November 2011 Vol 55: Rig Veda

November 2011
Chief Editor : Rina Sonowal Kouli Editor : Manogyan R. Pal
Vol 55
Joint Director (Production) : V.K. Meena Cover Design : Asha Saxena E-mail (Editorial) : yojanace@gmail.com (Circulation) : pdjucir_ jcm@yahoo.co.in Website : www.yojana.gov.in
Let noble thoughts come to us from every side
Rig Veda
CONTENTS
A COMMITMENT TO THE VOLUNTARY SECTOR Syeda Hameed ..................................................................................5 ROLE OF NGOs IN INDIA Mohammed Asif................................................................................8 NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIzATIONS IN INDIA Jomon Mathew, Joby Verghese .......................................................12 DO YOu KNOW? DRAFT NATIONAL TELECOM POLICY, 2011 ..........................15 ROLE OF NGOs IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT N Chatterjee, Mohd Ashraf Dar ......................................................17 SHODHYATRA MULTIPURPOSE FOOD PROCESSING MACHINE ..................21 NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIzATIONS AND THE AGEING IN INDIA Mathew Cherian ..............................................................................24 NGOs IN THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR G Srinivasan ....................................................................................29 REFORMING GOVERNANCE IN INDIA TODAY Rajesh Tandon .................................................................................33 FUTURE OF VOLUNTARY ORGANIzATIONS IN INDIA Harsh Jaitli ......................................................................................35 NORTH EAST DIARY ................................................................40 RESPONSE TO CHILD LABOUR IN INDIA Jayanta Mete, Ajit Mondal ..............................................................41 BEST PRACTICES A HUMAN APPROACH TO STAVE OFF HUNGER Amrendra Suman ............................................................................46 UTILITY AND GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES FACING THE NGO SECTOR Shekhar Chandra .............................................................................48 J&K WINDOW ............................................................................52
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YOJANA November 2011
YE-175/2011
About the Issue

ndia is one of the fastest growing economies of the world. Yet the 2010 Human Development Index ranks India as a middle level country in the bottom third at 119 of 169 countries on the human development index. The world hunger index for 2010 indicates that India is home to 42 percent of the worlds underweight children. Similarly is the case when we consider education. Voluntary Organizations have been active partners in the fight to improve the livelihood of Indias poor for many years. The voluntary sector or non-governmental organizations have emerged as a new force contributing to social upliftment and economic development. India is estimated to have 3.3 million registered NGOs. They play a vital role in the shaping and implementation of participatory democracy, and their credibility lies in the responsible and constructive role they play in society. They work at grassroots level in the remotest of areas and their reach is much wider. During the nineties the distinctive trend was the emergence of welfare oriented, non-profit and empowerment oriented organizations. NGOs emerged as important players in the development arena. The emerging NGO or voluntary sector is also known as the third sector. NGOs are engaged in development work in the remotest of areas in a variety of areas like health, education, water, environment, human rights, SCs/STs, Women empowerment, child rights, disability, etc., ensuring that people got their entitlements. Government has accepted role of NGOs in the development process. Many a time, NGOs act as a bridge between hard-to -reach areas and the government. Recognizing the important contributions made by this sector, in 2002 Planning Commission was declared the nodal agency for Government Organization - Voluntary Organization interface. This was the much needed step to have a focal point for an integrated and holistic view of the voluntary sector. The National Policy on the Voluntary Sector Policy, 2007 was the outcome of intense discussions between the Planning Commission and the voluntary sector. The policy seeks to establish a new working relationship between the government and the voluntary sector. The role of the voluntary sector can only expand and a well thought out policy that supports and encourages NGOs can take forward the process of development. However there is also the need for reciprocal efforts by NGOs themselves to assess and monitor their own performance rather than stringent government regulations. This would indeed be a winwin situation for all. In this issue of Yojana, the authors give an insight and views on this third sector, the challenges facing q it and the future of voluntary organizations in India.
YE-178/2011
NGOs
ViEWPOiNT
A Commitment to the Voluntary Sector
Syeda Hameed
The National Policy on the Voluntary Sector is a testament of our commitment to encourage, enable and empower an independent and effective voluntary sector
S M E M B E R responsible for Vo l u n t a r y A c t i o n Cell in the Planning Commission of India for seven years now, I have been part of the effort to bring people close to the planning process. Initially, we started a Civil Society Window in 2004, in the hope that it would enable people to engage with the Planning Commission and offer the benefit of their field experiences. We managed to take some of the learning from there into the 11th Five Year Plan. This initiative crystallized within a year and is now part of the Planning architecture.
bureaucracy build up, but also ease, over the years of my tenure. The disdain with which activists were held within these circles has begun to change and there is the beginning of mutual respect. Community based monitoring, social audit, etc. have been written into the formulation of various schemes. I found myself playing less and less the role of apologist for CS. The amicable relationship peaked when one year before the Approach Paper to the 12th Five Year Plan, the very first group to be invited in April 2010 for an informal brainstorming was a group of thought leaders, women and men, all part of CS. The challenges and the difficulties being faced by the voluntary sector are many. Highly committed people in this sector have to work with rather limited resources, which makes their task even more difficult. And yet I am proud to say that despite all odds, this sector has always shown tremendous enthusiasm and resilience in fighting for various social and developmental causes.
During the 11th Five Year Plan process we organized a regional consultation to get civil society feedback. Participation of Civil Society (CS) had thus already become a strong and robust element in the preparation of the Plan. It has not always been a straightforward process, though. Before my very eyes I have seen the frictions between CS and
The author is Member, Planning Commission, New Delhi. YOJANA November 2011 5
India particularly, has a very vibrant voluntary sector and the efforts of CSOs and VOs in India are now increasingly acknowledged all across the world. We know for a fact that in the last few years we have managed to get some very progressive legislation and action, like the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, because of the persistent and untiring efforts of the voluntary sector. In my travels across the length and breadth of this country, particularly in the last 7 years, I have seen first-hand the work and the potential of the voluntary sector. When I visited Metiabruz in West Bengal a few years ago, I found that people are aware of their problems, also articulate them, but neither they nor voluntary organizations working there are aware of government policies. Many such Metiabruz exist in India today, living out the tragedy of our schemes and policies that people dont know about or have no access to. After many years of toil, we have got a policy on the voluntary sector. It has been our dream and our need. Having been part of the voluntary sector I realize the importance of the policy, but equally the need for it to be widely disseminated, so that voluntary organizations may make use of it. For long now I have been a vociferous campaigner for strengthening the social sector. I have always believed that good governance is strengthened through peoples participation. Voluntary organizations facilitate peoples participation, which is a fact I have experienced during my sojourns in the field across the country, first as a member of the National Commission for Women and now for the last couple of years, as a member of the Planning Commission. This policy
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recognizes this critical contribution of the voluntary sector. The concept of volunteerism and social action is not new in this country and I will not go into the details of that. But what is important to assimilate is that voluntary organizations have played a pivotal role both during pre-independence and also during the freedom struggle. The voluntary sector has shown tremendous enthusiasm and resilience in raising the banner against social evils, fighting social malpractices, articulating social and developmental concerns and acting as a feedback channel for policy makers. The Right to Information Act 2005 is the testimony of their growing power and positive role in society. Fact is that there are almost 1.2 million VOs in India today, assuming various roles and responsibilities, especially of being watchdogs for the government, when it comes to protection of human rights like documenting torture cases, taking up right to work campaigns, creating awareness in fighting social evils, or identifying and articulating social issues, or providing feedback to policy makers. But their role doesnt end here. Just pointing out problems is not enough, it is important to solve them too. Two years ago, I visited Archana Womens Centre in Kottayam that provides sources of livelihood and has made a breakthrough in breaking social barriers by training women for jobs like carpentry and masonary. I think its a good example of innovative, out-ofthe-box thinking that also breaks stereotypes, while providing skills. Voluntary organizations in India have certainly proved their mettle, penetrating the remotest corners of the country, reaching across terrains that had been untouched
by government schemes. They have been able to articulate the problems and dilemmas of the grassroots and bring their issues to the mainstream. They have been able to mobilize people for constructive community work. I witnessed this first hand in the closed tea estates of Jalpaiguri. The tea garden workers there had no bijli, no paani, and no health facilities, no schools, no transport and were marred by rampant poverty. Women and men barely survived; their only means of livelihood was breaking stones in the dolomite mines of nearby Bhutan. The 9 percent growth of the GDP held no meaning for the bigha mazdoors who till today earn just Rs 12 a day! I witnessed the absence of the government machinery, yet was comforted by the presence of local groups like the Jan Kalyan Matri Sangh who are engaged in organizing young boys and girls into rescue and rehab groups. These groups were and are still the only hope in the forlorn lives of the tea garden workers. Everywhere I have gone, from Leh to Trivandrum, from the dhanis of Udaipur where Sewa Mandir is doing commendable work to the tiny islands in Andaman and Nicobar where organizations like SANE are fighting to ensure rights for the PTGs, I have seen the commendable work of the voluntary sector. I was in Kashmir immediately after the earthquake and I have seen how voluntary organizations from across the country had come together and were reaching the remotest villages taking with them aid that was needed. How many lives have been saved and how many empowered by the work of our NGOs and civil society organizations! Many would argue that a sudden rise of the number of NGOs indicates inactive government machinery, although this may
be true to some measure, for me the proliferation of NGOs, CBOs, SHGs is also indicative of increasing awareness among people. This shows an increasing effort by the people to shape their own lives and destinies- it was the dawn of a new era and the government recognized this. So in March 2000, the Government declared Planning Commission as the nodal agency for GO-NGO interface. The message was cleargovernment has to and will work with the voluntary sector. But while engagement and partnership is important, we also needed a policy to articulate this and therein lay a foundation for this partnership. In June 2003, we decided on the need to have a policy for the voluntary sector. Four years of intense discussion with friends from the voluntary sector and in May 2007, the cabinet approved the new policy. It is also now included in the 11th Five Year Plan chapter and is endorsed by the NDC. The National Policy on the Voluntary Sector is a testament of our commitment to encourage, enable and empower an independent and effective voluntary sector. While officially recognizing the contribution of the voluntary sector and the need for GovernmentVoluntary Sector partnership, the policy recognizes that project grants are a useful means for both the Government to promote its activities without its direct involvement and a valuable source of support to small and medium Voluntary Organizations. It highlights the need for Government to encourage all Central and State Government agencies to introduce pre-service and in-service training modules on constructive relations with voluntary organizations. It recognizes the difficulties faced by the voluntary sector in accessing
government schemes and suggests ways to tackle this. The main objective of the National Policy on the Voluntary Sector is to identify systems by which the Government may work together with the Voluntary Organizations on the basis of the principles of mutual trust, respect and shared responsibility. The National Policy on the Voluntary Sector recognizes the importance of independence of voluntary organizations, which allows them to explore alternative models of development. The accountability and credibility of the voluntary sector has been questioned time and again. We therefore believe that there is a need for accreditation of voluntary organizations, which will lead to better funding decisions and make the funding processes more transparent. Accreditation may provide incentives for better governance, management and performance of voluntary organizations. At present no reliable accreditation system is in place. The Government will need to encourage the voluntary sector, to develop alternative accreditation methodologies. The National Policy on the Voluntary Sector is just the beginning of the process to evolve a new working relationship between the government and the voluntary sector without affecting its autonomy and identity. Already 3 expert groups have been constituted to carry forward the recommendations of the policy. Some state governments are also coming up with drafts for a similar policy for their own states. There are many areas in which we seek help of the voluntary sector- for social audits, behaviour change, good governance and increasingly even for better service delivery. We want to ensure that no section of the population is deprived
of the benefits of our schemes and policies. We believe that this may be done through decentralization, through increased stakeholder participation and through Public Private Partnerships (PPP). PPP is not just with the profit sector, but also with committed civil society organizations. I have seen several excellent examples of this for example, Char area of Assam where Akha (Ship of hope) provides health services in partnership with state government, the NRHM and UNICEF, has taken healthcare to the forgotten people of the river islands of Dibrugarh, Dhemaji and Tinsukia districts in Upper Assam. In Udaipur School Health system the government in partnership with Nandi Foundation is taking quality healthcare to school children. It takes months and years of painful effort to build trust. This trust between government and CS is by now on a firm foundation. Consultations with citizens on the Approach Paper to the 12th Plan began on many platforms, including the internet. Members of Planning Commission travelled across the country attending Public Meetings called by CS around various sectoral issues to gather inputs for the 12 Five Year Plan. We learnt important lessons. For example in a Tribal Hearing we attended in a place called Tilda near Raipur, Chhatisgarh, our teachers were women and men from 13 states who had gathered to inform us of their concerns. The culmination of this process was a book Approaching Equity; Civil Society Inputs for the Approach Paper- 12 Five year Plan produced collectively by group effort coordinated by Wada Na Todo Abhiyan. We planners use it as reference as we think about the detailing of the 12 Five Year Plan. q
(E-mail: s.hameed@nic.in) 7
NGOs
PERSPECTiVE
Role of NGOs in India
Mohammed Asif
NGOs can and should play the game changer to pro-poor development through leadership on participatory research, community empowerment and search for development alternatives
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N A democratic society, it is the state that has the ultimate responsibility for ushering development to its citizens. In India, through the progressive interpretation of the Constitution and its laws and policies, the scope of development has been significantly broadened to include not just economic progress for citizens, but also promotion of social justice, gender equity, inclusion, citizens awareness, empowerment and improved quality of life. To achieve this holistic vision of development, the state requires the constructive and collaborative engagement of the civil society in its various developmental activities and programs. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as the operational arm of the civil society therefore have an important role in the development processes.
constituted social relations, institutions, and organisations that are not reducible to the administrative grasp of the state. NGOs are organisations within the civil society that work on the not-for-profit approach in the space which exists between the family (household), market and state. It is made up of several types of formal voluntary organisations, where people based on community, neighborhood, workplace and other connections form their association to participate in actions for their own collective interests or for larger social good. Those NGOs which are working at the global arena, across several countries are termed as international NGOs. Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in its concept papers on civil society and good governance has defined civil society as an intermediate realm situated between state and household, populated by organized groups or associations, which are separate from the state, enjoy some
Defining Non-Government Organisations In its most general usage, civil society refers to all voluntarily
The author is Director-Programme Implementation, Plan India, New Delhi. YOJANA November 2011
Types of Civil Society Organisations 1. Civil rights advocacy organizations: to promote human rights of specific social groups e.g. women, migrants, disabled, HIV, sex workers, Dalit people, tribal people, and the likes. Civil liberties advocacy organizations: to promote individual civil liberties and human rights of all citizens, rather than focusing on particular social group. Community based organizations, citizens groups, farmers cooperatives: to increase citizens participation on public policy issues so as to improve the quality of life in a particular community. Business and industry chambers of commerce: to promotion policies and practices on business. Labour unions: to promote the rights of employees and workers. International peace and human rights organizations: to promote peace and human rights. Media, communication organization: to produce, disseminate, or provide production facilities in one or more media forms; it includes television, printing and radio. National resources conservation and protection organizations: to promote conservation of natural resources, including land, water, energy, wildlife and plant resources, for public use. Private and public foundations: to promote development through grantmaking and partnership.
2.
3.
4. 5. 6. 7.
Government support and encouragement for NGOs continued in the Eighth Fiveyear plan, where a nation-wide network of NGOs was sought to be created. The Ninth Five-year plan proposed that NGOs should play a role in development on the public-private partnership model. Also, the agricultural development policies of the government and its implementation mechanisms provide scope and space for NGOs. A case in point is the watershed development program, which has led to the growth of NGOs working for rural development. This has also been acknowledged in the Tenth Five-year Plan Document. Such proactive state support to NGOs has also brought in the element of reporting and regulations. This is being done through a series of legislative and administrative measures, which are often considered by NGO workers as affecting the performance and efficiency of NGOs. However, the Constitutional provision for right to association ensures that the NGOs enjoy adequate autonomy in terms of their management and governance. In the words of Prof. Amartya Sen, the relationship between the state and NGOs is one of cooperative conflict. Wi t h t h e i n c r e a s i n g r o l e of the NGOs in development activities they are now attracting professionals from various other sectors, and capacities are being built in support areas such as financial management, resource mobilization, human resources, leadership development, governance procedures and
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8.
9.
10. Also the Civil society includes - Political Parties; Religious Organizations; and Housing cooperatives, slum dwellers, resident welfare associations.
autonomy in relations with the state, and are formed voluntarily by members of society to protect or extend their interests, values or identities. For the purpose of this paper we understand NGOs as formally registered notfor profit association of groups of individuals founded on the principles of equality, altruism and voluntary work spirit to promote human development (including environment and biodiversity) and nation building Indian State and NGOs In India the state policies have significantly influenced the formation of NGOs and their
activities. The government sponsored and aided programmes provided financial assistance to NGOs either as grants or as matching grants to support the implementation of social development projects. In the Sixth Five Year Plan (1980-1985), the government identified new areas in which NGOs as new actors could participate in development. The Seventh Five Year Plan (19851990), envisioned a more active role for NGOs as primary actors in the efforts towards self-reliant communities. This was in tune with the participatory and empowerment ideologies, which was gaining currency in the developmental discourse at that time.
practices and institutional development. At another level NGOs have been addressing the social service issues and empowerment related advocacy efforts have been increasing. The study conducted by a New Delhi based NGO concluded that every fifth NGO in India works on the issues of community and social service. The favourable disposition of the governments and the political will to involve NGOs is more pronounced in implementation of the welfare schemes addressing causes of women and children. Further, the industrial policies have influenced the formation and relations between the businesses and NGOs. The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), a leading organisation, has been raising the issues of corporate social responsibility. The emphasis of industrial policies on the promotion and development of small, cottage and village industries has also lead to the formation of agencies such as the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, Small Industries Associations and likes. The Indian NGOs Scenario In India, it was the 1970s which saw rapid growth in the formation of formally registered NGOs and the process continues to this day. Most NGOs have created their respective thematic, social group and geographical priorities such as poverty alleviation, community health, education, housing, human rights, child rights, womens rights, natural resource management, water and sanitation; and to these
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ends they put to practice a wide range of strategies and approaches. Primarily, their focus has been on the search for alternatives to development thinking and practice; achieved through participatory research, community capacity building and creation of demonstrable models. When we review some of the work done by NGOs over the past 3 decades, we find that they have contributed greatly to nation building. Many NGOs have worked hard to include children with disability in schools, end castebased stigma and discrimination, prevent child labour and promote gender equality resulting in women receiving equal wages for the same work compared to men. During natural calamities they have played an active role in relief and rehabilitation efforts, in particular, providing psycho-social care and support to the disaster affected children, women and men. NGOs have been instrumental in the formation and capacity building of farmers and producers cooperatives and womens selfhelp groups. Several NGOs have worked hand in hand with the Government to ensure that millions of out of school children are enrolled and continue their school education, thus making the right to education a reality. The leprosy eradication programme was spearheaded by NGOs and today only residual leprosy remains in our country. NGOs have implemented the Jeevan Dhara programme for creation of wells for safe drinking water; promoted community toilets
for total sanitation, and supported the public health programs on immunisation and for eliminating tuberculosis and malaria. The much celebrated NREGA, ICDS, ICPS, Nirmal gram, and Swasthya Bima of the government have their roots in the work of many NGOs. NGOs have significantly influenced the development of laws and policies on several important social and developmental issues such as the right to information, juvenile justice, ending corporal punishment in schools, anti-trafficking, forests and environment, wildlife conservation, women, elderly people, people with disability, rehabilitation and resettlement of development induced displaced people to name a few. Further, NGOs made their modest attempts to ensure the effective implementation of these laws and policies by conducting and disseminating findings from participatory research, budget analysis, public hearings, social audits, workshops, seminars and conferences. Summing up, it is now well established that NGOs have an important role to play in the development processes and that both the state and market need the collaboration of credible, active, and accountable NGOs. Given their connect with the grassroots realities, NGOs can and should play the game changer to pro-poor development through leadership on participatory research, community empowerment and search for development alternatives. q
(E-mail: mohammed.asif@planindia.org) YOJANA November 2011
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YE-183/2011
NGOs
OVERViEW
Non Governmental Organizations in India
Jomon Mathew Joby Verghese

