The reason may be that we have only half of safety in view. Madhyasth Darshan describes the other half, and it turns out to be the larger one.
This may sound like saying locks and police are unnecessary. It doesn’t. Where there is real danger, protection is needed. The claim is that protection alone never makes people feel safe, and that the larger part of safety is what people give each other.
What safety is
The Paribhasha Sanhita defines safety (सुरक्षा) in a way that surprises most readers. Safety is when a person’s body, mind and wealth go towards another person’s growth, nourishment and protection, and towards helping to remove hardship, pain, sorrow and poverty.
In other words, safety is not first something we defend. It is something we give. In Vyavaharvadi Samajshastra (व्यवहारवादी समाजशास्त्र), Shri A. Nagraj names its four parts: giving (अर्पण), devotion (समर्पण), nourishment (पोषण) and protection (संरक्षण). Nourishment, he says, reassures the body. Protection reassures the mind.
The same book says the safety of things works the same way. A thing is safe with whoever uses it well, and the root of that is trust in relationships.
“Safety is not first something we defend. It is something we give.”
Three moments that test a community
The book names three situations where this kind of safety matters most:
- Children, until they can stand on their own.
- Someone who falls ill.
- People hit by disaster: cyclone, earthquake, storm, flood or drought.
These are the moments when a person can’t look after themselves, and they come to everyone. A community that is reliable in these three moments is safe in the way that matters. One that isn’t, however well guarded, leaves each household alone with its fear.
Step 1: Look after every child
Parents look after their own children. A safe community goes further: every child is in some sense everyone’s. Children know several adults they can go to. Families notice when a child is hungry, out of school, or unhappy. The village plan in Avartanshil Arthashastra (आवर्तनशील अर्थशास्त्र) gives its justice and safety committee the task of making sure everyone in the village is getting a proper education, and of working with the family wherever a child has dropped out of school.
Step 2: Make sure no one is ill alone
Serious illness is one of the loneliest times in a life, and one of the most expensive. Agree, as neighbours or a village, how you will respond when someone falls ill: who checks in, who brings food, who helps with the fields or the children, who goes with them to the doctor. Written down in advance, it happens without anyone having to ask.
Step 3: Prepare for disaster together
The village plan includes consolation and practical help for any family hit by an accident, a natural disaster or a serious illness. Preparing means two things.
First, a plan: who helps whom, where people gather, what is done first. Second, a reserve. The darshan defines the safety of exchange as producing more than is needed, and storing it. A village grain store, a common fund, seed set aside: these are what carry a community through a bad year. They are very different from each household hoarding against the others, a difference we explore in Can I Be Safe If You Are Not?
Step 4: Keep shared things safe by using them well
The village plan describes keeping the village safe as keeping its land, forest, water, water sources and common facilities safe, through good use. A well is safe when it is used carefully and kept clean. A forest is safe when no more is taken than it grows. A shared hall is safe when people look after it as their own.
This is safety as the book defines it for things: safe with whoever uses them well. We describe how a village can look after these together in How to Organise a Village So Every Family Has Enough.
Step 5: Prevent harm before it happens
In Vyavaharatmak Janvad (व्यवहारात्मक जनवाद), the darshan describes correction happening before an inclination becomes an incident, starting in the family and moving out to the wider group only if needed. The village plan also asks its committee to remove the causes of conflict between families before they grow.
In practice, this means noticing early. A quarrel between two families that is brewing. A young person drifting towards trouble. Someone struggling and getting angry. Each is far easier to help at the start than after something has happened. Noticing is not watching people or labelling them. It means being close enough to offer help, letting people decline it, and keeping what you learn private unless someone is in danger. When a dispute does arise, the steps in How to Settle a Dispute So Both Sides Are Satisfied are a way to resolve it so that it doesn’t return.
Step 6: Share what works
The last part of the village plan’s idea of family safety is easy to miss: making any one family’s strengths available to every family. One family grows food well; another keeps its children healthy; another manages money wisely. A safe community passes these on, so that no household is left without what another has already learned.
How to tell whether it is working
The book adds a test. In each of the three situations, the safety given is evaluated by both sides, and both should be satisfied: the family that helped, and the family that was helped. That, it says, is justice.
So ask, from time to time: when someone in our community was ill, or a family was hit by bad luck, did they feel carried? Did those who helped feel it was worthwhile? Two yeses mean the community is becoming safe.
And the planet?
Safety built on defence pushes each household to stockpile against the others: more stored, more owned, more guarded, just in case. Much of that is taken from the earth and never used. Safety built on care and shared reserves can need far less. One village grain store can do the work of many private hoards, if it is well kept and fairly shared. Land, water and forest kept safe through good use are kept safe for the next generation too. We look at this further in How Much Should We Take from the Earth?
And our happiness?
Fear is one of the heaviest things a person carries, and much of it is the fear of being alone when things go wrong. A community that has shown, again and again, that it carries its children, its sick and its unlucky lifts that fear from everyone in it. That is a kind of freedom no lock can give, and it is one of the foundations of a happy life.
A protocol to try
Make a short list of the households closest to yours. For each, ask yourself: if they fell ill or met with bad luck tomorrow, would I know, and what could I do?
Then pick one household where the answer is “I wouldn’t know”, and get to know them a little better this month.
Limitations
- Some dangers, such as violence and serious crime, need protection, and often the police and the courts. This post doesn’t address them.
- A community that watches over everyone can become one that interferes with everyone. Care needs to leave room for privacy.
- Madhyasth Darshan holds that when people understand, wrongdoing stops. That is a strong claim, and we haven’t seen it demonstrated at the scale of a whole community.
- The six steps are our arrangement of what the books say, and we haven’t yet tested them.
References
- Shri A. Nagraj, Vyavaharvadi Samajshastra (व्यवहारवादी समाजशास्त्र), p. 130 (things are safe with whoever uses them well; the root is trust), pp. 165–166 (safety as giving, devotion, nourishment and protection; children, the sick, people hit by disaster; both sides satisfied)
- Shri A. Nagraj, Avartanshil Arthashastra (आवर्तनशील अर्थशास्त्र), p. 144 (keeping the village’s land, forest and water safe through good use), p. 145 (help for families in accident, disaster and serious illness; removing conflict between families; sharing one family’s strengths with all)
- Shri A. Nagraj, Vyavaharatmak Janvad (व्यवहारात्मक जनवाद), p. 106 (correction before an inclination becomes an incident, starting in the family)
- Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, सुरक्षा (safety), p. 201; अर्थ सुरक्षा, p. 5; विनिमय सुरक्षा, p. 172
