Role of Voluntary Organisation in Promoting Participation in Development

Submitted to: Mr. Ajesh P. Joseph, School of Social Work, Marian College, Kuttikkanam. Submitted by: Bimal Antony, II MSW, No. 111, School of Social Work, Marian College, Kuttikkanam. Date of Submission: 29th August 2011.

Voluntary Organisation and Development

Introduction
Non-Governmental organisations or NGOs in brief, have been engaged in many social development activities. They are organised by a group of people who feel that they have a moral duty to serve the community. They are organised on a voluntary basis on the principle of service to the socially disadvantaged classes. Their efforts supplement those of the government. Also, they can take up many activities, like organising the poor, which the government bureaucracy is not generally capable of taking up. In the developing countries as well as in the least developed countries, the role of NGOs in development activities is being increasingly emphasised in such fields as child and womans development, slums improvement, poverty amelioration, environmental conservation, educational development and political movements. The success of the Rural Development depends upon the active participation and willing cooperation of the rural people through self-help organizations and voluntary agencies. In recent years, the voluntary agencies have acquired greater importance and significance than before. Voluntary action stimulated and promoted by voluntary agencies engaged in development play a significant role at the grass roots level in the Indian social milieu; The NGOs and Government Departments are also struggling hard to organize the people through social mobilization process for eliciting their participation in the successful implementation of the development programmes. Some have succeeded in the process and some are still struggling in progressive direction. Also, the guidelines issued by the Government of India on SGSY, strongly emphasized the need for social mobilization for the successful implementation of the SGSY scheme through effective and innovative role of NGOs.

Role of NGOs in five years plans

After Independence, India was declared as a welfare state and relevant provisions were included in the Constitution of India. Social welfare was included as part of the Five Year Plans. The major responsibility of organizing social welfare services continued with the voluntary organizations. Hence, even today it is the voluntary organizations that are taking care of welfare activities (Basanta Kumar - 1995). The voluntary sector has been given due importance in the planning process right from the First Five Year Plan, as emphasis was given on public cooperation in national development with the help of VOs. It was highlighted in the First Plan document that the Public cooperation and public opinion constitute the principal force and sanction behind planning. A democracy working for social ends has to base itself on the willing assent of the people and not the coercive power of the State. In the Second Plan, it was reiterated that public cooperation and public opinion constitute the principal force and sanction behind Indias approach to planning. It was observed that wherever the people, especially in rural areas, have been approached, they have responded with eagerness. In national extension and community project areas, in local development works,

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in shramdan, in social welfare extension projects and in the work of voluntary organisations, there has always been willingness and enthusiasm on the part of the people to contribute in labour and local resources have been made freely available. The Third Five Year Plan emphasised that The concept of public cooperation is related to the much larger sphere of voluntary action in which the initiative and organisational responsibility rest completely with the people and their leaders, and does not rely on legal sanctions or the power of the State for achieving its aims. It was realised that so vast are the unsatisfied needs of the people that all the investments in the public and private sectors together can only make a limited provision for them. Properly organised voluntary effort may go for towards augmenting the facilities available to the community for helping the weakest to a somewhat better life. The wherewithal for this has to come from time, energy and other resources of millions of people for whom VOs can find constructive channels suited to the varying conditions in the country. During the Fourth and Fifth Plan, the thrust on public cooperation and involvement of peoples organisation was lost due to attack on over territory and recession that followed. During this period investment was focussed especially in intensive agricultural programmes. In the Sixth Five Year Plan, the idea of participation of peoples organisations was again recognised. Success stories in the field, of VOs like the Jamkhed Project on child and health care in Maharashtra, Bharat Agro Industries Foundations work in animal husbandry and social forestry and Self-Employed Womens Association (SEWA) were quoted and it was stated that the country is dotted with numerous examples of highly successful voluntary action of this nature. Role of VOs in development got a further fillip in the Seventh Five Year Plan where it was declared that serious efforts would be made to involve VOs in various development programmes to supplement the government efforts to offer the rural poor choices and alternatives. The emphasis continued till the ongoing Ninth Plan, wherein efforts are being made to promote peoples participatory bodies like Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), Self-help Groups and NGOs for development. The following criteria were identified for identifying voluntary agencies for enlisting help in relation to the rural development programmes: (i) The organisation should be a legal entity. (ii) It should be based in a rural area and be working there for a minimum of three years. (iii) It should have broad-based objectives serving the social and economic needs of the community as a whole and mainly the weaker sections. It must not work for profit but on 'no profit and no loss basis'. (iv) Its activities should be open to all citizens of India irrespective of religion, caste, creed, sex or race.