CCORDING TO the World Bank, a Non-governmental Organization (NGO) is a private organization that pursues activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development. In other words, NGOs are legally constituted organizations, operate independently from the government and are generally considered to be non-state, non-profit oriented groups who pursue purposes of public interest. The primary objective of NGOs is to provide social justice, development and human rights. NGOs are generally funded totally or partly by governments and they maintain their non-governmental status by excluding government representatives from membership in the organization. However, it has to be kept in mind that NGOs are not legal entities under national or international law.
A healthy linkage of government and NGO is the requirement of the time. It is also of paramount importance that the NGO sector in India, considering its social concerns and necessity, should properly be recognized and extensively researched
namely Operational NGOs and Advocacy NGOs. The main purpose of the former is the design and implementation of development oriented projects. Operational NGOs can also be classified as national organizations, international organizations, community based organizations etc. On the other hand the very purpose of advocacy NGOs is to influence the policies and practices of international organizations. NGOs in India International non-governmental organizations have a history dating back to atleast 1839. It has been estimated that by 1914, there were 1083 NGOs operating internationally dealing with issues like slavery, women suffrages, disarmament etc. However, with the formation of United Nations Organization in 1945 the number of NGOs increased tremendously all around the world. The main reasons of developing NGOs are treated to be economic recession, end of cold war, privatization, growing demands etc. Globalization during
The World Bank has identified two main categories of NGOs
The authors are Assistant Professor in Economics, P.G. Dept. of Applied Economics and Assistant Professor in Political Science E.K.N.M. Govt. College, Elerithattu, Kasaragod, Kerala respectively. 12 YOJANA November 2011
the 20th century too stimulated the growth of NGOs. India has a long history of civil society based on the concepts of daana means giving and seva means service. Voluntary organizations were active in cultural promotion, education, health, and natural disaster relief as early as the medieval period. During the second half of the 19th century, nationalist consciousness spread across India and self-help emerged as the primary focus of socio-political movements. The early examples of such attempts are Friend-in-Need Society (1858), Prathana Samaj (1864), Satya Shodhan Samaj (1873), Arya Samaj (1875), the National Council for Women in India (1875), the Indian National Conference (1887) etc. The Societys Registration Act (SRA) was approved in 1860 to confirm the legal status of the growing body of non-governmental organizations. Though the term NGO became popular in India only in the 1980s, the voluntary sector has an older tradition even at the time of independence. During the 1980s NGOs became more specialized and the voluntary movement was fragmented into three major groups. The first group includes those traditional development NGOs, who went into a village or a group of villages and ran literacy programmes, encouraged farmers to experiment with new crops and livestock breeds that would bring more money, helped the weavers and other village artisans market their products and so on. In pure sense, these NGOs became almost a part of the community in their chosen area. The organization run by Baba Amte leprosy patients in central India can be considered as a good example of this group.
The second group of NGOs was those who researched a particular subject in depth and then lobbied with the government or petitioned the courts for the improvements in the lives of the citizens. A wellknown example of an NGO of this type is the Centre for Science and Environment. In the third group were those volunteers who saw themselves more as activists than other NGOs did. Of course, all NGOs in this category undertook a certain amount of activism to get their points. Perhaps the best-known example of an NGO in this category is the Narmada Bachao Andolan. India has possibly the largest number of active non-government, non-profit organizations in the world. There has been a sharp increase in the number of new NGOs in the past decade in India. According to a government study, there were only 1.44 lakh registered societies till 1970. The maximum increase in the number of registrations happened after 2000. A recent study commissioned by the government showed that there are about 3.3 million NGOs in India by the end of 2009 i.e., one NGO for less than an average of 400 Indians. Even this staggering number may be less than the actual number of NGOs active in the country. This is because the study, commissioned in 2008, took into consideration only those entities which were registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 or the Mumbai Public Trust Act and its variants in other states. According to the study, the largest number of NGOs are registered in Maharashtra followed by Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The state wise strength of NGOs in India can be given below.
l l l l l l l l l l
Maharashtra (4.8 lakh), Andhra Pradesh (4.6 lakh), UP (4.3 lakh), Kerala (3.3 lakh), Karnataka (1.9 lakh), Gujarat (1.7 lakh), West Bengal (1.7 lakh), Tamil Nadu (1.4 lakh), Orissa (1.3 lakh) and Rajasthan (1 lakh).
These figures show that more than 80 percent of NGO registrations come from 10 states. Similarly, in case of finance the government has been the biggest donor i.e., Rs18,000 crore was set aside for the social sector in the XI Plan followed by foreign contributors. Individual donors are emerging as the biggest and most important source of funds for the working of NGOs. It can be noted that a great majority of the NGOs are small and about three-fourths of all NGOs are run entirely by volunteers. About 13 percent of the NGOs have between 2 to 5 employees; about 5 percent have between 6 to 10 employees and only about 8.5 percent NGOs employ more than 10 people. According to a survey conducted by society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 73.4 percent of NGOs have one or no paid staff, although across the country, more than 19 million persons work as volunteers or paid staff at an NGO. More often NGOs are registered as trusts, societies, or as private limited non profit companies, under Section25 of Indian Companies Act, 1956. They also enjoy income tax exemption. Foreign contributions to non-profits are governed by Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA, 1976). Major NGOs in India NGOs are formed to function in various fields so as to influence sociocultural and economic life of people
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in India. There are organizations in the areas like environment, health care, anti-corruption, eradication of child labour, education, protection of human rights of women and children, consumer protection etc. M Venkatarangaiya Foundation formed in 1991 and now functioning in several states like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar is known for eradicating child labour from India. The major NGOs involved in the environment education and protection include Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), Gandhi Peace Foundation, Bombay Natural History Society, Assam Science Society etc. It is worth mentioning here that a major effort, no doubt, of the NGO sector in influencing environmental policy in the country has been from Narmada Bachao Andolan. India Against Corruption and Awaaz are very active organization to fight against corruption, the much needed requisite of the time, in India. Chennai based Anticorruption NGO called Fifth Pillar India is yet another organization that introduces zero rupee note to provide anti corruption message to Indians. Centre for Social Research has been active for women and girls in India since 1983. All India Human Rights Association is functioning to educate the Masses about their rights and privileges. Similarly in order to protect the consumer rights and interests, there are NGOs like Consumer Education and Research Centre. This organization primarily deals with various projects through media, consumer research and monitoring. In short, NGOs are there in the area of environment, health, education, peace, human rights, consumer rights and womens rights and in every minute field of social change. Since 1980, many NGO groups across the country have taken an alternative social action
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approach by politicizing the issue of poverty, directly challenging many of the social programmes established by the government and thereby fighting against them. The NGO sector has always been in the forefront in providing recovery, relief and rehabilitation after natural calamities and disasters such as floods, droughts, earthquakes and epidemics. In this respect the government also recognizes their role as very significant. Does India benefit from NGOs? NGOs in India perform a variety of activities that would benefit the public basically because they do not have any commercial interests or profit motive. The important objective of NGOs is to serve the people who are suffering out of poverty or some natural calamity. Though NGOs are often criticized that they are wasting public money, they counter those criticisms by identifying the social problems systematically involving in finding a solution for them. As NGO in India runs mainly with the support of the funds that are raised, they plan everything carefully so that each programme that they execute is executed in a very cost effective way. The benefits of having NGOs in India are manifold. As India is a large country and as the population is huge, it may practically be difficult for the government to take care of all the activities, and the country definitely needs the support of the NGO in India to take care of the rest. As the standard of living certainly needs to be improved for majority of the people, Indian NGOs develop and work on various projects that would help people in changing their life styles. The local NGOs can help the development of the region better as they are flexible in adapting to local situations and responding to
local needs and therefore able to develop integrated projects. They enjoy good rapport with people and can render assistance to very poor people especially in rural India. They are able to recruit both experts and highly motivated staff with fewer restrictions than the government. The leadership quality is also developed by the active intereference of NGOs in social activities. Indian NGOs do provide education and similar services. In our quality education deprived country, NGOs in India are really a ray of light. As the motto of the NGO in India is solely to offer free education in India for poor children and to uplift the lives of people who are living under the poverty line, it is a relaxation for the government. There are also hundreds of other welfare programmes that are run just for the benefit of the people. In this regard the role of NGOs cannot simply be neglected in a country like India where government alone cannot address the requirement of its 121 crores of population. It can be concluded that India has got a vibrant and fast growing NGO sector. They perform a lot of functions in areas including environment, health care, anticorruption, eradication of child labour, education, protection of human rights of women and children, consumer protection, relief, disaster management and many more. Though the benefits of NGOs are being reached to crores of Indian population, there lies lack of public awareness about the very necessity of such non profit motive organizations. A healthy linkage of government and NGO is the requirement of the time. It is also of paramount importance that the NGO sector in India, considering its social concerns and necessity, should properly be recognized and extensively researched. q
(E-mail:jomonmathew.k@rediffmail.com) YOJANA November 2011
DO yOu KNOW?
DRAFT NATIONAL TELECOM POLICY, 2011
What is the necessity of a new telecom policy? Earlier telecom policy was announced in 1999 at a time when India had just entered into the area of mobile telephony and the total number of mobile phone users in India was limited to only around 20 lakhs. Over the decade, the telecom sector in India has undergone sea change particularly after incoming calls were made free as India emerged as the fastest growing mobile market in the world. Today there are around 90 crore mobile phone connections in India. Future of mobile telephony market in India is still promising and expanding every day. This necessitated introduction of a new set of guidelines with pragmatic vision and scope. What are the objectives of National Telecom Policy (NPT) 2011? The primary objective of NTP-2011 is maximizing public good by making available affordable, reliable and secure telecommunication and broadband services across the entire country. The main thrust of the Policy is on the multiplier effect and transformational impact of such services on the overall economy. It recognizes the role of such services in furthering the national development agenda while enhancing equity and inclusiveness. Direct revenue generation would continue to remain a secondary objective. NTP-2011 also recognizes the predominant role of the private sector in this field and the consequent policy imperative of ensuring continued viability of service providers in a competitive environment. Pursuant to NTPYOJANA November 2011
2011, these principles would guide decisions needed to strike a balance between the interests of users/ consumers, service providers and government revenue. Point wise we can put these objective in following concrete terms: The National Telecom Policy2011 envisions providing the people of India, secure, reliable, affordable and high quality converged telecommunication services anytime, anywhere. Some of the important objectives of the policy include: i. Increase in rural tele density from the current level of around 35 to 60 by the year 2017 and 100 by the year 2020. ii. Provide affordable and reliable broadband on demand by the year 2015 and to achieve 175 million broadband connections by the year 2017 and 600 million by the year 2020 at minimum 2 Mbps download speed and making available higher speeds of at least 100 Mbps on demand. iii. Provide high speed and high quality broadband access to all village panchayats through optical fibre by the year 2014 and progressively to all villages and habitations. iv. Promote indigenous R&D, innovation and manufacturing that serve domestic and foreign markets. v. Promote the domestic production of teleco-mmunication equipment to meet 80 percent Indian telecom sector demand through domestic manufacturing with a value addition of 65 percent by the year 2020. vi. Provide preferential market access for domestically manufactured telecommunication
products including mobile devices, SIM cards with enhanced features etc. with special emphasis on Indian products for which IPRs reside in India to address strategic and security concerns of the Government, consistent with international commitments. vii. Strive to create One Nation - One License across services and service areas. viii. Achieve One Nation - Full Mobile Number Portability and work towards One Nation - Free Roaming. ix. To reposition the mobile phone from a mere communication device to an instrument of empowerment that combines communication with proof of identity, fully secure financial and other transaction capability, multi-lingual services and a whole range of other capabilities that ride on them and transcend the literacy barrier. x. D e l i v e r s e a m l e s s I C T, multimedia and broadcasting services on converged networks for enhanced service delivery to provide superior experience to customers. xi. Optimize transmission of services to consumers irrespective of their devices or locations by Fixed-Mobile Convergence thus making available valuable spectrum for other wireless services. xii. Facilitate consolidation in the converged telecom service sector while ensuring sufficient competition. xiii. Mandate an ecosystem to ensure setting up of a common
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platform for interconnection of various networks for providing non-exclusive and nondiscriminatory access. xiv. Promote an ecosystem for participants in VAS industry value chain to make India a global hub for Value Added Services (VAS). xv. Ensure adequate availability of spectrum and its allocation in a transparent manner through market related processes. Make available additional 300 MHz spectrum for International Mobile Telephony (IMT) services by the year 2017 and another 200 MHz by 2020. xvi. Strengthen the framework to address the environmental and health related concerns pertaining to the telecom sector. xvii. Encourage adoption of green policy in telecom and incentivize use of renewable resources for sustainability. xviii.Protect consumer interest by promoting informed consent, transparency and accountability in quality of service, tariff, usage etc. xix. Encourage recognition and creation of synergistic alliance of public sector and other organisations of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) through appropriate policy interventions. xx. Achieve substantial transition to new Internet Protocol (IPv 6) in the country in a phased and time bound manner by 2020 and encourage an ecosystem for provision of a significantly large bouquet of services on IP platform. xxi. Put in place a web based, real time e-governance solution to support online submission of applications for all services of DoT and issuance of licences and clearances from DoT.
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How will it benefit mobile users? Users will not have to pay roaming charges and mobile number portability will be available nationwide. The policy envisages a one nation-one licence regime. Companies will not have to apply for separate licences in every circle/ service area and users will not have to pay roaming charges. A single licence will do across all the 22 service areas in the country. The policy will allow mobile operators to share, pool and trade spectrum. Spectrum will in fact, be delinked from licences in future and priced at market value. In the existing policy, start up spectrum of 4.4 MHz is bundled with the licence. How will it affect service providers and operators? The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will unveil an exit policy for operators. It has been referred to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for formulation. That should aid consolidation in the industry, which has 12.13 players in each circle. DoT will also seek TRAI recommendations on the new licensing framework and migration of licences. An additional 300 MHz of spectrum will be made available by 2017 and another 200 MHz by 2020. The telecom section will get infrastructure status under the new policy. The Communication and Information Technology Ministry will ensure adequate availability of spectrum and its allocation in transparent manner through marketrelated processes. It will prepare a road map for the availability of additional spectrum every five years. DoT had started work on the new telecom policy-2011 from January
this year in the wake of the 2G spectrum allocation controversy. It is feared that operators battling intense competition and low tariffs will be hit by the end of roaming charges. According to industry estimates, roaming charges account for eight percent of telecom players revenues What are the key features of the draft NTP 2011? The policy unveiled against the backdrop of the series of scams involving politicians as well as top executives of the telecom companies, is set to focus on transparency and quick decision in the sector. One of the key features of the NTP-2011 could be the strengthening of the grievance redress mechanism for telephone users by giving ample power to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). A separate cell is likely to be created under the TRAI where subscribers could file complaints if they are not happy with the response of customer care cells of their operators. The TRAI will be empowered to penalise guilty operators for not addressing subscriber complaints. Currently, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has the authority of imposing penalties on the telecom, while TRAI can give its recommendations on penalties or termination of licence, and the final decision rests with the DoT. Aimed at cleaning up and rejuvenating the sector, the new policy is expected to help attract more foreign investors to the country and plug the digital divide. The new policy will also propose to give infrastructure tag to telecom sector - which would entail tax concessions - so that more investment flows in. q
NGOs
OVERViEW
Role of NGOs in Rural Development
N Chatterjee Mohd Ashraf Dar

