Role of NGOs in India

Role of NGOs in India

NGOs can and should play the “game changer” to pro-poor development through leadership on participatory research, community empowerment and search for development alternatives

 

In 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, citizen’s 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.

Defining Non-Government Organisations

In its most general usage, civil society refers to all voluntarily 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, neighbourhood, 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.

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A COMMITMENT TO VOLUNTARY SECTOR

The National Policy on the Voluntary Sector is a testament of our commitment to encourage, enable and empower an independent and effective voluntary sector

As Member responsible for Voluntary Action 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.

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.

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UID Technology System

UID Technology System

Besides the social benefits, the technology benefits to the Government sector could be manifold. The UID Technology would enable creation of an e-governance cloud platform to be shared by central and state governments

Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has been created by the Government of India as an attached office under the Planning Commission. Its role is to develop and implement the necessary institutional, technical and legal infrastructure to issue Unique Identity numbers to Indian residents. UIDAI has adopted the name Aadhaar for the 12-digit unique number which it will issue for all residents. The number will be stored in a centralized database and will be linked to the basic demographics and biometric information – photograph, ten fingerprints and iris – of each individual. The features of the Aadhaar will be that this number will only provide identity and prove identity not citizenship, and facilitate enrolment of residents with proper verification and adoption of a partnership model. The UIDAI will be the regulatory authority managing a Central ID Repository (CIDR), which will issue UID numbers, update resident information and authenticate the identity of the residents as required.

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Aadhaar Number in India

The Possibilities of Aadhaar Number

The Aadhaar number is a powerful tool as governments move to more individual-oriented programs. It is an identification infrastructure available to every resident in India, including infants

Economic growth is not an end in itself; its power lies in the ability it gives us, the financial wherewithal to address the many problems that a developing country faces. Governments in India have accordingly, with economic growth, implemented new social programs and safety nets that tackle our poverty, health and education challenges. The ambitions of these programs however, have been marred by challenges in execution, and a significant one has been the lack of clear identification and targeting of individual beneficiaries.

The problems of identification bog down millions of people in India across communities and in different situations. Rural women for example, face difficulties in accessing social benefits and employment, especially if they are not part of a household; most benefits and programs, as well as identity mechanisms are linked to households, and single women or widows are excluded as a result. Backward communities and tribal groups similarly find themselves caught in a cycle of exclusion, where the lack of one service cuts off identification documents and consequently access to other services, such as when the inability to get a ration card also means difficulty in opening a bank account.

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Juvenile Justice System in India

Juvenile Justice System in India

The state guarantees special treatment to them through statutory law. However, in practice, they often get victimized by legal and procedural entanglements

The emergence of the concept of juvenile justice in India owes much to the developments that have taken place in western countries, especially in the perception of children and human rights jurisprudence in Europe and America. The Apprentices Act, 1850 was the first legislation that laid the foundation of juvenile justice system in the country. The concept consequently gained momentum with the enactment of the Indian Penal Code (1860), Reformatory Schools Act (1897), Code of Criminal Procedure (1898) and recommendations made by the Indian Jail Committee (1919-1920), which categorically mentioned that the child offender should be treated differently from an adult offender. It also held that imprisonment of child offenders should be prohibited and recommended for provision of reformatory schools and constitution of children’s courts with procedures ‘as informal and elastic as possible’. The Committee also drew attention to the desirability of making provisions and special enactment for children who had not committed crime so far, but could do so in the near future on account of living in criminal or inhuman surroundings or those without proper guardians or homes.

The Madras Children Act 1920 was the first Children Act to be enacted, closely followed by Bengal and Bombay in 1922 and 1924, respectively. Later, many more states enacted their own Children Acts, covering within their sphere two categories of children, viz., (i) delinquent children, and (ii) destitute and neglected children. Both these categories of children were to be handled by the juvenile courts. They were to be kept in remand homes and certified schools or released on probation, with a possibility of imprisonment when the nature of offence was serious and the character of the offender so depraved as to justify imprisonment (Ved Kumari: 2004). During this period, by and large, the “welfare” approach was adopted for children – whether delinquent, destitute or neglected.