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(v) It should have the necessary flexibility, professional competence and organisational skills to implement programmes. (vi) Its office bearers should not be elected members of any political party. (vii) It declares that it will adopt constitutional and non-violent means for rural development purposes. (viii) It is committed to secular and democratic concepts and methods of functioning. In the Eight Plan Document, due emphasis was given on building up people's institutions. It was admitted that developmental activities undertaken with people's active participation have a greater chance of success and can also be more cost-effective as compared to the development activities undertaken by the Government where people become passive observers. In the Ninth Five Year Plan, it was admitted that private initiative, whether individual collective or community based, forms the essence the development strategy articulated in the Plan and efforts to be made to remove disadvantages which had prevented some segment of our society in participating effectively in the development process. Keeping up with this line of thinking, promoting and developing peoples participatory bodies like Panchayati Raj Institutions, cooperatives and self-help groups was one of the objectives of the Ninth Plan. Certain disadvantages or shortcomings of voluntary sector are also well known, namely, their inability to cooperate with each other in a way which would allow for coherent policy making, their accountability & transparency is not perfect and their operations are smaller in scale. Therefore, there is a need to improvise the working of VOs by scaling up their operations and by making them transparent and accountable.

Role of NGOs in Social Mobilization

In recent times, many Non Governmental organisations have been concentrating social mobilization on contemporary issues of importance such as women empowerment, human rights, and implementation of various central and state government development programmes. The NGOs in India have contributed handsomely towards social mobilization and social activism through their intensive campaigns, peoples mobilization programmes and effective networks. The NGO as a social force facilitates collective action and people mobilization for the purpose of achieving the desired objectives. The NGOs are deploying various people-oriented as well as people-centered strategies, and these organizations build rapport with the people and mobilize them. The NGOs play in making the people environmentally aware and sensitive to take part in the development process (Biswambhar Panda et.al -2003).

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Social mobilization and development process

There is a symbiotic relationship between social mobilization and development process. Social mobilization lies at the genuine development. It gives impetus to the necessary changes that must occur before development whether social, political or economic-can be realized (Prasad 2003). Social mobilization, argues Ikoiwak (1989), in fact, is an essential surgical operation for the removal or virulent tissues of development in a polity. These malignant tissues are old or traditional economic, social, institutional, administrative, cultural system. Social mobilization is methodologies for making the poor contribute to economic growth. Rana (2001) is of the opinion that social mobilization provides a non-violent way of the morass of deprivation, alienation, insecurity, political graft, and corruption experienced relentlessly over the past fifty years of development and democracy. Deutsch (1961) states that social mobilization is a name given to an overall process of change that happens to sustainable parts of human population in countries that are moving from traditional to modern ways of life. This specific process of change, he says, affects residence, occupation, social setting, associates, institutions, roles and ways of acting, demands and capabilities. Later, Deutsch gave a rather short hand definition of his concept of social mobilization as the process in which major clusters of old social, economic, and psychological commitments are eroded or broken and people become available for new patterns of socializations and behaviour. Jarry Gana (1987) argues, Social Mobilization is the process of pooling together, harnessing, actualizing and utilizing potential human resources for the purpose of development. It is process whereby human beings are made aware of the resources at their disposal, and are also motivated and energized to collectively utilize such resources for the improvement of their spiritual and material conditions of living.