APART, THE Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology, has played an important role in facilitating the process of development in rural India through non-governmental organizations (NGOs). CAPART is an autonomous body registered in 1986 under the aegis of the Ministry of Rural Development, Govt. of India. The vision of CAPART is to play a catalytic role so as to strengthen the voluntary movement in the country and to facilitate the promotion of innovative rural technologies. For the last 25 years, CAPART has been serving as a catalyst for developmental initiatives in rural areas, strengthening and encouraging NGOs, VOs and CBOs to contribute in the betterment of rural areas. CAPART has been implementing many innovative development projects under different schemes through a strong network of government and
non-government organizations to reach all rural areas specially the backward areas of rural India. Vision and Mission of CAPART l The Vision of CAPART is to play a dynamic and catalytic role with the various governmental agencies and NGOs, influence public policy and contribute its share towards the many-sided development of India.
l
NGOs are also playing an important role in creating awareness amongst the rural masses with respect to various flagship development progammes of the government
The Mission of CAPART is to work in close coordination with the rural NGOs and empower them by - Engaging them in dialogue - Respecting their thoughts and ideas - Listening to their voice - Harnessing their resources - Funding their activities - Strengthening their hands, particularly the women, the weaker sections of rural
The authors are Director General and Research Officer, CAPART respectively. YOJANA November 2011 17
society and the disabled and other underprivileged sections of rural society. Walking hand-in-hand with them on the road to rural prosperity.
Schemes of CAPART to support NGOs in rural areas In order to address the issues of rural development, as per its mandate, CAPART has supported different projects under its schemes which may generically be grouped as follows:
l Public
the Councils vision is to play a dynamic and catalytic role with the various governmental agencies and NGOs, influence public policy and contribute its share towards the multi dimensional development of Rural India. The following are the thrust areas under ARTS scheme which CAPART implement through NGOs in the rural areas.
l
in the context of WTO and assist them by protecting their knowledge-base, timehonoured inherent and patent rights and all matters connected therewith. Appropriate technologies for rural application are designed especially to solve the problems faced by deprived sections of the society to improve their income generating and livelihood capabilities, to reduce drudgery, improve habitat as well as quality of life. These also focus on providing employment through self-sustaining and replicable income-based projects. The thrust of ARTS is also to promote innovative technologies assimilated and introduced in the villages by rural innovators. Such technologies are considered innovative as they are locally designed and assembled to solve a local problem. In the process of close interaction and collaboration with Department of Science & Technology (DST), New Delhi, eight Technologies have been identified for further dissemination and transfer through the NGOs. The resource institutions provide technological and scientific support. Regional Offices of CAPART have conducted the workshops in some of the 115 districts identified by the Planning Commission, Govt. of India. Organization of Beneficiaries (OB) Under this Scheme, CAPART supports NGO activities for organization of beneficiaries to create awareness among the rural poor. The objective of the Scheme is to provide support to poor communities/groups, through
Cooperation (PC) Public Cooperation Scheme is one of the popular and important schemes of CAPART by virtue of its multi-dimensional approach. The purpose of the Scheme is to involve the community in designing, planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and maintenance of assets created under the projects. The activities under the Scheme focus on the differently advantaged sections of the rural community, with a view to promote and strengthen SHGs, to build their skills through training and to facilitate production of goods as well as their marketability. Exposure of the rural community to appropriate technologies through capacity building is being considered as an inbuilt component of the Public Cooperation Scheme. Projects under this Scheme are implemented through NGOs. Advancement of Rural Technology Scheme (ARTS) The Memorandum of Association of the CAPART enunciates that
To s t r e n g t h e n e x i s t i n g institutions of research and develop or set up institutions, so as to develop national level institutions on matters of rural interest. act as a catalyst for development of technology appropriate for the rural areas, by identifying and funding research and development efforts and pilot projects by different agencies and institutions, particularly voluntary organizations. of appropriate technology to Government Departments, public sector undertaking, voluntary agencies and members of public to encourage adoption of modern techniques and appropriate technology in rural development.
l To
l act as a conduit for transfer To
To collaborate with other institutions, associations and societies in India or abroad including concerned international agenciesconstituents of the U.N. system interested in similar objects. create awareness amongst rural people and provide a series of escort services to them through the NGOs on matters relating to Intellectual Property Right (IPR) issues
l To
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NGOs for just causes and to sustain the campaign for betterment of their economic status and social power. The Scheme also intends to empower people by increasing their awareness and bargaining power to get what is rightfully their benefits in terms of schemes, rights and legal entitlements. Disability (Working with people with differently advantaged) The Disability Action Division was set up in 1995 to facilitate equal job opportunities for people with disabilities while working for rural development. The thrust of the programme is to generate awareness through NGOs for formation of Self Help Groups (SHGs) and to take up economic support activities so that the disabled people not only become selfsupporting but also equal partners in the development process. The emphasis is on community based rehabilitation programmes through voluntary organizations, to enable people who have the capacity to work in this field and to focus on development of disabled people. CAPART was the first national agency to act on the mandate of the "Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation)" Act, 1995 and to earmark three percent of its resources for people with disabilities. The goals and focused areas of this scheme, implemented through NGOs are: l Community Based Rehabilitation Projects (CBR) based on local conditions and cultures which enable the expansion of CBR coverage as an important means of achieving equalization of
opportunities for people with disabilities in rural areas.

l
CAPART has recognized seven established organizations in the field as Facilitation Centres for aiding the CBR programme. Elimination of attitudinal, cultural and physical barriers, which limit the access of rural people with disabilities to facilities, services, information and development programme in the rural areas, is one of the key objectives of the Disability Action Scheme Administered by CAPART.
forestry, agricultural engineering, marketing, etc. and subsequently placing them with organizations such as the District Rural Development Agencies (DRDAs), NGOs, the Ministry of Rural Development and the CAPART offices. The appointment of YPs is on contract for a fixed period during which they are exposed to both administrative and field level work. The selection of the candidates is made through campus interviews from various institutions located across the country. The selected candidates are provided with a 15-days orientation training which also includes field exposures to established NGOs. After the orientation, these YPs are placed on a cost-sharing basis with NGOs working in the rural areas and also with DRDAs. The YPs are also given an opportunity to attend a week-long intensive refresher course on completion of one year of service. In order to encourage the YPs to continue working in the developmental sector, a scheme known as the Starter Package was introduced in the year 1994 under which a one-time grant is provided to such YPs who set up their own NGOs to work in a rural area. Besides providing an honorarium to these ex-YPs, the grant also covers, other expenses related to creating the basic infrastructure of their organization and conducting a baseline survey of the selected areas. l CAPART has lately conducted workshops in 50 districts identified by the Planning Commission of India in association with respective K r i s h i Vi g y a n K e n d r a
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Marketing Gram Shree Mela The first step towards establishing an overall marketing development linkage was the organization of Gram Shree Melas GSM, (which literally means wealth of villages) through NGOs. GSM provide an opportunity to rural producers to sell their products directly in major markets, to interact with the buyers, to study and comprehend consumer tastes, preferences and choice. Thus it helps them to upgrade and improve their products and marketing skills and to provide better service to the consumer while benefiting from larger marketing opportunity. Yo u n g P ro f e s s i o n a l s ( Y P ) scheme. The Young Professional (YP) scheme was introduced in the CAPART in the year 1988 with the objective of encouraging professionalism in the highly diverse and largely unorganized development sector. This was done by recruiting post-graduates from disciplines related to rural development, viz., social work,
(KVKs) of Indian Council of Agriculture Research to facilitate the local NGOs in formulation of viable project proposals on innovative rural technologies - an intervention to carry forward the flagship programmes of the Ministry of Rural Development like MGNREGA and SGSY under the newly introduced scheme of CAPART Grow Up to Lab Achieved Benchmark" (GULAB).
l To
of carbon credits;
l
CAPART has institutionalized and developed the frame work and norms for holding Gram Shree Melas; CAPART has formulated action plans to identify NGOs for Scouting, documentation/ validation and patenting/ piloting and up-scaling of rural technologies and innovations; Through DST assisted workshops, CAPART has analyzed the perceived needs of the local areas for rural technological interventions through local S&T network; CAPART also promotes studies on the current issues of the third sector; CAPART has lately initiated comprehensive IT web based applications for its stakeholders, namely NGOs and within the organization.
for different project proposals supported by CAPART. All projects are subject to Pre Funding, Mid Term and Post Evaluation by empanelled institutional monitors to review the physical and financial achievements under the projects. To improve and adopt a more transparent system in the Council, CAPART has taken an initiative to adopt an online application system for submission of proposals whereby the NGOs have been encouraged to submit their viable project proposals online. An NGO is to be registered with the NGO Portal System and then submit their proposal for support. This system is expected to facilitate the local NGOs to obtain the latest status of their project proposal online. Conclusion The relevance of the voluntary sector has been widely acknowledged by policy planners. Since its inception, CAPART has supported nearly 27,000 projects and 12,000 NGOs across the country. Some of the NGOs which were supported by CAPART in their nascent stage have demonstrated their presence in policy making and in developing unique strategies for delivering services and benefits in the rural areas. NGOs are also playing an important role in creating awareness amongst the rural masses with respect to various flagship development progammes of the government, through advocacy, dissemination of information as well as sensitization of the rural population. q
(E-mail: chatterjeen@caparthq.delhi.nic.in mashraf2004@rediffmail.com) YOJANA November 2011
bridge the gap between corporate sector and social sector CAPART, in collaboration with CII attempted to establish an interactive platform for dialogue between NGOs and other corporate funding organizations so as to provide good opportunities to NGOs and Corporate to show common interest to expedite the development process at grass root level and meet the objectives of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR);
Process of Implementation NGOs which intend to take up projects from CAPART have to submit detailed project proposal in the prescribed format along with organizational profile. The proposals should be need based and beneficiary oriented. It is mandatory that the category wise list of beneficiaries is mentioned properly in the proposal. The proposals are scrutinized and after fulfilling the criteria laid down in the policy guideline these proposals are subjected to pre funding appraisal by external institutional monitors to assess the feasibility of the proposal. CAPART has a three tier system of monitoring and evaluation
CAPART has attempted to institutionalize and formulate the framework to estimate the level of potential for CAPART's project to align with Government of India's National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC). The focus was to develop appropriate guidelines and practitioner's tool-kit for appraisal and approach so as to align climate response with CDM in the current and proposed areas of intervention for CAPART. The purpose was to disseminate the findings to NGOs who may adopt the toolkit and approach to avail
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ShODhyATRA
Multipurpose Food Processing Machine
M U LT I P U R P O S E FOOD processing machine that facilitates on-farm processing or herbs, flowers and fruits has been developed by Dharamveer Kamboj (45), a farmer, herbalist and an innovator.
The device effectively provides a method for sterilizing, boiling and extracting gel from within the fibrous husks of harvested Aloe vera leaves, flowers, herbs, fruits, vegetables, groundnut, spices and other materials
The youngest among five siblings, Dharamveer was born on 15 May 1963 at village Damla to Ramswaroop Kamboj and Savitri Devi. His father was a farmer and, along with agriculture, also operated a small flour mill and jaggery processing plant. Dharamveer used to assist his father sometimes. His mother was a herbalist, with whom he was extremely close. He would often accompany his mother for collecting kesu (Butea monosperma) flowers, watching how those flowers were taken care of and made into colours for Holi. Unfortunately he lost his mother in childhood, but inherited her curiosity for nature and its herbal wealth. He got married to Shyamudevi in 1986. But just after three days of
his daughters birth in December, after an altercation with his father, he had to leave for Delhi in search of better means of income. He started earning working as a rickshaw puller. He used to carry traders to Khari Baoli area of Old Delhi, where they used to pay hefty amount for herbs. This amazed him and he would often converse with the passengers and vendors to know about the herbs and the income they could fetch. His passion for herbs was revived. Unfortunately his stay at Delhi had to be cut short as he met with an accident in 1987. Severely injured, he was brought back to his village and it took a year to nurse him back to health. After his recovery, he joined the village development society and went for a training programme in improving agricultural practices and organic farming techniques. During the six months of the programme, he interacted with different farmers and experts in the agricultural sector and gained much knowledge. Subsequently, he began his work as an organic farmer and started conducting various experiments.
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In 1990, he became the first farmer in his area to cultivate hybrid tomatoes and generate record production. He also developed some innovative devices viz. battery operated spraying machine using a tape recorder motor and an insect trapping device. He also tried new cropping patterns by cultivating coriander, bottle gourd and sugarcane at the same time. For this also developed a farm implement customized for ploughing without disturbing the sugarcane crop. 1991 onwards he slowly diversified into growing mushrooms, strawberries and baby corn. Subsequently, with the machine that he built for processing Aloe vera and amla, he expanded his business manufacturing and supplying plant extracts gels, essence and herbal product mix. Genesis of innovation It was in 2002 that a bank manager came to their village promoting Aloe vera farming. He discussed with Dharamveer about the Aloe vera gel extractor machine. However, owing to the high cost of machine and the consultation charges, he decided to develop one on his own. In 2003 he started the initial work of designing the machine and in April 2004 handed over the final design to a local fabricator, Vijay Dhiman at Jagadhari who completed the first prototype in March 2005. During the process of building the machine also, there were certain changes made by Dharamveer. In December 2004, Dharamveer got an opportunity to visit various Aloe vera and Amla processing units in Rajasthan along with other farmers. This was facilitated by the Department of Horticulture, Haryana government.
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This experience made him understand the processing methodology better. The first prototype had a problem of over heating when the material to be processed was less. He tried to improve but could not eliminate the problem in the second prototype. In the third one, he introduced castor oil bath, which could maintain the temperature till 200 C. This prototype was bought by GIAN North and send to Kenya on a pilot basis. Based on the feedback, GIAN asked him to modify it further incorporating provisions that would make it easily transportable, including making the legs foldable. In the fourth machine, he also incorporated a sieve to manage the flow of amla. In subsequent models he plans to add temperature and pressure gauzes. Innovation This machine is a multipurpose device capable of pulverizing and extracting oil/gel from various herbs.The machine is a vertical free-standing cylindrical unit mounted on four legs. The raw material is fed from the top and the processed output can be collected at the bottom. The machine consists of an autoclave unit for sterilization, a boiler unit for boiling, the extractor unit for extracting juice or gel, a drive means for a source of power attached to the apparatus. The extractor unit comprises one frame, one condenser with flexible coolant, a set of blades connected of the frame and a grinding system. The main chamber is enclosed with an oil jacket to avoid direct heating of the herbs. First the leaves of the Aloe vera are washed, then they are individually peeled and skin is removed. The peeled skin is kept separately for secondary processing
to generate the essence and gel. The jelly portion inside is washed separately and put into the boiler. The motor is switched ON for running of grinder arranged inside boiler. The boiler is then heated with the help of burner/heater upto 50-60 degrees. This is done for about 10 minutes to prepare the juice. Then the Aloe vera juice is extracted from the main outlet which is fitted with an inbuilt filter. For the secondary process of extracting the essence, the removed skin along with some portion of the jelly is washed and put into the boiler along with equal amount of water and is stirred and boiled to over 100 deg. The steam produced during heating is condensed with the help of condenser for producing the essence. The essence collected is mixed with specific quantity of Gelatin powder to form the gel. To produce juice from plants or fruits, the heating is not done and once material is fed into the shell, the grinder is turned ON and the pulverizing, crushing and mixing produces the juice. The grinding unit is utilized primarily when the processing of dry fruits or spices is required. The temperature and pressure can be set manually using the gauges based on the raw material and desired product outcome. It can also be used for ancillary functions including boiling, sterilization (autoclaving), pulverizing, mixing of produce such as amla, saunf, mushroom and orange. The unit can process 100 kilograms of Aloe vera in an hour. About 1.25 kilograms of Aloe vera leaves are converted to 1 litre of gel in the unit. This machine also acts as a boiler, sterilizer and cooker besides being used to extract the juice or essence from various plants or parts thereof. Interestingly, the
machine also allows the operator to use heating as an option and not deploy it if only pulverizing and grinding is required for certain produce types. As compared to available options, this machine is cost effective, portable and suitable for on-farm processing. It can also be operated by an unskilled worker and be used to process a variety of herbs. Applications and Dispersion Being a versatile unit, the machine is used differently for various types of produce. The device effectively provides a method for sterilizing, boiling and extracting gel from within the fibrous husks of harvested Aloe vera leaves, flowers, herbs, fruits, vegetables, groundnut, spices and other materials. The complete specification for patenting the design was filed in February, 2009 in Dharamveers name. Funding to the tune of Rs 2.8 lakh under the HDFC revolving fund scheme was provided by GIAN North in the year 2008 to him to manufacture and sell a few units. Costing Rs 1.20 lakh apiece, he has sold more than 7 units in Haryana and neighbouring states under the brand name of Prince, which is his sons name. He has also been supported under the Micro Venture Innovation Fund (MVIF) for prototype development and test marketing. Having obtained the FPO license (A73) for the products obtained using the machine, he earns his livelihood by making and selling value added products from different herbs, fruits and vegetable. He has given employment to over two dozen ladies in his manufacturing setup. His innovative work has been covered in many regional newspapers. Recently, The Hindu newspaper also carried an article on his multi-purpose machine. Future Aspirations Dharamveer wants to develop a farm where he will grow, process and sell the herbs. Presently, he lives with his wife and children on the outskirts of the village near his two acres of land. Dharamveer gives the credit for his achievements to his mother who instilled in him the urge to know more about herbs and their uses. He is also very appreciative of the efforts of GIAN North and NIF in supporting him. The only thing that Dharamveer regrets is that his q parents are not around to see his success.
(E-mail : campaign@nifindia.org, www.nifindia.org) YOJANA November 2011
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YE-177/2011
NGOs
CONCERNS
Non Governmental Organizations and the Ageing in India

