{"id":316529,"date":"2026-05-25T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=316529"},"modified":"2026-05-21T13:19:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:19:15","slug":"the-indian-villager-wants-to-speak-to-you-if-only-you-will-listen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/05\/the-indian-villager-wants-to-speak-to-you-if-only-you-will-listen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Indian Villager Wants to Speak to You–if only You Will Listen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entering the Village: Beyond Illusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Go to the People<\/em>
\nLive with them
\nLearn from them,
\nLove them.
\nStart with what they know,
\nBuild with what they have.
\n. . . But with the best leaders
\nWhen the work is done
\nThe task is accomplished.
\nThe people will say, “We have done this ourselves.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Tao Te Ching, attributed to Lao Tzu<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

21 May 2026 – <\/em>The village, as I have come to understand it, is often reduced either to a romanticised emblem of “authentic India” or to a shorthand for stagnation, hierarchy, and deprivation. Both framings feel incomplete, as neither adequately captures their lived complexity.<\/p>\n

In reflecting on rural life, I do not see a static social world, but a durable form shaped by land, labour, kinship, and the demands of survival. It is neither a residual fragment of the past nor a failed version of modernity, but a living reality that continually negotiates change on its own terms. Within its everyday rhythms, I observe a combination of continuity and disruption, tradition and adaptation, constraint and quiet resilience.<\/p>\n

I can understand why the village is often idealised. It may appear to offer moral clarity, rootedness, and a slower tempo of life, seemingly removed from urban intensity. At the same time, I am aware that it is experienced very differently by others\u2014as a space shaped by entrenched inequality, patriarchal authority, caste hierarchies, and limited social mobility. These are not abstract observations for me, but part of the layered social realities I encounter.<\/p>\n

What I have come to recognise is that neither representation is sufficient on its own. The village is not best understood as a symbol to be either celebrated or condemned. It is a lived space of ongoing negotiation, where aspiration meets constraint and where change unfolds incrementally rather than abruptly.<\/p>\n

For me, understanding the village requires moving beyond simple binaries\u2014”backward” or “modern,” “pure” or “deprived.” Rural life is neither fixed nor complete, but continually evolving. Its significance lies less in myth or metaphor than in its persistent, complex, and deeply human reality.<\/p>\n

Listening Beyond the Village Myth<\/h2>\n

When I began reflecting on Indian villages, I noticed how persistently they are imagined as self-contained and timeless\u2014often described as “little republics,” complete and unchanging, existing somehow outside history. This image, which has long influenced both popular and educated understandings, conveys stability and autonomy, yet it feels increasingly distant from lived realities.<\/p>\n

My own experience has led me to question this framing. Villages are not insulated worlds; they are deeply enmeshed in wider economic, political, and social processes. Their internal life is neither fixed nor self-reproducing. What often appears as continuity is, in practice, the result of ongoing adaptation\u2014sometimes gradual, sometimes abrupt\u2014shaped by shifts in livelihood, authority, and aspiration.<\/p>\n

I have come to think that such representations endure less because they are accurate than because they offer a simplified and manageable image of a far more complex social landscape. This simplification, however, carries consequences: it flattens diversity, obscures internal conflict, and diminishes the dynamism of rural society. It also influences how development is conceived, encouraging approaches that treat villages as static objects of intervention rather than evolving social formations.<\/p>\n

Even today, a degree of nostalgia persists around the idea of the “idyllic village”\u2014self-sufficient, harmonious, and morally intact. Yet this nostalgia often reflects anxieties within urban life as much as it reflects rural conditions. In that sense, the village can become less a description of social reality than a projection shaped by distance and imagination.<\/p>\n

Through my work and travels, I have learned that villages cannot be adequately understood through inherited abstractions. They must be approached as internally differentiated, historically embedded, and continuously changing. Their realities are uneven and often difficult, but always in motion. Engaging with them meaningfully requires setting aside ready-made narratives and cultivating a more attentive, grounded understanding.<\/p>\n

In the end, what I have come to rely on is not the image of the village as a fixed entity, but the lived experience of those within it\u2014an experience shaped not by stasis, but by ongoing negotiation and adaptation.<\/p>\n

The Myth and Mechanics of Developmental Change<\/h2>\n

I have long been struck by the way India is often imagined\u2014as a land of ruins, snake charmers, and romanticised antiquity, almost a museum arranged for the passing gaze of outsiders. Yet this representation quickly dissolves in lived experience. Beneath such a curated image lies a more unsettled reality: a civilisation in motion, changing not through spectacle but through gradual shifts in consciousness, practice, and social organisation. This transformation is neither linear nor uniform. I have seen it most clearly in villages, where cultural memory is dense and where even small changes must negotiate scarcity and the enduring weight of tradition.<\/p>\n