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Reducing GHG Emissions : The Kyoto Mechanisms

Reducing GHG Emissions : The Kyoto Mechanisms

The Kyoto Protocol has put in place three flexibility mechanisms to reduce emission of Green House Gases. Although the Protocol places maximum responsibility of reducing emissions on the developed countries by committing them to specific emission targets, the three mechanisms are based on the premise that reduction of emissions in any part of the globe will have the same desired effect on the atmosphere, and also that some developed countries might find it easier and more cost effective to support emissions reductions in other developed or developing countries rather than at home. These mechanisms thus provide flexibility to the Annexure I countries, helping them to meet their emission reduction obligations. Let us take a look at what these mechanisms are.

What are the three flexibility mechanisms put in place by the Kyoto Protocol for reducing GHG emissions ?

The three mechanisms are Joint Implementation, Emissions Trading and Clean Development Mechanism.

What is Joint Implementation?

Through the Joint Implementation, any Annex I country can invest in emission reduction projects (referred to as "Joint Implementation Projects") in any other Annex I country as an alternative to reducing emissions domestically. Two early examples are change from a wet to a dry process at a Ukraine cement works, reducing energy consumption by 53 percent by 2008-2012; and rehabilitation of a Bulgarian hydropower project, with a 267,000 ton reduction of CO2 equivalent during 2008- 012.

What is Clean Development Mechanism ?

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows a developed country with an emission reduction or emission-limitation commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to implement an emission reduction project in developing countries as an alternative to more expensive emission reductions in their own countries. In exchange for the amount of reduction in emission thus achieved, the investing country

gets Carbon Credits which it can offset against its Kyoto targets. The developing country gains a step towards sustainable development.

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Human Rights Protection

PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN INDIA

What was the first global expression of Human Rights ?

The first global expression of human rights came in 1948, just after the second world war, in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly. The declaration recognizes that human beings are inherently entitled to certain rights; justice and peace in the world can be established only if the human dignity of all people is respected, and disregard for the same outrages the conscience of mankind. The declaration recognizes freedom of speech, belief, freedom from fear and from want as the highest aspiration of people. The declaration consists of 30 articles which have been elaborated in subsequent international treaties, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions and laws. The International Bill of Human Rights which consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its two Protocols, took on the force of international law in 1976. Subsequently, the Vienna Declaration and Plan of action were adopted in 1993. This declaration established the interdependence of democracy, economic development, and human rights; brought in the concept of rights being indivisible, interdependent, and inter-related and led to the creation of the post of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights . India is also a signatory to the Vienna declaration.

What is the main framework for protecting human rights in India ?

The main framework for protecting human rights in India is provided by the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. This has been enacted pursuant to the directive under Article 51 of the Constitution and also the commitments taken at the Vienna conference. It defines human right as the right relating to liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the Indian constitution as embodied in the fundamental rights and the International covenants (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on the 16th December, 1966), and enforceable by courts in India.

The Act provides for the constitution of a National Human Rights Commission, State Human Rights Commission in States and Human Rights Courts for better protection of human rights and for matters connected therewith. 

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Tribal Development Approach

Tribal Neglect and Limitations of Budget-centric Approach to Development

 

In addition to spending budgets, we need to give equal importance to non-monetary issues such as institutions, laws, and policies

  

It is well established that the central region of India, despite being resource rich, inhabits the poorest people who have not benefited from social and economic development to the same extent as people in other regions have, and in many cases have actually been harmed from displacement that growth entails. From the viewpoint of policy, it is important to understand that tribal communities are vulnerable not only because they are poor, assetless and illiterate compared to the general population; often their distinct vulnerability arises from their inability to negotiate and cope with the consequences of their forced integration with the mainstream economy, society, cultural and political system, from which they were historically protected as the result of their relative isolation. Post-independence, the requirements of planned development brought with them the spectre of dams, mines, industries and roads on tribal lands. With these came the concomitant processes of displacement, both literal and metaphorical — as tribal institutions and practices were forced into uneasy existence with or gave way to market or formal state institutions (most significantly, in the legal sphere), tribal peoples found themselves at a profound disadvantage with respect to the influx of better-equipped outsiders into tribal areas. The repercussions for the already fragile socio-economic livelihood base of the tribals were devastating — ranging from loss of livelihoods, land alienation on a vast scale, to hereditary bondage.  