Mathew Cherian
In conclusion, the NGOs in Ageing are far and few. The problems are huge and there is still much more which needs to be done
N INDIA , civil society and Non governmental organizations are growing at a large pace. In 2001 the JHUPRIA study estimated the number at 1.6 million. Later the Ministry of Programme Implementation and Statistics indicated that about 3 million non profit organisations (NPOs) exist in the country. There are many estimates but this includes NPOs working in all sectors including religious organisations, sports bodies and cultural associations. In the social sector there are about 100,000 NGOs working in remote villages, slums and in tribal communities.
However in the field of ageing there are only about 3000 NGOs working and that too running old age homes. These are trusts and religious associations running homes for destitute older persons. There are large organisations like Help Age India which works nationally for the cause and care of Disadvantaged older persons.
The demographic scenario appears to indicate a very precarious condition for the older persons. While the elderly in the age group 60-69 years could be expected to lead a fairly healthy life and offer their services as volunteers for informal care giving to the elderly in the two higher age groups, both the 70-79 years age group and the 80 + years age group would require critical social and medical health care support both informal care giving and formal care giving. The two higher age groups were 49.12 million as per the 2001 Census, with almost more than two-thirds living in Indias rural areas. The males among this total segment of the elderly accounted for 22.75 million; the females were around 26.37 million. The rapidly growing number of older persons, more older women than men, combined with the rapidly declining number of traditional care providers within the family, the marked absence of any public policy on either home-based healthcare or training of cadres of professional care providers for the home-based
The author is Chief Executive, HelpAge India. 24 YOJANA November 2011
older persons, and the sky-rocketing costs of hospitalization could lead to a situation where the older persons would resort to avoidance of diagnostic and curative health opportunities. Migration by the young and economically productive workers forces older persons to fend for themselves alone in the impoverished rural economy. The first old age home was established in Kerala by Raja Marthand Verma in Trichur in 1890 and the Home was established as a society. This is about 121 years old. Later Missionary activity established more Christian Old age homes in Cochin and Allepey by the Sisters of Charity which works exclusively with older persons. The House of Providence and the Shertallay Homes were established in the early nineteenth century. These are all registered as NGOs. Many Voluntary agencies in this field run a Vridh Ashram or a Old Age Home. Bulk of them are registered as Trusts. Some are also registered as religious trusts serving one community exclusively. The National Population Commission has estimated that the population of the elderly (age group 60 years and above) is expected to grow from 71 million in 2001 to 173 million in 2026. The urban population would increase from 28 percent in 2001 to 38 percent by 2026; the urban growth would account for over two-thirds (67 percent) of total population increase by 2026. Out of the total population increase of 371 million during 2001-2026 in the country, the share of increase in urban population is expected to be 249 million. Women form majority of population ageing; they are more vulnerable, more likely to lack modern work skills, more likely to lack income security, and more likely to be widowed. The biological frailty, coupled with disease and disability in old
age, constantly reminds them of the risks inherent in stepping out from their homes or even remaining confined to their homes. The risks are thus inherent in all their life conditionslocational, psychological, social and cultural. Vulnerability is itself a complex characteristic produced by a combination of factors derived especially (but not entirely) from class, gender and ethnicity. It is not a property of social groups or individuals; it is embedded in complex social processes and relations. Alzeimers disease is the most common cause of dementia; the nerve cells in the brain die. The symptoms of the disease can be seen with the onset of memory problems, serious problems in thinking, judgment and the ability to carry out daily activities. In some cases, abnormal structures are found in certain areas of the affected brain. In this field the Alzheimer and Related Disorders Society of India (ARDSI) again which started in Kerala has chapters in Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai. ARDSI works in the field of dementia and runs memory clinics and a home in Kunnamkulam, Kerala. Help Age India runs dementia daycare centres in Patna and Kolkata. Another NGO called Nightingales runs a centre for Dementia Care in Bangalore. The National Policy for Older Persons 1999 takes note of the significant role that family has been performing in protecting the right to care of its older members; however, it points towards changes that have taken place over the years within the Indian family structure: It is true that family ties in India are very strong and an overwhelming majority live with their sons or are supported by them. Also, working couples find the presence of old
parents emotionally bonding, and of great help in managing the household and caring for children. However, due to the operation of several forces, the position of a large number of older persons has become vulnerable due to which they cannot take for granted that their children will be able to look after them when they need care in old age, especially in view of the longer life span implying an extended period of dependency and higher costs to meet health and other needs. HelpAge India and Nightingales in Bangalore run helplines for elderly. The HelpAge helpline under the number of 1800180-1253 runs in 20 cities. The Policy noted that old persons have become soft targets for criminal elements. They also become victims of fraudulent dealings and of physical and emotional abuse within the household by family members to force them to part with their ownership rights. Widows right of inheritance, occupancy and disposal are at times violated by their own children and relatives. It is important that protection is available to older persons. The introduction of special provisions in IPC to protect older persons from domestic violence will be considered and machinery provided to attend all such cases promptly. Tenancy legislation will be reviewed so that the rights of occupancy of older persons are restored speedily. Women are affected by a range of preventable conditions that differ from those of older men such as post-menopausal reproductive health problems or which, because of their social and financial status, are less likely to be treated for example, loss of vision due to glaucoma or cataract. Untreated infertility is a reproductive health issue which, for women in Africa
25
particularly, has a negative impact in later life: childless older women are more likely to find themselves without essential family support. In case of women, poor education and lack of information concerning their entitlement often prevent them from accessing healthcare services. Educational levels of girls have been found to be correlated with their childrens survival at their family formation stage. Schooling thus seems to trigger a sense of empowerment among girls since that happens to be the first step for many girls in the process of familiarization with the modern outside world. Women who have had such exposure are better prepared to move beyond the traditional confines of household and village and to see themselves as able and entitled to cope with the world. The more educated a woman is, the more likely she is to want and to be able to obtain contraceptive services, modern preventive and curative healthcare, immunizations, and schooling for both her male and female children, and the less likely she is to want her daughters to marry early. Agencies like the Guild of Services an NGO established in Chennai in 1930 by Mrs Mary Club wala Jadhav now works in Delhi and Mathura and looks after widows in particular. In New Delhi Aarey Mahila Ashram runs a home for older destitute women. In North Delhi, St. Marys Home established in 1920 by the St. Stephen Society runs a home for older women. There are very few homes for elderly women and Helpage India established Kalyan Ashram in Kolkata exclusively for older women. Older persons, including older women, undertake both informal
26
and formal roles in healthcare. In tribal clusters, villages and urban slums, most traditional healers are older persons, including older women. Based primarily on experiential learning, and without any formal training in care giving, most women, and more so older women, continue to provide familybased and community-based care. Outside their homes, older women could be known as volunteer care givers. The National Policy on Older Persons 1999, having taken note of the demographic scenario, had noted that several factors, including adoption of small family norm by a growing number of people, would create a situation where the country would face a scarcity of care givers. It projected the following situation: Changing roles and expectations of women, their concepts of privacy and space, desire not to be encumbered by caring responsibilities of old people for long periods, career ambitions, and employment outside the home implies considerably reduced time for care giving. The position of single persons, particularly females, is more vulnerable in old age as few persons are willing to take care of non-lineal relatives. So also is the situation of widows an overwhelming majority of whom have no independent source of income, do not own assets and are totally dependent. As family care givers, women, including older women, need support from respite care givers, in order to be able to cope with stress created by unending care duties, particularly in situations wherein a family has to tend to the long-term care needs of a patient. Older people, including older women, are now beginning to find
some specialized services (e.g. Geriatric Wards at major hospitals in urban areas, or special Sunday Clinics, or Mobile Medical Units in slums and rural areas). However, a large majority of the older people, including older women, tend to stay away from the specialized services due in part to the fact that lack of transport to clinics and money for medicines make them more likely to opt for self-treatment. Dependency Ratio Out of the total population increase of 371 million between 2001 and 2026, the share of the workers in the age-group 15-59 years would be 83 percent. This would have a positive implication in regard to the productivity of labour in future. This economically productive age group would be better equipped to provide support to the dependent members of their families, i.e. children, and, older persons. The 11th Five Year Plan Draft Approach Paper (June 2006) viewed this point as one that carried greater significance concerning dependency ratio in the country. Three sub-groups among the Old The elderly population in India, when categorized in terms of the three age groups as per the Census of 2001, demonstrates the following picture:
Table1 Percentage of old persons to total population by sex Age group 60-69 years 70-79 years 80+ years Total percent to total Persons male female 4.5 2.1 0.3 6.9 4.3 2.0 0.3 6.6 4.7 2.1 0.3 7.1
The group that would need critical care both respite care and long-term institutional care - (i.e. 80 years + age group) will be around 19.88 million (males numbering 8.40 million and females around 11.47 million). The state of Kerala had the highest percentage of the elderly (11 percent of its population) as of 2001; it is expected to go up to 18 percent by the year 2026. It could be said that every sixth person in the state of Kerala would be in the category of the elderly. Kerala represents and will continue to represent both the dramatic population ageing phenomenon and the feminization of ageing in India. The state of Uttar Pradesh represents the other extreme with the elderly representing 6 percent of the total population in the year 2001; it is, however, expected to go up to 10 percent by the year 2026. In Mathura, Varanasi and Haridwar many widows go to spend their last years on the banks of the Ganges at religious places. Many organizations have set up Ashrams like Ramakrishna Mission, Guild of Services, Lions Club and some Hindu organisations like Swami Shivanand Ashram and Mahesh Yogi Ashrams Women form majority of population ageing; they are l More vulnerable,
l More
homes in search of better livelihood options continues to adversely affect the older persons in the families. Migration on the part of the younger members does bring in cash resources for the older persons thus facilitating some improvement in their living standards; however, it adversely affects the extent of care available to them as also it shrinks the size of social network that was available to them earlier. Migration by the younger members of the families appears to alter the shape and size of the original household as well. Both the urban and rural scenarios indicate many households comprising entirely of the old with the younger members having moved away to other cities (the Bangalored phenomenon, for example, created by the IT and BPO industry!). Chennai, Pune, Kochi and Mohali are rapidly emerging as the other cities that are attracting many young people in search of better livelihoods. The old persons household are now a reality; with the death of one member among this household (it is the male member who dies first, in most cases), it becomes a single older woman household (in most cases, the old widows household). Adding to the grim absence of care, the Indian culture continues to nurture the view that women must be care providers, not care receivers! Who would then delve deep into issues such as higher rates of psychological problems like depression faced by women in their old age? Vulnerability to abuse and crime increases in such conditions; low morale and low self-esteem complicates the situation further. Who would measure their degree of life satisfaction and distress
in life arising largely on account of the structure of the household? There is need to generate morbidity data at this stage of womens life. Agencies like Dignity and Harmony work with middle class and better off elderly and are experimenting with assisted living facilities on pay and stay basis. Psycho-social Perspective Older persons in India face the grave threat of either finding themselves alone in their family home, or, of being pushed out of their family home. There are many who live with their children and grandchildren, yet find themselves left alone during a large part of the day. There are also those unfortunate ones who are dumped and rendered destitutes by their own young ones since the latter cannot take care of their declining health. Resource-plus or resourceminus, the older persons find themselves challenged in every aspect of their life once they have lost contact with their primary network of social relationships, i.e. their family members and close relatives. The realization that they have been abandoned by their primary network, they find it extremely difficult to pick up psycho-social courage to try and be part of some secondary network of social relationships i.e. peer group in the local Senior Citizens Association/Council, Resident Welfare Association, NGO or Club. There are federations like FESCOM in Maharashtra which has one lakh members in Maharashtra. Similar confederations exists in other states. Prominent have been AISCON in Maharashtra and Confederation of Senior Citizens in Delhi.
27
likely to lack modern work skills, likely to lack income security, and likely to be widowed.
l More
l More
Migration of the young to places far away from their original