I have also frequently encountered an idealised image of rural life\u2014lush fields, abundant harvests, open skies, and a presumed harmony between humans, animals, and nature. While aesthetically compelling, it sits uneasily alongside the realities of rural existence. Villages may be admired as sites of simplicity or pastoral balance, yet they are rarely chosen over urban comfort when real alternatives are available. Such portrayals tend to flatten a complex social and economic landscape into a static idyll.<\/p>\n

In my engagement with rural communities, I have come to understand development not as a purely administrative or technical process, but as an encounter with culture in its lived form. Culture is not peripheral; it is constitutive. It shapes what is thinkable, what is acceptable, and what is experienced as possible, thereby framing the very conditions under which change occurs.<\/p>\n

For this reason, development cannot be adequately measured through infrastructure alone\u2014roads, statistics, or formal indicators of progress. Its more meaningful measure lies in whether people can live, and ultimately die, with dignity. A society’s moral texture is revealed less through its visible achievements than through the quiet organisation of everyday life: whether people with low incomes are heard, whether the vulnerable are protected, whether older people are cared for, and whether the final passage of life is marked by dignity rather than neglect.<\/p>\n

One of the most revealing indicators of this moral condition is not only how a community treats the living, but how it honours its dead. In many villages, even today, the absence of a proper pathway to cremation or burial grounds means that grieving families must carry bodies across uneven terrain, where the bier often moves precariously over mud and stone. Such moments expose, with particular clarity, the gap between material development and lived dignity.<\/p>\n

In this sense, development loses its moral coherence when a society can build roads to markets and institutions but cannot ensure a dignified path for its dead.<\/p>\n

Defying Systems: A Journey through Resistance and Resolve<\/h3>\n

I spent much of my career in rural India, a path I chose because it was less travelled\u2014and that, in important ways, shaped my perspective. In institutional settings, I was often described as a maverick, sometimes as a radical or an anachronism in rural banking. I did not consistently temper my ideas to align with prevailing authority, and many of my proposals were received with scepticism. Working with a limited awareness of headquarters’ internal dynamics, I tended to assume that rural banking could accommodate greater experimentation and flexibility than was conventionally accepted. In doing so, I sometimes found myself in conflict with established hierarchies.<\/p>\n

Criticism and caution from senior levels were not uncommon. Each time a new programme was introduced, its progress depended on negotiation, persuasion, and institutional endorsement. A significant section within the system remained closely aligned with conventional banking norms and often viewed rural initiatives with reservation. My ideas were at times characterised in dismissive terms. Yet, I continued with the work, guided by a commitment to rural development and to those at the margins of the formal economy.<\/p>\n

Over time, I increasingly questioned rigid institutional constraints, particularly where they appeared ill-suited to rural realities. I was drawn to a more bottom-up orientation, prioritising listening over prescribing. The analogy of the non-swimmer remained instructive for me: while providing support, such as arm floats, may assist in the short term, a more fundamental requirement is to enable people to learn to stay afloat in their own circumstances. The distinction, for me, was significant.<\/p>\n

I also drew quiet encouragement from the belief that those who persist in the face of resistance may contribute to change, even if recognition is delayed. Theodore Roosevelt’s observation about the importance of those who act “in the arena,” despite uncertainty and criticism, further reinforced this orientation.<\/p>\n

With time, I came to understand that one of the most serious shortcomings in development practice is the failure to see people with low incomes from their own standpoint. Approaches that are patronising or reductive are not only ineffective but also methodologically and ethically inadequate. Yet development interventions too often continue to rely on simplified representations that obscure the agency, complexity, and lived knowledge of rural communities.<\/p>\n

Ground Realities, Listening, and Transformative Learning<\/h2>\n

My days in rural India were a sustained and often demanding immersion. I travelled by motorbike along dirt tracks to remote villages, a cotton cloth tied around my head to protect me from the intense heat. The routine included long waits at isolated bus stops, late meals under harsh neon lights and loudspeakers, physical exhaustion, dust, uncertainty, and the cold bucket baths that ended many days in modest lodging houses.<\/p>\n

Yet this unvarnished experience gradually reshaped my perception. It sharpened my awareness and opened up new ways of thinking.<\/p>\n

I am fair-skinned, yet I have understood myself as indigenous to this land\u2014rooted in its histories and connected to its people in ways that extend beyond appearance. For me, belonging has never been a matter of complexion, but of commitment: where one chooses to stand, listen, and remain engaged.<\/p>\n