Role of Voluntary Organizations in Social Capital

opportunity for face-to-face interaction provided by participation in voluntary organizations not only teaches essential civics skills, such as trust, compromise and reciprocity, but also binds society together by creating bridges between diverse groups (de Tocqueville, as summarized by Newton, 1997). These bridges are viewed as difficult to create because they necessitate people going outside their social circles (Wuthnow, 2002). Leonard and Onyx (2003) explore the role of strong and weak ties in the context of voluntary organizations. Their qualitative study was conducted in three different communities in New South Wales with respondents who had some association with community or voluntary organizations. The conventional wisdom is that strong ties are associated with bonding and weak ties are associated with bridging, but Leonard and Onyxs findings do not support this conclusion. Their analysis indicates that bridging social capital associated with voluntary organizations is in fact dependent on strong, not weak ties. It is more likely that two different

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networks will link if they can work through a trusted intermediary. Bridging using loose ties is only possible when the linking person is a professional who is trusted because his/her status provides legitimacy and credibility, and he/she has demonstrated commitment. Newton (1997) suggests that the impact of voluntary organizations on social capital depends on the type of organization. For example, highly formalized bureaucratic organizations may have less impact because there is not much involvement of members in the daily activities. Instead members pay a fee to access services or benefits or maintain a symbolic attachment to the organization because of its support of a particular social cause. This research highlights the role of face-to-face organizational involvement in the development of trust. There is also a question of the relative importance of voluntary organizations compared to other societal structures promoting social capital. Marsden and Campbell (1983) found that emotional intensity is a better indicator of tie strength than duration and frequency of contact. Thus, when considering the importance of voluntary organizations as the glue that holds society together, it may be that participation in school, family work and community may have stronger internal effects because they take up more time and involve stronger emotional commitment (Newton, 1997). Onyx and Bullen (2000) would agree that voluntary organizations do not have a monopoly on the development of social capital. Their research indicates that social capital can be produced anywhere there are dense lateral networks involving voluntary engagement, trust and mutual benefit. While voluntary organizations are important so are informal networking among friends and neighbours, the workplace and the educational system.

Conclusion
Voluntary organizations can play a crucial role in rural development by supplementing Government efforts as they are close to the mind and hearts of the rural people. In the changing scenario of the liberalization they can experiment new approaches to rural development and self employment training. Now a days, there is huge investment by voluntary organization in rural development and self employment training in rural area. Here, there is scope for researchers to measure efficiency of fund utilization by the voluntary organizations in contrast to the Government. There is need to evaluate voluntary organizations owing to their changed role. Efficiency measure would help us to evolve an appropriate auditing / accounting model for voluntary sector.

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Voluntary Organisation and Development

References
1. Mary Foster, Agnes Meinhard, Ida Berger (2003), The Role of Social Capital: Bridging, Bonding or Both?, Ryerson University, Working Paper Series, Number 22, November 2003, Toronto. 2. Steve Davies (2009), GOVERNMENT POLICY, RECESSION VOLUNTARY SECTOR, A report for UNISON, Cardiff University: UK. 3. Non-Government Organisations, IGNOU: Delhi. 4. Jayavantha Nayak (2004), Role of Voluntary Agencies in Rural Development and Self Employment Training. 5. Dr. C. Villia, Study on The Role of NGOs in Social Mobilizations in the Context of SGSY, State Institute of Rural Development: Maraimalai Nagar. 6. REPORT OF THE STEERING COMMITTEE ON VOLUNTARY SECTOR (2002), PLANNING COMMISSION GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 7. Alan F. Fowler (1995), STRENGTHENING THE ROLE OF VOLUNTARY DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATIONS: POLICY ISSUES FACING OFFICIAL AID AGENCIES, The Synergos Institute and the Overseas Development Council: New York AND THE

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