Individual Vulnerability People generally become vulnerable in their daily life transactions on account of diverse risks l social isolation,
l inability to form new personal
and social networks resulting in self-imposed social exclusion,

l lack
that they nurtured for their entire life collapsed on their own. Many older persons find their will to live life considerably weakened. Many older persons went to the extent of claiming that it was possible to get on with the agency of daily living when a child died in a family but difficult to get on with life when known that the children were there and yet not with them. The older members of the family were thus frequently left alone to fend for themselves and keep a watch over their family assets; most metropolitan centres were increasingly recording the phenomenon of older persons families or even old widows family with small pieces of land that they cultivate and protect from poachers, houses that they guard, animals that they rear, and car engines that they crank everyday at least once. In some cases they were left also with small children and grandchildren in addition to watching over the family assets; salt pan workers among the Kutchi families in Gujarat left their original homes and children for a number of months to earn their livelihood for the entire year from the leased salt pan lands. The suicide-prone fields of Amravati in Maharashtra left older men and women as those tending to their grandchildren with the young and earning members having surrendered their life through suicide! The Vidharbha Jan Andolan supports such elderly widows. The old persons are full of insecurity about their own safety, the safety of the family assets, and of the children. The original care providers in the family having migrated away, the alternate care providers that they took help from i.e. domestic servants,
newspaper hawkers, household utilities maintenance workers and the persons that are in league with such alternate care providers continue to pose risks to their lives. What was critical to the situation was to understand the nature of their physical location (e.g. tribal, rural, and urban; within these three contexts, the nature of land use mixed or functionspecific), including the density of population in that physical location, socio-economic systems and processes which influence their lives (e.g. the social processes that give rise to social classes and accordingly determine opportunities for livelihood generation), and resilience growing from the physical and psychological strength that they can utilize in their lives. It is believed, for example, that older persons with substantial economic resources, residing in areas that are characterized by low density of population, and living alone or left alone for some predictable part of the day are vulnerable to crime and fraudulent offences. Widows and single women in such situations are more vulnerable to crime and fraudulent offences than men. Police have special interest in involving HelpAge India and senior citizen associations in providing surveillance and security of older persons living alone . The Helplines of HelpAge India are also providing similar services. Age well, another Delhi based NGO is involved in running a helpline. In conclusion, the NGOs in Ageing are far and few. The problems are huge and there is still much more which needs to be done. q
(E-mail: Mathew.Cherian@ helpageindia.org) YOJANA November 2011
of access to resources,
l lack l lack
of skills to access resources, of resilience to retain resources that they have, and of hope for the future.
l loss
The younger members in their families migrate, for example, to avail of diverse and attractive opportunities for livelihood away from their traditional homes (that the older persons had nurtured for years as their primary network of social relationships) to cities within the same country, other industrial centres in the neighbouring countries, or even to far off countries. This separation from, (if one does not want to term it harshly as abandonment), their own children imposes on them a kind of social isolation that tended to dismantle the very anchor of their primary network of social relationships on and around which they had so far built their entire life. There are Vridha Sanghas and Elder Self help Groups formed by HelpAge India in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand where this migration is high. These are part of civil society . The older persons find themselves in a dilemma unable to get on with their lives. The fear that haunts them is the fear of instability of the attempted primary and alternate primary networks of social relationships since the relationships
28
NGOs
ViEWPOiNT
NGOs in the Healthcare Sector
G Srinivasan
It is a consummation to be devoutly wished that the authorities would do all they can to ensure that this third important pillar of service, after public and private, does get its due of deserved policy and administrative encouragement duly and durably
HE ROLE of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the countrys health care system is going to be too important in the future to be treated with any levity even as NGOs in other walks of public life are being deemed noisy and nosy to the discomfort of the governing dispensation. Be that as it may, the record of public health maintenance both by the public and private sector in the country has been none too satisfactory over the years. This is conceded by the Draft Approach to the 12th Five Year Plan of the Planning Commission when it gravely stated that though the percentage of total expenditure on health in India as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) was around five percent, there was a disproportionately high dependence on private, particularly households out of pocket expenditure.
The reasons for this stem from a critical imbalance in the healthcare
system which arose out of the shortcomings in the public sectors capacity to deliver basic health care. The private sector too was plagued by wide variations. At one end of the spectrum were private hospitals with world class facilities and personnel offering services, which were competitively priced compared to similar services overseas but remained beyond the capacity of most Indians. At the other end there was an unregulated private sector which was more affordable but offered services of varying quality often by ill-equipped or under-qualified practitioners. As researchers in the field repeatedly and wryly pointed out that the rapid commercialization of private medical practitioners of uneven quality of care that had led to the whole array of problems in heath care services across the country. Starting from the high scarcity cost of good medical education, the recompense differential between public and corporate hospitals causing unwillingness of the young
The author is a Senior Journalist based in Delhi. 29
professional to avoid pubic service in rural areas to succumb to the lure of the market in urban centres to the compulsion of returns on investment whenever costly equipment is installed in the private hospitals, the reasons are pretty solid. In the bleak backdrop of the public and private health care system being inadequate with the former due to budgetary constraints and the need to balance funds against competing demands and the latter due to commercialization of health services, the only viable option open is to bolster the extant voluntary organizations in the health care arena. The voluntary health programme in India could be catalogued into specialized community health programmes, intergraed development programmes, health care for special group of people, government voluntary organization and health work sponsored by Rotary, Lions clubs and chambers of commerce, campaign groups and health researchers and activists. The government voluntary organizations are bodies which play the part in implementing plethora of family welfare and health programmes of the government such as family planning and integrated child development services. Available rough estimates suggest that more than 7000 voluntary organizations are working in these aforementioned areas of health areas across the length and breadth of the country. Voluntary agencies have been the real harbingers in fostering alternative models in extending low-cost and efficacious health services in several parts of the country. They have been successful enough in developing village-based health cadres, educational materials and appropriate technology, besides being instrumental in plugging
30
the glaring gaps that abound in government health care services and programmes. From the middle of the 1960s, the government foresaw a crucial role for NGOs in the health sector. Most of the plan documents emanating from the Planning Commission unambiguously advert to the critical role the NGOs must perforce play in all facets of healthcare, particularly for the downtrodden population and people living in farflung and difficult terrain regions. It is also a deplorable aspect that since health is a state remit and responsibility under the federal set-up, the concern being felt by the Centre is not quite often shared by all the state governments which are under different political or State level parties. As a result, there has been a weakening of the NGOs role in the healthcare provisions across the country. Another besetting problem is one of inadequate involvement of NGOs in health planning. This invariably governments look for NGOs to take part in the final phase of implementation of programmes, the content and subjects of which may not be to the yen and perspective of the NGOs concerned. There are also gaps between the grassroots needs and the government agenda. Thus an NGO functioning at the grassroots with the community level considers communicable diseases and reproductive health as a big problem, while the government fervently bolsters programmes that are target-driven, prepackaged and might have little to do with the local requirements and realities. Existing data on voluntary bodies in health services reveal that the health groups working gratuitously are broadly divided on ideological grounds-- foreign or locally funded, those following
traditional or modern medicine. For instance, the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), one of the few voluntary bodies that bid fair to demystify medicine by banking on conventional or traditional herbs, staunchly supports the conviction that healthcare is a basic right of all citizens and that a benevolently beneficial system ought to work towards keeping the whole populace physically and psychically salutary. It cautions people against modern healthcare systems owned and operated by multinational drug majors, emphasizing in place the variegated wealth of knowledge that exists in the traditional system of medicine. Yet another outstanding example of voluntary healthcare association that has evoked universal attention in India is the Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI). A Delhi-based national network of more than 4000 NGOs spread across the nation, it is verily one of the worlds biggest associations of voluntary agencies in the realm of health and developments. It is a federation of 24 state-level voluntary health associations and it has been striving hard since its inception in 1970 to build a peoples health movement by its ardent advocacy of a cost-effective, preventive and promotional health care system through innovative approaches in Community Health. A senior functionary of VHAI claimed that given its presence in every nook and corner of the country and its technical and professional expertise, it is able to foster a relationship of mutual trust and confidence with the government. This has led to a situation wherein many areas of common concerns like reproductive and child health, HIV/AIDS, people-centered community health care as well as health promoting, VHAI is working in concert with the Government.
Despite this rapport with the authorities, VHAI has not shied away from taking up issues with the government on many issues of major concern, beginning from its five-year report on the status of the nations health. The report of Independent Commission on Health in India which VHAI sponsored and coordinated as a major policy document covered all aspects of health and medical care in the country. On issues like tobacco, drug policy and baby food, VHAI has taken a proactive and confrontational posture vis-vis government by engaging in systematic research, educating the public and media and availing of legal recourse where needed for a more people-oriented policy on these issues. It is a sign of maturity of the authorities that these confrontations by a voluntary body did not lead to a widening of the rift but helped in building grudging respect within government for VHAI, a spokesperson of VHAI said on record. VHAI has also proposed a slew of measures to the Government to reinforce voluntary effort in key areas of healthcare. A National Coordination Committee, consisting of the Director General Health Services, Secretary
(Health), three representatives from voluntary organizations and one representative from the state government should work as active listening posts for the voluntary agencies working in the field of health. The Committee, meeting periodically, should also promote collaboration and cooperation between the government and voluntary organizations in primary healthcare, identify peoples health needs and bring them to the notice of planners and assist in developing comprehensives national health policies and action plans at all levels. Voluntary organizations should also be involved in various activities at the district and block level such as innovative health service delivery, training and special programmes for endemic areas. In fine, it cannot be gainsaid that the Indian health industry is all set to register rapid growth during this decade, spurred by rising life expectancy, higher income levels, greater reach of health insurance and growing life-style related diseases. The Investment Commission of India too said that the market size of hospitals and nursing homes are projected to be Rs 54,000 crore with a 20 percent growth per annum, while that of medical equipment Rs 9000 crore with 15 percent
growth; Clinical lab diagnostics market is worth Rs 4500 crore and a 30 percent growth, while that of image diagnostics at Rs 4500 crores and a 30 percent growth with other services, including training and education, aesthetics and weight loss and retail pharmacy at Rs 9000 crore. While all these market potentials show that the healthcare industry in the country is poised to scale new highs in the years ahead, the fact remains that for a vast chunk of the countrys population the primary health concern continues to remain a concern in the absence of affordable and holistic health care facilities. It is here that the role and responsibility of the voluntary organizations come to the fore. It is a consummation to be devoutly wished that the authorities would do all they can to ensure that this third important pillar of service, after public and private, does get its due of deserved policy and administrative encouragement duly and durably. This would over the long haul make a decisive dent in the countrys morbidity and mortality rate so that a healthy India would be lock-step with a wealthy India. q
(E-mail:geeyes34@gmail.com)
YOJANA
Forthcoming Issues
December 2011 North East, Focus State: ASSAM January 2012 An Approach to the 12th Five Year Plan
December 2011 & January 2012
31
GEOGRAPHY
Prof. MAJID HUSAIN
M.A.(Gold Medalist), L.L.B, Ph.D Prof. Majid Husain needs no introduction as the senior most geographer in India and teaching experience of over 40 years and research experience of 43 years. Besides he has numerous UPSC exam books to his credit.
I.A.S. - 2012
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
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(Ex-I.A.S, Commissioner & Director C.V.C) L.L.B, L.L.M, PhD(Law), M.Com, PhD(Management), D.Lit(Management), PGDP(U.K.), CLA(U.K.)
Prof. Swamy started his career as a teacher in University of Madras, an Ex-IAS officer of 1980 batch. An eminent scholar and author of several books of international repute, he has served under various ministries and key bureaucratic offices such as Commissioner and Director CVC, Dy-Secretary Ministry of Planning, Prof. and HOD Management & Public Administration under Ministry of Finance. A dry honest bureaucrat has a passion for teaching which is reflected in his lifelong association to teaching. He has held teaching positions in various institutes all over the world. His stronghold is the subject of Public Administration where he has humongous experience as an able administrator and his fine skill of teaching makes the subject lucid.
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32
NGOs
PERSPECTiVE
Reforming Governance in India Today
Rajesh Tandon
Civil society and political society, both, are essential for inclusive social transformation in India. Whenever they appreciate each others distinctive roles, complementary and synergistic outcomes follow
uring the freedom movement, Gandhiji would suddenly ask the political workers of Congress to stop political disobedience movement, and dedicate themselves to constructive social work in the villages for the next year or so. Much of this constructive social work was addressing problems of illiteracy, ill-health, lack of sanitation, etc. In this approach, direct political action against the colonial rule and supportive social action with the poor were seen as two sides of the same coin transformation. After independence, however, many Gandhians joined the government, while just a few (Vinoba ji & Jay Prakash ji notable among them) remained dedicated to constructive social work in the communities. The politics of social transformation, over the past six decades, gradually became disconnected with the politics of governing the Indian state.
society itself. When PRIA began its work thirty years ago, I was quite surprised to note this distinction among the voluntary organizations. When PRIA championed the cause of authentic participation of citizens in determining their own affairs, it was implying that citizens have a role in governance. People of India are not just voters (periodically electing representatives and then going to sleep); nor are they mere beneficiaries (for whose welfare distant bureaucrats plan one-sizefits-all programmes); they are citizens, who have an ongoing right and responsibility to engage with the processes and structures of decision-making that affect common public good in their localities---governance per se! So, PRIA decided to engage with the institutions of local governance (panchayats and municipalities) soon after the constitution mandated them as such in 1993. We felt that such citizens (who have been consistently marginalized and excluded) can now exercise legitimate political authority in these democratic institutions. So, PRIA experimented with a threepronged strategy to make political authority more democratically accountable.
This separation has resulted in an understanding of separation of political society from civil societyformer is focused on capturing and running the state, while the latter is concerned with bringing about changes in the
The author is President, Participatory Research in Asia ( PRIA), New Delhi. YOJANA November 2011 33
First, we mobilized community groups and local community leaders to participate in PEVAC (Pre-Election Voters Awareness Campaigns) in 16 states of the country during the previous two rounds of elections in 2000-02 and 2004-06. These campaigns were aimed at i) making citizens aware of their rights to elect their leaders in panchayats and municipalities; ii) enabling good candidates from the marginalized sections women, minorities, scheduled caste, scheduled tribe-to file their nominations; iii) strengthening civicdriven processes to focus electoral politics on issues of development and not on caste, religion and corruption. A coalition of nearly 300 civil society organizations was formed in each state, which received formal recognition from State Election Commissions, and mobilized media and others to carry out the campaigns. During the last round of local government elections in these 12 states, more than 300 million voters were reached through such campaigns. Second approach was focused on building the capacities of elected representatives to be able to perform their new public roles effectively and accountably. PRIA partnered with state and national government agencies, as well as civil society organisations, to design and conduct initial orientationsPRJA (Panchayati Raj Jagrukta Abhiyan)of all elected representatives in 12 states. In addition, PRIA piloted an approach to provide ongoing support of information, skills and connections to such elected representatives (specially women and those from the marginalized sections) through village and block level Panchayat (and Urban) Resource Centres (numbering nearly 200 spread over 12 states). Later on, these capacity building approaches and models have been incorporated in national policies and programmes. Third, PRIA focused its attention on enabling citizens to continue to interact with, and demand accountability from,