From this vantage point, my understanding of development began to take clearer form. People with low incomes, particularly rural women, do not lack capability or determination; rather, they often lack conditions in which their strengths can be fully expressed. What may appear as hesitation or refusal is frequently shaped by prior experience\u2014of exclusion, humiliation, and institutions that have not earned trust. A “no” in such contexts is often less a rejection than an accumulation of history.<\/p>\n

Meaningful change, in my experience, begins with recognising rather than overriding that history. It requires proximity, patience, and humility. Development cannot be imposed externally; it must emerge from lived realities and be shaped by the knowledge and rhythms of those who inhabit them. Incremental, practical opportunities\u2014such as access to credit, tools, or collective support\u2014often enable more lasting transformation than large and distant schemes.<\/p>\n

I have observed confidence emerging quietly. When one woman steps forward, others often follow\u2014not through persuasion, but through recognition. Over time, trust becomes the central medium of change, enabling dignity: the capacity not only to survive, but to act, decide, and shape one’s own future.<\/p>\n

In this sense, development is less about delivering progress than about enabling it to surface. It is not the triumph of systems, but the unfolding of human capability, particularly among those long kept at the margins.<\/p>\n

Among the most instructive experiences for me was witnessing women gain dignity through opportunities for self-reliance. With opportunity came confidence; with responsibility, a renewed sense of self-worth. I came to understand that attentive listening is as important as the design of solutions.<\/p>\n

In schools, hospitals, and villages, people often paused their daily lives to share their experiences. Even when speaking of hardship\u2014unpaid school fees, illness, or the loss of a child\u2014they did so with quiet dignity. In such moments, I learned a form of humility that was less rhetorical than experiential. I also realised that correctness in design or argument has limited value if it does not translate into effectiveness in lived contexts.<\/p>\n

Across regions marked by uneven development, I encountered individuals who had taken significant risks to create change within their own communities. Their stories were not only about material progress, but also about dignity, courage, and collective agency.<\/p>\n

Acceptance, I found, came gradually. Kindness was often immediate, but belonging took time. As one villager remarked with disarming clarity, “You are a stranger for five minutes, but a newcomer for fifty years.” Yet I was frequently received with warmth from the outset\u2014sharing meals, walking together, and allowing trust to develop quietly and without declaration.<\/p>\n

Bent, Not Broken<\/h2>\n

In the often overlooked rhythms of rural life, I have found that women carry a central yet frequently unacknowledged burden of survival. They walk before dawn, labour without pause, and sustain households, fields, and futures through continuous effort. Their work is less episodic than structural, embedded in the landscape itself\u2014furrowed fields, distant water sources, smoke-filled kitchens, and days that begin before sunrise and end long after dusk.<\/p>\n

A familiar image has stayed with me: a woman bent in a field at dawn, her body shaped by labour that extends from early morning to night. She sows, weeds, and harvests; she collects water, gathers fuel, cooks, and cares. At times, a child rests on her back; at other times, she waits at the field’s edge. The posture is so routine that it becomes almost invisible, yet within it lies a sustaining force for families, local economies, and wider social life.<\/p>\n

Much of this labour remains unrecorded. While fields are measured and yields calculated, the everyday work that makes production and reproduction possible rarely enters formal economic language. Each meal reflects a sequence of unpaid effort\u2014cultivation, harvesting, processing, cooking, and water collection. Alongside this, women carry the ongoing responsibilities of care for children, elders, and households. Even when they participate in paid work, these responsibilities rarely diminish; they accumulate across visible and invisible domains. What sustains daily life is often least recognised by the systems that claim to measure value.<\/p>\n

Despite this, I have observed a steady and quiet resilience. It is expressed not through visibility but through continuity\u2014through repetition, routine, and adaptation. Women absorb shocks that might otherwise destabilise fragile systems: economic strain, environmental uncertainty, and social constraint. Where structures fail, they adjust; where resources are scarce, they improvise; where recognition is absent, they continue. Their strength lies less in the absence of hardship than in its absorption into ongoing life.<\/p>\n

This image, however, must be held without romanticisation. Women are not only symbols of endurance but also bearers of structural inequality. To acknowledge their labour is not simply to admire resilience, but to question the conditions that make such resilience necessary.<\/p>\n

In my experience, women perform substantial unpaid work that is often unacknowledged, despite its centrality to household and community life. This includes domestic labour, agricultural work, care responsibilities, and the daily management of survival. While the tasks vary across contexts, the expectation is strikingly consistent: such work is treated as natural rather than recognised as an economic or social contribution.<\/p>\n

What has troubled me most is not only the scale of this labour, but its persistent invisibility within formal systems of valuation. Much of what sustains everyday life does not appear in economic statistics or public recognition. Yet without it, neither households nor communities could function.<\/p>\n

