Under the leadership of executive secretary and programme director Sushobha Barve, the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation in New Delhi has been engaged in efforts to broker peace in communities and places in the country that are especially fraught with violence. Barve talks to Happymon Jacob about her organisation’s civil peace-building initiatives in Jammu and Kashmir, placing the importance of wide-ranging community-level dialogues above all else.In the chat, Barve also speaks on her own personal experiences while working with communities in Mumbai affected by the riots which followed the 1993 bomb blasts. Highlighting the crucial impact such violence is liable to have on communities, Barve notes that the government in New Delhi must work towards ending hostilities in Jammu and Kashmir and increase efforts to engage at the level of communities.