34
elected representatives through regular campaigns of mobilizations of Gram Sabha (and Mohalla Samiti in municipalities). Such campaigns provided knowledge about rights and responsibilities of citizens and political officeholders in a manner that enabled ongoing monitoring and systematic disclosure of information of various development programmes. While numerous practical and policy gains have been achieved from this methodology of work of PRIA over the past 15 yearsunder the rubric of Governance Where People Matter-it has also created several challenges on our way. First and foremost, we had to overcome our own cynicism about politics and political leaders in India. Many of us felt that engaging with electoral politics would dirty our hands. Once we overcame that, we had to convince other civil society groups to join in this effort with us by overcoming their hang-ups too. Second, this joining in with others was strategically crucial because engaging with political process of this nature requires operating at scale. Even the smallest political parties have presence in hundreds of constituencies. So, building and sustaining state-level coalitions and platforms was essential for this strategy to work. Third, we had to jealously guard against succumbing to political inducements. In these coalitions and platforms, strict codes of conduct were established and monitored so that no civil society actor was seen as favoring any particular political party or political interest. Many a times, activists of civil society themselves became candidates; we had to then ask them to disassociate with these coalitions and platforms, sometimes painfully? Fourth, direct interactions with senior state and district level political party leaders had to be initiated before the campaigns began. It is important to keep the formal political parties and their leaders adequately informed of our purposes and activities so as not to be seen as competing against their electoral interests. Such interactions
further enabled us to appreciate their priorities and interests, which in many ways were not against our own purposes in these campaigns. Fifth, credibility in the eyes of the formal electoral and official machinery was important factor in effective implementation of this strategy. PRIAs track record, and that of its many partners, had been characterized by serious, professional, quality, unbiased and long-term approach to social transformation, which placed citizens at the centre. Where such credibility was absent, this methodology of work suffered. Finally, there was the challenge of resources. Not only that PRIA needed resources for its own teams, many of the small communitybased groups had no access to funds to enable them to disseminate information and travel around in the block or the municipality. Even printing of posters and handbills, or production of musical cassettes and jingles for radio and television required funds. Government funds have been scarce for such activities (though we managed to access some from ministries of rural development and panchayati raj, and some state governments); foreign funds are seen to be antinational, and legal restrictions of FCRA are huge. Public or corporate donations for such interventions at local government level are still rare. Civil society interventions aimed at democratising democracy in India are still poorly resourced. What have we learnt? Civil society and political society, both, are essential for inclusive social transformation in India. Whenever they appreciate each other s distinctive roles, complementary and synergistic outcomes follow. Where that is not the case, adversarial interactions have to be contended with. But, as civil society actors, representation is not the basis of our legitimacy. Our values, our work, our commitment to the democratic transformation of our societiesconstitute the basis of our voice. q
(E-mail: rajesh.tandon@pria.org) YOJANA November 2011
NGOs
ANALySiS
Future of Voluntary Organizations in India
Harsh Jaitli
The need of the hour is to work closely with each other for the benefit of the marginalized people, as even today the dream of Mahatma Gandhi has not been achieved
HE EXISTENCE of voluntary sector in India is as old as the history of humanity in any civilizations. If we see the recorded history of India, we find that the responsibility of providing decent human life with dignity had been always shared with state and the informal grouping of people. The temples played an important role through their religious charities to provide education, health and other basic services along with state apparatuses, whose primary role was to provide security. The more structured form of voluntary organizations came into existence with the formation of Societies Registration Act of 1860, but the contribution of voluntary sector has been much beyond it. After independence, the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi became the inspiration of many grass roots organizations popularly known as Gandhian Organizations. In fact, after independence, Mahatma
Gandhi gave a call that we have only achieved political freedom, and freedom from hunger, disease, deprivation and marginalization is still to be achieved. So, he advised many freedom fighters that those who want to achieve this through political means could join the electoral politics and others should join the social service sector. After independence, India faced the Herculean task of providing these basic services to the remotest corners of the country which was also trying to recover from devastating drought and pains of partition. This problem was further complicated by the lack of financial and human resources with the state. Acting on the need of the hour, the voluntary organizations not only worked in the deep and remote locations in the country but also got engaged in innovations to develop methods and models for delivery of services to the marginalized. Many of them became the extended arm of the government. As the
The author is Chief Executive Officer, Voluntary Action Network India (Vani), New Delhi. YOJANA November 2011 35
situations changed the nature, scope and functions of voluntary organizations also transformed. If we analyze from todays realities, the voluntary organizations not only have new opportunities but also face very serious existential challenges. Rights versus service delivery Today our country is progressing very fast on the path of self-reliance. The stable democracy and constant economic growth have contributed to this. Unfortunately the fruits of this economic growth have not reached the majority of our population which still suffers from poverty. These not only include poor in urban locations but also tribals, dalits and women. For the benefit of such sections of society the Indian government has come out with various flagship schemes. Many of such schemes are based on the innovations carried by the voluntary organizations. Some of them are like National Rural Health Mission, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, etc. Number of voluntary organizations in India are engaged in implementing the schemes. Since voluntary organizations have outreach in the remotest locations of the country as well as acceptance with the community, they become very effective partner of government at national, state and district levels. This role is primarily known as facilitating service delivery. Equally important is the role of empowering people about their entitlements under these schemes. Many a times these schemes are made in national or state capitals in very complicated languages. The true sprit and ultimate results
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can only be achieved when people will know its benefits and demand from the officials and also from the voluntary organizations. The roles, service delivery and empowerment have to go hand in hand if we want to not only make freedom from hunger and disease a reality but also achieve full value of public money. The voluntary organizations are playing a very important role in this aspect of nation building. Advisory role to the government There are some voluntary organizations that play active role as advocacy groups. They conduct research on the key issues affecting the country and engage with government on policy dialogue. Many a times they also conduct reviews on the efficacy of developmental projects carried over by the state and national governments. These reviews help in mid course correction and redefine the targets of such projects. The voluntary organizations have benefit of their outreach on one hand and also availability of technical expertise on the other. The voluntary organizations are also engaged in formulation of five year plans of the Planning Commission. The review of 11th plan was conducted by a consortium of voluntary organizations after a series of consultations at state and thematic levels. Now, various subgroups are formed by the Planning Commission to help carve out the next five year plan. Not only the voluntary sector but even the government consider this role as important input in policy formation function. Since the last two years selected voluntary organizations are also invited by the Finance Ministry
for Pre-budget annual consultation. Many consultative committees are also formed by various ministries to seek structured input from the sector. The voluntary sector is also engaged in providing critical input to the policy makers within government even out of this mechanism. They regularly bring out status reports on climate change, agriculture, industry, fiscal reforms, etc and submit to the government. They also provide input to the members of parliament and state legislatures. Many times these reports are neither invited by the government nor accepted by it. On such cases these organizations run advocacy campaigns through media and popular publication to generate awareness and public support. Shrinking financial resources Financial resources are very critical to the survival of this sector, because the users of services by this sector are not in a position to pay. For example, if any voluntary organization is providing sanitation facilities to the economically poor and socially marginalized group, the total expenditure has to be supported by the third party. This could be government, private sector or international funding agency. However, in the last few years the international funding for development aid is going down as far as India is concerned. This is partly due to growing GDP of India and partly due to policies of government refusing bilateral aid. The focus has shifted more to technical aid from socio-economic development aid from the international aid agencies. Simultaneously, the nature and
scope of government aided projects have grown tremendously in the last few years. The private sector has also come up in their corporate social responsibility projects. Unfortunately, in the current aid scenario of India, there is very less support available for work on awareness on entitlements or grass roots innovations. The major focus of government and private sector is on delivery of services with very less investment on independent review of policies or flexible grants for experimentations. The voluntary sector of India is losing its edge on these two important aspects for which it was known worldwide. National Policy on the Voluntary Sector The relationship between government and voluntary sector has always been mixed. Sometimes voluntary sector plays the role of extended hand of government by delivering services and projects and also produces the critique of the same. Within the complex realities of the relationship between government and voluntary sector, the National Policy on the Voluntary Sector came like a ray of hope. The policy saw the light of the day in 2007 due to the tremendous efforts and the leadership of the Planning Commission. Essentially, the policy was an effort to redefine the relationship between both the engines of nation building. This policy visualized to evolve a long-term, sustainable and institutionalized collaboration between the government and voluntary sector. A need to develop a national policy, which not only defines the relationship
between the government and the voluntary sector but also explores the ways to strengthen the sector, emerged. Various strategies like capacity building, streamlining the procedures and guidelines, creating synergy between efforts of government and voluntary sector have been outlined. Although, the origin of these efforts could be traced back as far as 1988, the first concrete step was taken by Planning Commission in 1994, when a national convention was organized in March 7-8. In these two days of deliberations, the Planning Commission adopted an Action Plan to bring about a collaborative relationship between Voluntary sector and the Government. It should be noted that while formulating the Tenth Five Year Plan, the Planning Commission set up a Steering Committee for the active involvement of voluntary organizations. The National Convention of VANI in August 2006, deliberated on the draft framework of the policy and eventually the approach paper of 11th Plan stated that Central Government would announce the policy for voluntary sector. On May 17, 2007 the National Policy was approved by the Government of India. The announcement of a national policy was whole-heartedly welcomed by the sector as it reflected the seriousness of the government to encourage, enable, and empower an independent, creative and effective voluntary sector as its partner and not as a sub-contractor. Broadly speaking, the policy sets out four specific objectives:
To c r e a t e a n e n a b l i n g environment for VOs that stimulates their enterprise and effectiveness, and safeguards their autonomy To enable VOs to legitimately mobilize necessary financial resources from India and abroad To identify operating systems by which the Government may work together with VOs, on the basis of the principles of mutual trust and respect, and with the shared responsibility; and, To encourage VOs to adopt transparent and accountable systems of governance and management.
Although, there has been no systematic analysis of the achievements or the failures of the policy but the broad indications are not very promising. Some of the areas are listed below: 1. State Policies One of the intentions of the national policy was to motivate state governments to have similar policies. The Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission wrote to almost all the Chief Ministers in this regard. VANI, along with its member organizations, also conducted a series of workshops in various states with the objective of informing state level Voluntary Organizations, and to build a link between state governments. Various state level groups were formed to coordinate and motivate state governments. In 2007-2008, almost 13 meetings were organized. Unfortunately, only three states came up with the draft policies;
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they are Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. 2. Enabling Environment The National Policy promised governments efforts towards creating enabling environment for voluntary organizations by simplifying rules, regulations, capacity building and facilitating funding environment. However, more stringent Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 2010, was made, which not only requires reregistration after every five years but also relieves government from accountability towards VOs. On the one hand, the provision of deemed approval is being taken back while on the other hand there is no answerability by Ministry in case of a delay or arbitrary rejection. Presently, the VOs are not supposed to mobilize people for their democratic rights unless approved by the ministry. Similarly, the proposed Direct Taxes Code intends to tax VOs. The provision of saving has been taken away along with the facility to account on accrual basis. The definition of charitable activities remains confused as it was earlier. The business like activities unilaterally defined can make an accessing officer to take away the tax exemptions. The VISA regime for VOs has also been tightened. Hence, inviting external experts and organizing international workshops require clearance from three Ministries, Home, External Affairs, and Nodal Ministry. Lastly, the environment for fund generation within India has also become more difficult. The relationship of partnership for development is shifting very fast to a relationship of sub contractor.
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The VOs have to compete along with the various consultancy firms to partner with government on various development schemes.
3. Consultative Mechanism with National Ministries One of the outstanding recommendations of the policy was to work towards building a permanent mechanism of regular consultation between various national ministries and VOs. This generated mixed results. The Finance Ministry has started organizing pre-budget meetings with the selected VOs. VANI was also invited by the Finance Ministry along with CII, FICCI and other industrial associations for consultations on Direct Taxes Code. Although, some ministries invite VO for various consultations, there is no attempt to institutionalize such practice. 4. The Planning Commission Having pioneered the National Policy on the Voluntary Sector, the Voluntary Action Cell of the Planning Commission, undertook many significant steps. The national online registration and data bank was initiated along with three task forces viz., Accreditation system, National Registration Regulation, and Decentralized Funding Mechanisms. Recently, all the three draft reports have come, and they require sharing and consultations with stakeholders. What does the future hold? We a r e e n t e r i n g i n t o a n important phase where the 12th five year plan is being worked out and there are many targets that the government intends to achieve
with the active collaboration of VOs. Therefore, it is important to conduct an effective review or report card of the National Policy with specific recommendations. These recommendations could become an agenda for all Voluntary Organizations, Planning Commission, state governments and national Ministries. Efforts are also needed to further disseminate the information about the policy and its intentions with small VOs as well as government functionaries. There is a need to solicit commitment from state governments and national ministries. A systematic intervention is also needed to get National Policy approved and adopted by the Indian Parliament. The most serious challenge faced by India today is the conflict between violent and non-violent approach of development. Needless to say that majority of population of India is still deprived of basic fruits of development, but rather than adopting the approach which is more inclusive and look for solutions within the constitution, India is faced by disturbances in many parts of the country. This not only hampers the development projects but also shrink the space for peoples participation to achieve their goals through peaceful means. The voluntary sector being present in such locations faces the challenge of delivering the services and even mobilizing people on the development agenda. The need of the hour is to work closely with each other for the benefit of the marginalized people, as even today the dream of Mahatma Gandhi has q not been achieved.
(E-mail: harsh@vaniindia.org) YOJANA November 2011
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NORTh EAST DiARy