Over time, I have come to believe that meaningful development is not possible while such labour remains unrecognised. The acknowledgement of unpaid work is therefore not only an economic correction but also a moral necessity.<\/p>\n

My own understanding of this was shaped early in my career when I first sanctioned a loan to a village woman. The hesitation I encountered\u2014both institutional and personal\u2014was significant. Many women initially resisted borrowing, shaped by past experiences of hardship, stigma, and fear of household pressure. Within formal systems, this reluctance was often misinterpreted as incapacity, rather than as the residue of lived experience. In reality, it was not refusal, but memory speaking through caution.<\/p>\n

Over time, I came to see that rural women do not lack initiative; rather, they often lack conditions in which initiative can be safely expressed. When a few women eventually stepped forward, after extended discussion and hesitation, a gradual shift became visible. Trust began to replace fear, and participation spread through example rather than instruction. The process unfolded slowly, requiring proximity, patience, and sustained engagement.<\/p>\n

On one occasion, I witnessed how modest financial support could alter a household’s trajectory. A woman, long constrained by poverty, entered income-generating work through a small loan. Over time, this led to greater stability, a renewed sense of dignity, and changes in household and community relations. Economic participation, in her case, translated into voice and recognition.<\/p>\n

What remains clear to me is that credit alone is insufficient without accompaniment, and opportunity remains limited without trust. Where institutions move beyond transactional relationships to sustained engagement, change tends to be deeper and more durable. In this sense, development is not simply delivered; it is gradually enabled and, in a fuller sense, awakened.<\/p>\n

The Winds of Change<\/h2>\n

A careful observer of society, I have learned, must look beyond surface appearances and question inherited explanations. Rather than accepting fixed interpretations, this approach reveals how forces such as globalisation, market integration, and expanding urban economies interact with rural life in uneven and often indirect ways. In rural settings, globalisation is rarely encountered as an abstract process; it is experienced through shifting aspirations, changing consumption patterns, increasing digital exposure, and, most significantly, the steady pull of migration to cities.<\/p>\n

Close attention to everyday life shows that villages are not static formations but are continuously reshaped by these currents. Younger generations increasingly move to urban centres in search of wage employment, education, and perceived opportunities, leaving ageing populations and weakening local institutions behind. This movement is not only demographic; it alters the social fabric by redistributing labour, straining support systems, and gradually redefining work, family relations, and belonging.<\/p>\n

At the same time, globalisation generates new aspirations even where material conditions remain largely unchanged. Information now travels faster than infrastructure: images of urban prosperity circulate through mobile phones and media, reshaping expectations well before corresponding opportunities emerge locally. This produces a persistent tension between rooted livelihoods and imagined futures elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Such an understanding requires patience, careful observation, and a willingness to engage with uncertainty. It resists ideological simplification, favouring instead a reflective engagement with social reality instead. Its value lies in an openness that allows complexity to remain visible, and in recognising rural transformation not as isolation from globalisation, but as one of its most immediate and grounded expressions.<\/p>\n

In villages such as Wanoja in Chandrapur district in central India, this process is particularly evident. Over the past decade, many households\u2014especially younger men\u2014have migrated to urban centres in search of livelihood. The local landscape reflects the consequences of this shift. The nearest source of freshwater lies some distance away and is insufficient for both domestic use and agriculture. As a result, cattle rearing has declined sharply, with only a few animals remaining, often kept in close proximity to households.<\/p>\n

Agriculture has also contracted, largely to chilli cultivation, chosen less for preference than for its low water and labour requirements. With population decline, the primary school now functions intermittently, while access to schooling and basic healthcare has shifted to a neighbouring village.<\/p>\n

This structural fragility has placed a disproportionate burden on women, intensifying their daily labour in ways that would be considered unsustainable in urban contexts. Their day typically begins early with the collection of fodder from nearby forests, followed by cooking and then wage labour in surrounding fields through the day. Domestic responsibilities continue into the evening, leaving little rest. The rhythm of life is continuous and demanding, shaped less by choice than by necessity, where everyday survival depends on sustained effort and adaptation.<\/p>\n

Immersion and Awakening: Lessons from the Ground<\/h2>\n

My experience across rural India has shown me that many communities maintain a quiet social reserve\u2014haya<\/em>\u2014expressed as distance, limited eye contact, and particularly restrained interaction among women. Such conduct is shaped by local norms of dignity as well as by a degree of unfamiliarity with outsiders.<\/p>\n

