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Subject: General Studies (Paper 2 - Governance, Constitution, Polity, Social Justice and International relations)

Topic: Development Processes And The Development Industry

Development Processes And The Development Industry

Non-governmental Organisations

The cooperation or lack of same extended or denied by these agencies, to the public administration facilitates or hampers the effective execution of policies. The non-governmental organisations are expected to play a significant role in the policy implementation. The first five year plan document emphasised the importance of voluntary organisations in the implementation of public programmes However, only in the seventh plan document, there is a detailed discussion about the role of voluntary agencies in rural development. The role mentioned comprises:

(a) to supplement Government programmes- to provide choices and alternatives to the rural poor to enable them to improve quality of their life;
(b) to serve as eyes and ears of the villagers;
(c) to devise simple, innovative, flexible and inexpensive strategies and projects of participative types;
(d) to activate and improve responsiveness of the delivery system to meet the felt needs of the poorest of the poor;
(e) to disseminate information about on-going and proposed welfare and development programmes of the Government;
(f) to stimulate local communities to adopt a self-reliant attitude of mind;
(g) to demonstrate more effective utilisation of local resources, material and human, to the local people;
(h) to demystify and simplify technology and make it available to the rural poor;
(i) to motivate communities to mobilise local resources for self-reliant development process; and
(j) to create social awareness among the poor to demand better performance of services from concerned public sector agencies and also to impose local accountability on their performance.

The seventh plan document also emphasised the importance of people’s participation in development. Development goals may not be fully achieved if there is too much dependence on bureaucracy.

The plan document identified the areas for involvement of voluntary organisations in rural areas as:

(i) Integrated Ruler Development /Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme/ TRYSEM:
(ii) Implementation of land ceilings and distribution of surplus land;
(iii) Enforcement of minimum wages to agricultural labourers;
(iv) Identification and rehabilitation of bonded labourers;
(v) Supply of safe drinking water; repair and maintenance of water supply system with community support;
(vi) Afforestation, social forestry, development of bio-gas and alternative energy sources (Solar Wind energy, smokeless chulas, etc.,
(vii) Promotion of family planning;
(viii) Primary health case; Control of leprosy, T.B., Blindness: and preventive health programmes using village resources;
(ix) Programmes for women and children in rural areas;
(x) Innovative methods and low cost alternatives in elementary, primary and middle school education for children, adult education and non forfnal and informal education;
(xi) Consumer protection, promotion of cooperatives;
(xii) Promotion of handicrafts and village and cottage industries;
(xiii) Promotion of Science and Technology;
(xiv) Legal Education;
(xv) Rural Housing - improvement of rural slums;
(xvi) Environmental ecological improvement; and
(xvii) Promotion and encouragement of traditional media for dissemination of information.

Sanjit Roy, discussing the role of voluntary organisations in villages, identified the following as important functions of these agencies:

(a) To supplement government efforts;
(b) To be the eyes and ears of people at the village level;
(c) To set an example of collective effort;
(d) To activise the system and make it responds;
(e) To disseminate information;
(f) To illustrate how local, village and indigenous resources would be used for their own development;
(g) To make communities as self-reliant as possible;
(h) To train cadre oif grassroots workers who believe In professionalising voluntarism;
(i) To mobilise financial resources from within the community; and
(j) To mobilise and organise the poor to demand quality service and impose a community system of accountability on the performance of grassroot government functionaries.

In recent years, voluntary organisations are actively involved In contemporary social issues, like environmental protection, legal aid to poor, consumer protection, human rights protection, Harijan and tribal development, child welfare, etc. The Chipko movement\created social awareness on the environmental problems. The legal aid groups are using Public Interest Litigation provision to protect the interests of weaker sections. The consumer protection groups are trying to protect the interest of consumers in producer dominated economy. This expansion of the scope and nature of activities of non-governmental agencies indicates their importance in the socio-economic transformation of society.

A great diversity in origin, nature, character, ideological stance, background, and way of functioning characteristic the voluntary sector in India. On the one extreme, there are traditional, good intentioned welfare oriented philanthropists, not given to or bothered about societal contradictions, busy wiping tears of the diseased and feeding the hungry and on the other extreme are those who believe in nothing less than fundamental societal restructuring. They are Gandhian and Marxist, religion based, industry promoted, wings of political parties, survivors of long defunct political and social movements, and young professionals in search of alternative ‘clients’ and new challenges. Some are foreign trained and influenced. Some are totally indigenous. Some thrive on foreign funds.

Others refuse to touch them. Some are content to deliver services to the needy. Others believe, that delivering services is not an end in itself but nUo a means to organising people to help themselves.

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