ICT SERVICES IN NORTH-EAST
o provide information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled services in the country's North-Eastern States, the Centre has opened a State Data Centre (SDC) in Kohima that will help improve service delivery in Nagaland. Other States in the region will have similar facility soon. The Aadhar Scheme has also been launched in the state. Established at a cost of Rs.30.68 crore, the Nagaland SDC will enable consolidation of services, applications and infrastructure to provide efficient electronic delivery of various services. Under the SDC scheme, data repositories/data centres are being created in various States and Union Territories so that common secured data storage can be maintained to serve a host of e-governance applications. Implementation of State Wide Area Network (SWAN) is in an advanced stage. The Nagaland SWAN, approved with an outlay of Rs.21.05 crore, will establish seamless and secured intranet networks connecting State departments and government entities within Nagaland. Nearly 200 Common Service Centres (CSCs) have been rolled out in the State. The main objective of the CSCs was to provide public and private services to citizens in their neighbourhood at an affordable cost. The SDC, SWAN and CSC are critical components of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) to create a citizen-centric and business-centric environment for governance, under about the Aadhaar scheme where each individual will have a unique identity number, it would ensure improved service delivery and more transparent, efficient and effective governance. This, along with initiatives such as electronic delivery of services would reduce corruption. q
FLORICuLTuRE SuCCESS IN TRIPuRA

poverty-stricken Tripura village has blossomed into an exporter of flowers after the villagers adopted floriculture with the assistance from Horticulture Department and Technology Mission. Three years ago, Laxmibil village, in west Tripura district was like any other, wallowing in poverty and absence of gainful work till the the Horticulture Department and Technology Mission stepped in and motivated people to start floriculture. As it stands, the village now not only supplies flowers to the home market, but also exports them abroad. The story began when an unemployed youth Swapan Paul cultivated flower plants in his field on the suggestion of the Horticulture Department officials. He was unemployed but now earns a handsome Rs 35,000 per month by selling flowers. Soon other unemployed youth were inspired by Paul and took up floriculture as a profession. Now their ranks have swelled to more than 250. The favourable agro-climatic condition of the village has also helped script the success story. Villagers are now cultivating different kinds of flowers and also experimenting with exotic varieties like Anthurium and orchids to earn good money. In the beginning various government organizations came forward with technical assistance. Now the villagers are doing it with their own efforts, an official of the Horticulture Department said. Paul said he had started with a financial assistance of Rs 3.5 lakh from the Technology Mission and constructed three hightech green-houses. Starting with cultivation of Anthurium, Gerbera and Carnation flowers he also took up orchid cultivation on a 2.5-bigha land and started getting return within one and a half years. He also cultivates Chandramallika, Rose, Gladiolus, Rajanigandha and Lilia. His flowers are sold in Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore. A Delhi-based company is now marketing a part of the production in return for 10 percent commission which fetches a good amount. q
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NGOs
ANALySiS
Response to Child Labour in India
Jayanta Mete Ajit Mondal

N INDIA, there are several temples of Bal Krishna, Bal Hanuman i.e. child God. According to Hindu Philosophy, a child is considered to be the form of God. India is better known to be the country of Dhruv, Prahlad, Lav-kush and Abhimanyu, the children possessing multifaceted talents, wisdom, intelligence, and exuberance. In spite of Indias rich heritage and culture we have more than 20 million child labourers. They constitute 36 percent of Indian population. More than 14 percent of the total child population between 5-14 years is involved in child labour. In 2001 the ILO estimated that 11.6 percent of children aged 10-14 in India are part of child labour. More than 20 million children are out of schooling system. One out of every 6 children is a victim of some sort of social evil.
Government does not have the infrastructure to reach every section of the society and particularly the millions who work and live in remote areas. NGOs can act as a bridge between hard-toreach areas and the government
Child labour is a violation of human rights and yet is considered to be a necessary evil in a developing country like India. They are working in hazardous and unhygienic Conditions in manufacturing industries. Child labour continues to be a serious problem which hampers the health and growth of child i.e. the growth of future India. D i f f e re n t F o r m s o f C h i l d Labour i. Hazardous form of child labour: It is the worst form of child labour where children carry out heavy work in utmost unhygienic, uncongenial working conditions. It has serious impact on physical and mental development of children. The work includes working in mines; cracker making industry, heavy metal industry, glass industry etc. ii. Non hazardous form of child labour : It comprises of light
The authors are Associate Professor and Research Scholar, Department of Education, University of Kalyani, West Bengal, respectively. YOJANA November 2011 41
natured work which does not affect the children. It is that form of work in which children help their parents in light form of work such as working in agriculture sector, working in food industry, restaurants, dabhas, roadside stalls etc. iii. D e b t b o n d a g e : I t i s a phenomenon in which money lenders would enslave people for nonpayment of exorbitant debts. Usually, these people were charged heavy rates of interest on debts and they were so poor that they did not have much for collateral security. Therefore, they were forced to sell themselves and their family members for paying off their debts. Most often these people used to keep their children as collateral securities. These children were forced to work relentlessly for more than 12 hours a day for peanuts. iv. Child trafficking : Trafficking in children means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation. It is the extended form of bonded labour. The victims of trafficking are forced to work in various illegal activities such as beggary, robbery, prostitution etc. It is also known as forced form of labour. v. Child abuse : Child abuse or maltreatment is all forms of physical, emotional, illtreatment, sexual abuse, neglect, negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the childs health, survival, development
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or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power. India is the home of more than 19 percent of the child abused children in the world. The victims of child abuse face lot of physical and mental deformities. Usually there are four types of maltreatment -physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse. Magnitude of Child Labour in India The problem of child labour is a global problem. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has estimated in (1998) that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in developing countries-at least 120 million on a fulltime basis. 61 percent of these are in Asia, 32 percent in Africa and 7 percent in Latin America. In Asia 22 percent of the workforce is children. In Latin America, 17 percent of the workforce is children. The proportion of child labourers varies a lot among countries and even regions inside those countries.
Table 1 : Percentage of Child Labour In Developing and Developed Countries Sl no 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Country Africa Latin America India China Pakistan Turkey Kenya Brazil Percentage of Child Labor 26.3 9.8 14.4 11.6 17.7 24 41.3 16.1
Table 1 explains that the problem of child labour is more severe in underdeveloped or developing economies. Depicted in the table, are the top eight countries with the problem of child labour. Over here we see no developed country. The problem is worst in Africa, SubSaharan region where more than 30 percent of children are inflicted by it. Although India has only 14.4 percent of total child population working as child labourers but the actual numbers are quite high. China and Latin America have the minimum percent of child labour (in this group) as both these areas are developing at a very fast pace. The 2001 Census put the number of child labourers to 12.66 percent million whereas the figure is 11.28 million as per 1991 census. Regarding percentage of total workforce, there has been a slight decrease from 5.37 to 5 percent between 1991 and 2001census. The recent round of the National Sample Survey ( NSSO) estimates suggests that the child labour in the country is around 9.07 million in 2004/2005 with a workforce participation rate of 3.4 percent (NSSO 2004 /2005). The 61st round of NSSO (2004-05) shows a declining trend compared to two earlier rounds (table 2) in the magnitude of child labour.
Table 2 : NSSO Estimate of the Magnitude of Child Labour in India, 1993-2004/05 (in millions) Year (Round) 1993-94 (50th Round) 1999-00 (55th Round) 2004-05 (61st Round) Boys Girls All 7.35 5.37 4.76 6.51 13.86 4.76 10.13 4.31 9.07
Source-ILO (2008)
Source: Derived from Respective Unit Level Records of NSS Causes of Child Labour
In a country like India where over 40 percent of the population is living in conditions of extreme poverty, child labour is a complex issue. Child labour is the cumulative effect of a number of factors. Following are some of the causes of child labour : Extreme poverty is the chief cause of child labour. The children either supplement their parents income or are the only wage earners in the family. l Child labour is deliberately created by vested interest to get cheap labour. l Low level of parental education is also an important factor in determining the incidence of child labour. l majority of parents prefer A to send their children to work rather than to school at the school-going age, primarily on account of their need for a supplementary income. l Demographic factors like size of the family also compels children to participate in the labour force. l Social forces such as low-birth seal the fate of many child labourers.
l
occupations; the hazardous occupations are identified and reviewed by the expert committee from time to time. The Act also regulates the work of children in certain other industries. However there is no specific or all encompassing prohibition on the work for children. There are sectors such as domestic service, agriculture, urban and rural informal sectors where children work in large numbers. Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 : The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act purports to abolish all debt agreements and obligations arising out of Indias longstanding bonded labour system. It frees all bonded labourers, cancels any outstanding debts against them, prohibits the creation of new bondage agreements, and orders the economic rehabilitation of freed bonded laborers by the state. The Supreme Court directions in 1996 : It gave directions for immediate identification of children in hazardous occupations and their subsequent rehabilitation, including providing appropriate education to the released children. The National Child Labour Policy 1987 : The National Child Labour Policy-1987 addresses the complex issue of child through the legislative action plan by implementing Child Labour-Act 1986 and project-based action plan in areas of high concentration of child labour. Under the project-based action plan the released children from the hazardous occupations are provided educational services in specially designed Non-formal education (NFE) centers under the centrally sponsored National
Child Labour Project (NCLP). The NCLP is currently in operation in 100 districts in 13 states, in the areas of high concentration of child labour throughout the country. Till September 2004-05, 4077 special NFE schools are in operation throughout the country, with a total enrolment of 203,850 children. Initiatives Through Five-Year Plan and Others : Allocation under NCLP through five-year plan and yearly budget allocation under all schemes on child labour have been also made for eradication of child labour.
Table 3 : Statement showing the Plan-wise allocation under NCLP Scheme Plan Period 1992-1997 (Eighth Plan) 1997-2002 (Ninth Plan) 2002-2007 (Tenth Plan) Allocation (in lakhs) 1500.00 24960.00 60200.00
Source : Ministry of Labour and Eemployment, Govt. of India.
Grant-in-aid scheme for voluntary organisations Funds under Grants-in-Aid Scheme are sanctioned directly to NGO for elimination of Child Labour in districts not covered by NCLP Scheme. Under the scheme voluntary agencies are given financial assistance by the Ministry of Labour on the recommendation of the State Government to the extent of 75 percent of the project cost for the rehabilitation of working children. Voluntary organisations have been receiving funds under the scheme since 1979-80. Currently, about 70 voluntary agencies are being assisted.
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Child Labour Elimination: Government Policy and Initiatives The Ministry of Labour at the centre and the corresponding ministry at the states are responsible for adopting constitutional, statutory and development measures, that are required to eliminate child labour. Child Labour Act 1986 : It seeks to ban employment of children working in certain hazardous
NGOs Combating Child Labour NGO movement in India has been very strong in creating pressure on government to address the social development issues and create awareness for child rights. The Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) and its partner organizations under the banner of South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) have been in the forefront for creating awareness towards child rights. The major activities of BBA and SACCS partners has been to release and withdraw children from the worst forms of labour particularly from bondage and forced labour, through direct action, secret raids, legal intervention, persuasion and pressure building while ensuring their social, psychological, economic and statutory rehabilitation through quality transitory rehabilitation measures and state efforts. Other NGOs like M.V. Foundation, Pratham, CREDA, Project Mala, CINI-ASHA and other regional NGOs have demonstrated project based approach. The main focus has been to provide educational support to out-of-school children, through bridge course/ camp schools/ non-formal schools and mainstream the children in formal schools. The case of Bandhua Mukti Morcha (BMM), Child Relief and You (CRY), Salaam Balak Trust (SBT) may also be cited here. BMM has advocated for compulsory primary education and has been able to raise awareness for education among the ex-bonded labourers, who set up a school of their own. This is a remarkable achievement. Government does not have the infrastructure to reach every section
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of the society and particularly the millions who work and live in remote areas. NGOs can act as a bridge between hard-to-reach areas and the government. What More is Required of NGOs
l NGOs should concentrate more
on the proper rehabilitation of the released child labourers. l Their focus of the work should be on children working in hazardous industries and occupations, bonded child labourers, street children, and those in the informal sectors, especially the dhaba and domestic workers. l The initiatives of NGOs should focus on the families of the child labourers as well. Among other things, the NGOs efforts should be directed towards the use of adults productively since it is because of adult unemployment that children have to work. l Education should be imparted on a much larger scale. Instead of providing an alternative system of education and creating new schools for the working children, NGOs should pressurise the government to improve and raise the standard of education of the existing government schools. l The NGOs should take care of the nutritional needs of the poor children since they are undernourished. Therefore, providing at least one full meal to the children per day should be part of their programme for children. l h e v o c a t i o n a l t r a i n i n g T imparted to the child labourers or potential child labourers should be compatible (in
terms of remuneration), to the existing income-generating activities already being done by these children. l The NGOs should provide for in their budget proposal the cost of monitoring of the projects. This is important since inadequate monitoring and follow-up of the programmes and projects undertaken, leads to creating only a temporary effect. Conclusion NGOs have an important role to play in the protection and eradication of child labour. But, they will have to adopt a different approach if they really want eradication of child labour. Firstly, they will have to interact with each other to put up a collective demand on the basis of their common approach. Secondly, they will have to lobby to pressurise the government to accept the timebound goal of banning child labour from all activities and to ratify the ILO Convention No. 138 for the purpose, which establishes that no child can be employed in any economic sector below the age designated for the completion of compulsory education and not less than 15 years. Thirdly, they will have to be vigilant about the enforcement of government regulations regarding child labour. And fourthly, they will have to join hands with other outside organisations to create a pressure group at the international level. They will have to shake away their apathy and take up the challenge boldly. Lastly NGOs must make the government realize that children are the only hope for a developing country like India. q
(E-mail: mondalajit.edn@gmail.com jayanta_@135@yahoo.co.in) YOJANA November 2011
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YE-182/2011
BEST PRACTiCES
A Human Approach to Stave off Hunger
Amrendra Suman
The response in Jharkhand has been humanistic, driven by the felt need on the ground and taking steps to mitigate what is simply unacceptable
UKAL HANSDAK from Bhairavpur village, in the panchayat with the same name, Dumka district, Jharkhand has been pulling a rickshaw for last 30 years to keep himself and his family going. Asked how much he earns in a day, he answers Between Rs.100-150 .The next logical question is Is this enough? According to Sukal I give Rs.25-40 as rent to the rickshaw owner for the day. That leaves anything between Rs.75-125. He spends Rs.20-30 on his own food which leaves precious little for other household expenses.
on the edge are feeling a little less burdened since the Mukhyamantri Dal-Bhaat Yojana started operating from August 15 this year. Now just for Rs.5/- they can have a full mid-day meal. This frees up the money that he necessarily needed to use for his own food. Sukals relief and joy finds an echo across Jharkhands villages, amongst a wide cross-section of people, who struggle to earn a meagre wage within the rural economy. The region falls within the Santhal belt, predominantly tribal. In Nakti village on the Kathikund Road, the men mostly go to work as daily labour on private construction sites or in brick kilns or pulling rickshaws and selling items on Thelas or handcarts. The women also work to make ends meet. They work not only as agricultural labourers, but also as domestic help in rich households. The going is tough and the rising inflation does not stop at
Handsak like many others in the village go to nearby towns to ply their rickshaws, to work on construction sites and sell wares on thelas to eke out a living. For all practical purposes, notwithstanding the definitions of poverty, they are poor. Rising food expenses is a killer and this is where innovative measures by the state government have been a boon. People who live
46
the doorsteps of the poor, in fact makes their struggle for survival even more acute. This is why the government needs to step in to provide a shield, to protect them from one of the most fundamental forms of deprivation and want hunger. While the ambitious Food Security Bill is being thrashed out at the national level, in keeping with this essence, in Jharkhand, steps to mitigate this scourge are under way. Village women Mangal Turi, Phagu Besra and Santosh Harijan, applaud the move. The Dal-Bhaat Yojana is nothing less than manna from heaven, helping them to not only stave off hunger but also save the precious amount being spent on food. Vishnu Dehri of Nanku Kuruva, Behrabak Panchayat, says Amidst the rising costs of food, with rates of dal, oil, spices, potatoes, onion and salt increasing at a fast pace we were really feeling the pinch Now people like us who are poor and were finding it difficult to keep pace with inflation to meet their food costs are getting Dal-rice, vegetable and Chatni in just Rs.5/-! Isnt that incredible? This is indeed the human face of poverty alleviation. Rather than get bogged down by figures, by definitions of various committees or by the Planning Commission, the state government has responded to a crying need of a large section of people who are very obviously poor. Agricultural labourers, rickshaw pullers, handcart pullers, people working in unorganized sector, those who go to towns and the cities every day. These are the beneficiaries in Jharkhand.
The challenges of development in this relatively new state carved out of Bihar in November 2000, have been immense. A region full of mineral and natural resources, with a high percentage of tribal population, it was crucial to cater to the needs of the poor people, tribal and non-tribal, both with their own unique life-styles and livelihood patterns. Essentially run by the Department of Food, Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs, these attract milling crowds at centers which are typically housed in public institutions like hospitals, health care centers, a Public Welfare Council amongst others. Agreed this is a populist scheme, but what is important is that it is catering to the core needs of the marginalised and vulnerable amongst rural society. According to Ramesh Kumar Chaudhri, president of a village labour union in Kuruwa This scheme meant for the economically weaker sections is a major milestone for the government. Says Chaudhri, I have seen such a scheme for the first time. In Bihar I have heard of a scheme under which cheap Roti are provided which lessen the cost of food for the poor Still the scheme needs to be broadened, systemized in order to benefit the largest number of deserving people. At present, each centre caters to around 400 people which are a drop in the ocean. A programme such as this needs to have its scope wide-open so that no-one who is deserving is turned away. This is unfortunately not so and the net is quite restricted. Ehtasham Ahmad, Union leader
and secretary of Jharkhand Local Bodys Employees Federation says Such schemes should be started in all the blocks of the state to reach the maximum number of people living in far flung rural areas and they come for employment in the towns. According to Ahmad Having only 5-7 centre for such a huge population is like giving a crying child a Jhunjhuna ( a rattle) instead of something to eat. As if in response to this need, the state government has decided to open these food-centres at the block level beginning this Gandhi Jayanti. This would widen the network to a great degree. Kamlakant Sinha, senior JDU leader and ex-MLA, believes that such schemes will help the poor for sure but these schemes should be regular. Often we see that various governments start such popular schemes but it dies its own death in a few months. The government should have a definite budget for such schemes, he said. The justification and indeed the raison detre of such a scheme lies not in political expediencies but in responding to basic needs of a section of rural population that lives on the margins. The response in Jharkhand has been humanistic, driven by the felt need on the ground and taking steps to mitigate what is simply unacceptable. Yet such an impetus needs a policy framework, not merely to function but to sustain. Hopefully, the government will continue to show sagacity and sensitivity in overcoming hunger. q Charkha Features
(E-mail: charkha@bol.net.in) 47
NGOs
OPiNiON
Utility and Governance Challenges Facing the NGO Sector