Wanoja, however, felt somewhat different. Partly due to local cultural disposition and partly due to the presence of a field facilitator, interaction there was more open and immediate. Greetings were readily exchanged, tea invitations were frequent, and everyday exchanges often carried a lightness of humour. As visitors from an urban, English-speaking background, we also performed a certain belonging\u2014walking through muddy cattle paths while speaking of feeling “at home,” even as our actual homes remained distant, structured, and largely detached from the material realities of rural life.<\/p>\n

One small incident remains with me. Tea was served without milk, which led to some confusion in the household and equal surprise at our limited use of sugar. We had not specified “no sugar.” What arrived, therefore, was a tea of concentrated sweetness, offered with such generosity that refusal felt almost inappropriate.<\/p>\n

My experiential learning in Wanoja and neighbouring villages in Chandrapur district led me to a central conclusion: scarcity here is not primarily a question of absolute absence, but of access, capture, and retention\u2014particularly in relation to water. Unlike regions where groundwater depletion is the central concern, here rainfall is available but insufficiently harvested or stored for sustained use.<\/p>\n

A further constraint also became evident: the limited capacity for sustained local leadership to translate government schemes into functioning infrastructure. While public provision exists, weak institutional mediation often leaves implementation incomplete, trapping villages in cycles of subsistence.<\/p>\n

This became especially clear in discussions on water. The community itself gradually converged on a shared understanding that no meaningful progress\u2014whether in agriculture or livelihoods\u2014was possible without first addressing water storage and harvesting. Water, in this sense, was not absent; it was present but unretained.<\/p>\n

From that point onward, attention focused on practical steps: mapping catchments, designing storage systems, and preparing for the approaching monsoon. The rains, expected within a month, came to represent both an opportunity and a test of the village’s hydrological potential and institutional readiness.<\/p>\n

What remained most evident to me was not simple deprivation, but a condition of latent possibility. Wanoja, as I came to see it, was not a broken system; it was an unstructured one\u2014where adaptation already existed, awaiting more coherent design and direction.<\/p>\n

Deeper Lesson: Rethinking Development<\/h2>\n

At its deepest level, my engagement with rural India has been shaped by a persistent moral unease\u2014an awareness of disparities so pronounced as to be impossible to ignore. It has raised enduring questions for me: what does it truly mean to help? Is it to provide solutions, or to enable understanding; to accelerate change, or to make it sustainable?<\/p>\n

In a rapidly globalising world, such questions acquire particular urgency. If development is to be meaningful, it must be inclusive, expanding opportunity rather than concentrating it. Within this framework, education remains central\u2014arguably the most durable means of linking possibility with participation.<\/p>\n

I have also come to see that outsiders inevitably play a role in these processes, but their most constructive function is not as architects of change, but as facilitators\u2014broadening horizons without displacing agency. The task, as I have understood it, is less to impose direction than to create conditions for it; less to lead than to listen.<\/p>\n

A careful observer of society, I have learned, must look beyond surface appearances and question inherited assumptions. Rather than accepting fixed explanations, this approach reveals how forces such as status, wealth, and influence interact in uneven and shifting ways. Close attention to everyday life reveals that communities are not static but continually evolve through aspiration, adaptation, and agency. Such an approach requires patience, disciplined observation, and a willingness to remain with uncertainty. It resists ideological closure and simple conclusions, favouring a reflective engagement with complexity instead.<\/p>\n

Rural India, in my experience, has not only offered insights into development but has also revealed deeper dimensions of human existence. It has shown that dignity is not dependent on wealth, that resilience often emerges under constraint, and that forms of knowledge outside formal systems carry their own authority.<\/p>\n

In the end, the lesson is both simple and demanding: development is not a mechanical process to be engineered, but a human process to be understood. It is shaped not only by policy and resources, but also by relationships, trust, and moral imagination.<\/p>\n

For those willing to listen, the village is not merely a site of intervention or receipt\u2014it is also an enduring source of learning.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Moin Qazi<\/em>, PhD Economics,\u00a0PhD English, is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a> and a member of NITI Aayog\u2019s National Committee on Financial Literacy and Inclusion for Women. He is the author of the bestselling book, <\/em>Village Diary of a Heretic Banker. He has worked in the development finance sector for almost four decades in India and can be reached at <\/em>moinqazi123@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 May 2026 – The village, as I have come to understand it, is often reduced either to a romanticised emblem of “authentic India” or to a shorthand for stagnation, hierarchy, and deprivation. Both framings feel incomplete, as neither adequately captures their lived complexity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":83401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1547,290,331,260,759,996],"class_list":["post-316529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-caste-system","tag-culture","tag-development","tag-history","tag-india","tag-poverty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316529"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316533,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316529\/revisions\/316533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}