As tribal people in India perilously, sometimes hopelessly, grapple with these tragic consequences, the small clutch of bureaucratic programmes have done little to assist the precipitous pauperisation, exploitation and disintegration of these communities. Tribal people respond occasionally with anger and assertion, but often also in anomie and despair, because the following persistent problems have by and large remained unattended to:  

-Land alienation
-Indebtedness
-Relation with forests, and government monopoly over MFPs, and non-implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006
-Ineffective implementation of Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996 (PESA, 1996) for Schedule V areas.
-Involuntary displacement due to development projects and lack of proper rehabilitation.
-Shifting Cultivation, such as podu
-Poor utilisation of government funds, and
-Poor delivery of government programmes

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Human Rights in India

Providing an Improved Environment for Human Rights in The Country(India)

"While human rights institutions like the NHRC have a significant role in the promotion and protection of human rights, the contributions of civil society actors and the state are just as crucial"

An informed discussion on how to provide an improved environment for human rights in the country, and how to achieve social justice through human rights is very necessary. Social justice, as the American philosopher John Rawls pointed out, ‘is predicated on the idea that a society can be regarded as egalitarian only when it is based on principles of equality and solidarity, where human rights are valued and the dignity of every individual upheld.’ A just society is one which provides a degree of protection to its weaker, differently-abled and less gifted members. It is not one where the law of the jungle prevails, where might is right. In a civilized society, reasonable constraints are placed on the ambitions and acquisitiveness of its more aggressive members and special safeguards provided to its weaker and more vulnerable sections. These considerations are basic to any scheme of social justice and their neglect will brutalize society. In a limited sense, the right to social justice may be said to be the right of the weak, aged, destitute, poor, women, children and other underprivileged persons, to the protection of the State against the ruthless competition of life. It is a bundle of rights, in another sense it is a preserver of other rights. It is the balancing wheel between haves and have-nots. 

Our Constitution makers were fully alive to the need for providing safeguards to the weaker sections of society as is evident from the Preamble to the Constitution and Part IV of the Constitution, that is, the Directive Principles of State Policy. Social justice has become a pressing issue across the world, especially in the larger context of globalization, which is altering traditional roles and relationships between states and their citizens and throwing up multiple challenges to the realization of socio-economic justice, whether in the form of the devastating financial crisis, the rising cost of essential food commodities, or the growing influence of transnational bodies such as the WTO, IMF, World Bank and Multinational Corporations. 

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National Knowledge Network

National Knowledge Network

What is the National Knowledge Network ?

The National Knowledge Network (NKN) is a major step towards building a knowledge society without boundary. It is a multi- gigabit, unified, high speed network that aims to connect over 1500 institutions like universities, research institutions, libraries, laboratories, healthcare and agricultural institutions, nuclear, space and defence research agencies in the country. Such a connectivity will allow free flow of data / information/ knowledge and allow researchers, students, scientists and other stakeholders from diverse fields to access and use the same with ease. This initiative is expected to help build quality institutions in the country and improve the level and quality of research by making it multidisciplinary and collaborative. It will also help create a pool of highly qualified and trained professionals. Besides these, the NKN is also expected to facilitate advanced distance education in specialized fields such as engineering, science, medicine etc, an ultra high speed backbone for e-Governance and integration of different sectoral networks in the field of research, education, health, commerce and governance.

The Government approved the establishment of the National Knowledge Network (NKN) in March 2010, at an outlay of Rs.5990 crore. A High Level Committee (HLC) has been set up for establishment of NKN, under the Chairmanship of the Principal Scientific Advisor to Govt of India. National Informatics Centre has been designated as the implementing agency and the action plan has been developed by the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) set up by the HLC. 

What are the main features of NKN ?

The NKN will consist of an ultra-high speed Core (multiples of 10Gbps and upwards), and over 1500 nodes. It is scalable to higher speed and more nodes also. The Core shall be complemented with a distribution layer at appropriate speeds. The participating institutions can directly or through distribution layer connect to the National Knowledge Network at speeds of 100 Mbps /1 Gbps. The architecture of the network aims to provide reliability, availability and scalability.

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