Shekhar Chandra
Voluntary sector urgently needs self-regulatory guidelines and transparency mechanisms to increase the trust and awareness as to how the philanthropic funds are being utilised
ON-GOVERNMENTAL organization, or NGO, is a legally constituted organization started by natural and legal persons operating independently from any government. The term has been originated from the United Nations (UN), referring to organizations that do not form part of the government and are not conventional for profit business. The cases in which NGOs are funded totally or partially by governments, the NGO maintains its non-governmental status by excluding government representatives from membership in the organization.
They are self-governing, i.e., not controlled by Government and (d) They are registered organizations or informal groups, with defined aims and objectives. H o w e v e r , b r o a d l y, t h e term NGO could be applied to any non-profit organization which is independent from government. NGOs are typically value-based organizations which depend, in whole or in part, on charitable donations and voluntary service. Although the NGO sector has become increasingly professional over the last two decades, principles of altruism and voluntarism remain its key defining characteristics. The term is usually applied only to organizations pursuing some broader social aim that has political aspects, but that are not overtly political organizations such as political parties. Unlike the term intergovernmental organization, the term non-governmental organization has no generally agreed legal definition.
According to the Planning Commission of India, to be covered under the National Policy on Voluntary Sector, 2007, NGOs should broadly have the following characteristics (a) They are private, i.e., separate from Government (b) They do not return profits generated to their owners or directors (c)
The author is working with the Planning Commission, New Delhi. The author acknowledges the comments of Mr. B.K. Chaturvedi, Member, Planning Commission. 48 YOJANA November 2011
NGO Sector in India NGOs in India are engaged in a wide range of activities. The same NGO may be involved in multiple areas of operation. Micro-credit is one of the most common and increasingly popular type of operation of NGOs, not only because of its outreach to the poor, especially women, but also for the reason that it has also become a legally endorsed income generating activity helping development and sustainability of the NGOs themselves. Other popular programmes include education, health, family planning, environment, human rights, women and children welfare, etc. The number of internationally operating NGOs is estimated to be 40,000. National numbers are even higher. In India, since the Fifth Five Year Plan recognised non-government organisations (NGOs) as an alternative tool to development, a number of them have sprouted up all over the country. India currently is estimated to have around 3.3 million NGOs in year 2009, which is one NGO for less than 400 Indians, and many times the number of primary schools and primary health centres in India. For effective implementation of Government programme, monitoring and internal-auditing are two integral components. The NGO sector has contributed significantly to finding innovative solutions to poverty, deprivation, discrimination and exclusion, through means such as awareness raising, social mobilization, service delivery, training, research, and advocacy. The voluntary sector has been serving as an effective non-political link between the people and the Government. Peoples participation in the process aids effective
implementation to achieve stated objectives of the programme. Strengthening Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), and organizations run by people who are articulate might further help. With the help of NGOs, quite often implementation of programs is possible in a cost-effective manner in areas where government machinery is inadequate. Pratham is one of the largest non governmental organisation working to provide quality education to the underprivileged children of India. It has been doing commendable work in providing the assessment of elementary education in the country. It annually publishes report (ASER) on assessment of elementary education in India. ASER (meaning impact in Hindi) is the largest household survey undertaken in India by people outside the government. It measures the enrolment as well as the reading and arithmetic levels of children in the age group of 6-14 years. Prayas, another leading NGO of the country has been doing excellent work in the power sector, with its two main themes (1) Energy Regulation & Governance and (2) Energy Policy for Sustainable Development. Both themes involve analysis, innovation, outreach, intervention and advocacy at state and national levels. Similarly, many NGOs have been doing excellent work in the drought prone areas of Bundelkhand region in the field of animal husbandry by helping out people securing alternative sources of livelihood. Key governance challenges In view of the emergence of a new paradigm of scaling up, in which NGOs are seen as catalysts of policy innovations and social capital; as creators of programmatic knowledge that can be spun off and integrated into government
and market institutions; and as builders of vibrant and diverse civil societies, its imperative to critically analyze the role of NGOs in the process of development and understanding the challenges facing the Sector. Transparency and accountability are key ingredients of Governance in the NGO Sector as these determine operational efficiencies and risk mitigation. Over the years, corporate sector has been able to recognize and implement best governance practices through appropriate institutional framework. However, the NGO sector is yet to evolve any institutionalized framework, which could potentially play an important role in overall development of the nation. NGOs play an increasingly active role in todays political and social arenas. Civil society organizations are increasing in number all over India. Of late, some of the local and national NGOs have been found involved in malpractices and acting irresponsibly, thus undermining the credibility of civil society. Its a huge concern and poses a great challenge to the development movement spearheaded by NGOs in the country. There is a huge flow of funds into the non government organization sector and this requires prudence and good practices to maintain accountability and transparency to the benefit of all stakeholders. Although, NGOs do internal auditing but for more accountability and transparency, it is advisable to go through external auditing also, especially where public funds are involved. Hence, issues of internal control mechanisms, professionalism, accountability, transparency and financial management must be given impetus. The challenge is multidimensional, and is compounded by the
49
unorganised nature of the sector, lack of regulatory frameworks and the fact that India boasts of more than a million NGOs of different roles, structures and sizes. I n p a r t i c u l a r, t h e I n d i a n voluntary sector urgently needs self-regulatory guidelines and transparency mechanisms to increase the trust and awareness as to how the philanthropic funds are being utilised. This is a critical challenge that creates a barrier to raising funds and capital for the sector. The general lack of transparency in the functioning of a large proportion of NGOs leads to aversion in donating funds for charitable causes since the general public is largely cynical about the genuineness of the non-profit spirit of the sector. The stringent governance standards of an NGO will facilitate the effective management and increase the accountability to its stakeholders including donors, the government and the community. It is in the self-interest of the NGOs to realize the fact that to implement a structure of corporate governance principles would provide the real value to the stakeholders. Also, this would enable to track the potentially dubious sources of funding coming in for the voluntary sector an aspect which has gained impetus in the wake of the increased number of terror attacks and extremist activities. Recently, this Union Home Ministry has identified some NGOs as security threat to the country. Such security considerations have underscored the rising need of improving the governance practices in the Indian NGOs and exercising better regulatory mechanisms, disclosure norms, and management processes including financial management and budgeting systems as well. Moreover, in the larger interest going
50
beyond the security considerations, the impetus has to be on inculcating a culture of including performance goals, conducting financial and performance audits, and reforms for increasing the operational accountability and transparency in the eyes of the public, volunteers, donors and other stakeholders. Suggestions and Conclusion
l
status to charitable projects under the Income Tax Act. At the same time, the Government might consider tightening administrative and penal procedures to ensure that these incentives are not misused by paper charities for private financial gain.
l The
The implementation of a strategic framework is essentially important in the management of an NGO. The endorsement of such a framework brings in professionalism and internal control mechanisms, which further makes the organizations performance more effective. Developing strategies also include establishing a mechanism of consistent monitoring of whether they are being implemented and linking the results to the organizations goals. need to bolster public confidence in the voluntary sector by opening it up to greater public scrutiny. The Government will encourage Central and State level agencies to introduce norms for filing basic documents in respect of NGOs, which have been receiving funding by Government agencies and placing them in the public domain (with easy access through the internet) in order to inculcate a spirit of public oversight. source of funds for the NGO sector and one that can and must increase substantially. Tax incentives play a positive role in this process.The Government could simplify and streamline the system for granting income tax exemption
Government should encourage all relevant Central and State Government agencies to introduce pre-service and in-service training modules on constructive relations with the voluntary sector. Such agencies need to introduce time bound procedures for dealing with the VOs. These could cover registration, income tax clearances, financial assistance, etc. There must be a formal systems for registering complaints and for redressing grievances of NGOs. Government should encourage setting up of Joint Consultative Groups / Forums or Joint Machineries of government and voluntary sector representatives, by relevant Central Departments and State Governments. It also needs to encourage district administrations, district planning bodies, district rural development agencies, zilla parishads and local governments to do so. These groups could be permanent forums with the explicit mandate to share ideas, views and information and to identify opportunities and mechanisms of working together. The Government also might introduce suitable mechanisms for involving a wide cross-section of the voluntary sector in these Groups/ q Forums.
(E-mail: cshekh@gmail.com) YOJANA November 2011
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J&K WiNDOW
HIGHEST NuMBER OF TOuRIST ARRIVALS IN THE VALLEY
ashmir has surpassed last year's tourist count of 7.38 lakh, and the state Tourism Department's tally shows both Indians and foreigners have given the Valley a thumbs up despite fears about security. From a few thousand foreigners visiting Kashmir, the figure jumped to 22,000 with an unprecedented 10.73 lakh tourists having visited the Valley till September 30 this year and this is believed to be the highest number of tourist arrivals in the past 25 years.
Ladakh and Amarnath have benefited as well. At 1.48 lakh tourists, Ladakh's footfall doubled this year. The number of Amarnath yatris is at a high of 6.35 lakh a jump of 2 lakh from last year. With peace prevailing in Kashmir, tourism has got a boost in the Valley. Director of Tourism in Kashmir Farooq A Shah said, "This is the highest number of tourist arrivals recorded in the last 25 years. It has been a very good season for us. But Kashmir's potential is unparalleled and we hope to do more work." Hotel and Restaurant Association of Katra's senior vicepresident Rakesh Wazir endorsed the tourist season's success. He said he expected the number of pilgrims arriving at Mata Vaishno Devi shrine to increase further from the current 75 lakh estimated by the tourism department. "There has been a lot of improvement in infrastructure and with the (new) rail link we are sure to cross the 1 crore mark by 2012," he said. A peaceful season has meant a booming economy for locals after unrest in the Valley and the tragic cloudburst in Leh last year. The state government is advocating against travel advisories issued by some countries, pointing to the vote of confidence tourists have delivered. The Union Tourism Ministry had in recent years launched an advertisement campaign, with J&K as a special focus. State officials and political representatives have also made their presence felt in the international market through trade fairs and other initiatives. q
FRuIT PRODuCTION IN JAMMu AND KASHMIR

he Jammu and Kashmir Government has submitted a comprehensive Rs 50 crore plan to the Centre for revival of various sick horticulture grading centre across the state due to long turmoil. The Government has taken multi dimensional initiatives to boost horticulture industry, 22 fruit and vegetable Mandies having established across the State. Of these, 11 mandies were upgraded during last two years which include fruit Mandies at Sopore, Narwal Jammu, Shopian, Chari-Sharief, Handwara, Kupwara, Baramulla. Under the Technology Mission main thrust is on horticulture expansion. The Government is promoting private sector for developing post harvest management facilities like grading and packaging centres and Compressed Atmosphere Stores (CA) and two such units have already come up at Industrial Growth Centres, Lassipora and other three Units are in pipeline. Due to concerted efforts of the Horticulture Department, the fruit production has increased from 13 lakh MTs in 2008-09 to 22.5 lakh Mts in 2009-10. The fruit production this year is expected to be at 40 lakh MTs. The State has won the prestigious Leadership Award in the country in the horticulture sector.
52

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November 2011

Chief Editor : Rina Sonowal Kouli Editor : Manogyan R. Pal

Let noble thoughts come to us from every side

YOJANA November 2011

YOJANA November 2011

About the Issue

YOJANA November 2011

YOJANA November 2011

A Commitment to the Voluntary Sector

Role of NGOs in India

YOJANA November 2011

Non Governmental Organizations in India

Jomon Mathew Joby Verghese

The World Bank has identified two main categories of NGOs

Role of NGOs in Rural Development

N Chatterjee Mohd Ashraf Dar

l act as a conduit for transfer To

opportunities for people with disabilities in rural areas.

Multipurpose Food Processing Machine

Non Governmental Organizations and the Ageing in India

The author is Chief Executive, HelpAge India. 24 YOJANA November 2011

YOJANA November 2011

Migration of the young to places far away from their original

and social networks resulting in self-imposed social exclusion,

NGOs in the Healthcare Sector

The author is a Senior Journalist based in Delhi. 29

December 2011 & January 2012

YOJANA November 2011

PRAGATI CENTER FOR IAS

YOJANA November 2011

Reforming Governance in India Today

Future of Voluntary Organizations in India

WHY PURI SIRS CLASSES

Batch Starting from : 17th Nov, 2011

PRELIMS GENERAL STUDIES-PAPER II

Batch Starting from : 10th Nov. 2011

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For Details Contact

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E-mail: visionindiaias@gmail.com, Website: www.visionindiaias.com

NORTh EAST DiARy

FLORICuLTuRE SuCCESS IN TRIPuRA

YOJANA November 2011

Response to Child Labour in India

Jayanta Mete Ajit Mondal

YOJANA November 2011

Source : Ministry of Labour and Eemployment, Govt. of India.

YOJANA November 2011

A Human Approach to Stave off Hunger

Utility and Governance Challenges Facing the NGO Sector

l Public donation is an important

Passionate about your success.....

It pays to study with specialists

General Studies, CSAT, Public Administration, Psychology

P.O.D Technique for General Studies Preparation

We do not claim your success we want to be party to your hard work

YOJANA November 2011

FRuIT PRODuCTION IN JAMMu AND KASHMIR

YOJANA November 2011

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