Do you agree with statement, It is often said that, by their very nature, nongovernmental organizations are better equipped

to render welfare services?

Give reasons in support of your answer.

Introduction
The role of the state in the field of production and in various service
activities are diminishing in an era of trade liberalization and globalization.
Alternatively
the role of the civil society is gaining relevance and importance in social,
economic and
community development. With the declining role of the state in social welfare
and social
services, NGOs are increasingly gaining attention and are looked upon as
alternative
agencies in promoting awareness, change and development in the society.
They are
extensively involved in alleviating the poverty and promoting sustainable
and equitable
development. They are in a position to provide social services to different
sections of the
society where as the state fails to provide such services. NGO approach to
development
is based on the principle of peoples participation.

What id Non-Governmental Organization?

A non-governmental
organization (NGO)
is
a
not-forprofit organization that is independent from states and international
governmental organizations. They are usually funded by donations but some
avoid formal funding altogether and are run primarily by volunteers. NGOs
are highly diverse groups of organizations engaged in a wide range of
activities, and take different forms in different parts of the world.
NGOs are difficult to define, and the term 'NGO' is not always used
consistently. In some countries the term NGO is applied to an organization
that in another country would be called an NPO (nonprofit organization), and
vice-versa. There are many different classifications of NGO in use. The most
common focus is on "orientation" and "level of operation". An NGO's
orientation refers to the type of activities it takes on. These activities might
include human rights, environmental, improving health, or development
work. An NGO's level of operation indicates the scale at which an
organization works, such as local, regional, national, or international
The term "non-governmental organization" was first coined in 1945, when
the United Nations (UN) was created.
Today, according to the UN, any kind of private organization that is
independent from government control can be termed an "NGO", provided it
is not-for-profit, non-prevention, and not simply an opposition political party.
Types of ngo
NGO/GRO (governmental related organizations) types can be understood by
their orientation and level of how they operate.
By orientation

Charitable orientation often involves a top-down paternalistic effort

with little participation by the "beneficiaries". It includes NGOs with
activities directed toward meeting the needs of the poor peoples.

Service orientation includes NGOs with activities such as the provision

of health, family planning or education services in which the programme
is designed by the NGO and people are expected to participate in its
implementation and in receiving the service.

Participatory orientation is characterized by self-help projects where

local people are involved particularly in the implementation of a project
by contributing cash, tools, land, materials, labour etc. In the classical
community development project, participation begins with the need
definition and continues into the planning and implementation stages.

Empowering orientation aims to help poor people develop a clearer

understanding of the social, political and economic factors affecting their
lives, and to strengthen their awareness of their own potential power to
control their lives. There is maximum involvement of the beneficiaries
with NGOs acting as facilitators.

By level of operation

Community-based organizations (CBOs) arise out of people's own

initiatives. They can be responsible for raising the consciousness of the
urban poor, helping them to understand their rights in accessing needed
services, and providing such services.

City-wide organizations include organizations such as chambers of

commerce and industry, coalitions of business, ethnic or educational
groups, and associations of community organizations.

'National
NGOs include
national
organizations
such
as
the YMCAs/YWCAs, professional associations and similar groups. Some
have state and city branches and assist local NGOs.

International NGOs range from secular agencies such as Ducere

Foundation and Save the Children organizations, OXFAM, CARE, Ford
Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation to religiously motivated groups.
They can be responsible for funding local NGOs, institutions and projects
and implementing projects.[

Track II diplomacy
Track II dialogue, or Track II diplomacy, is transnational coordination that
involves non-official members of the government including epistemic
communities as well as former policy-makers or analysts. Track II diplomacy
aims to get policymakers and policy analysts to come to a common solution
through discussions by unofficial means. Unlike the Track I diplomacy where
government officials, diplomats and elected leaders gather to talk about
certain issues, Track II diplomacy consists of experts, scientists, professors
and other figures that are not involved in government affairs. The members
of Track II diplomacy usually have more freedom to exchange ideas and
come up with compromises on their own.
Statistics
The first-ever exercise by the CBI to map registered NGOs has disclosed that
India has at least 31 lakh NGOs more than double the number of schools
in the country, 250 times the number of government hospitals, one NGO for
400 people as against one policeman for 709 people.
NGOs and their different roles
In the last decades, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have grown in
numbers and have been able to establish themselves as important actors in
society in almost every country around the world. Although NGOs focus on a
variety of different issues and are driven by different motivations, they are
generally said to constitute of five main characteristics: They are formal, e.g.
have some kind of organizational structure and permanence, are
institutionally separate from the government, and are non-profit, meaning
that surpluses are not disbursed to the owners or directors of such
organization. Concerning their different roles, NGOs are regarded as making
part of civil society
NGOs are also said to provide alternative ways of organizing the economy,
politics and social relations NGOs in the recent times is largely attributed to
the serious disjunctions and distortions in the development paradigm itself
2
where the poor and the marginalized received the least attention. NGOs are
important linkages between the people at the grassroots level, civil society
and the state. They have been instrumental in creating awareness and
implementing development programmes in agriculture, watershed
development, womens empowerment, education, health and family welfare.
They are the representatives of the alternative modes of development.

With the relevance of NGOs in the social sectors rising so fast, several
institutions and
agencies working in the area of development, including those belonging to
UN family,
are focusing on how best involve the NGOs in their operations and
collaborate with them
on a sustainable basis. Presently, national governments and various
development agencies realized that economic, social and community
development can be achieved only with
the full involvement of the people at the grassroots level and therefore,
NGOs, which
represent the people at the grassroots and accountable to them, have to be
involved in the
development activities on a large scale. There were some favorable signals
from various
international financial institutions for increasing participation of NGOs in
development
programmes in the developing countries. The NGO initiative was being
seriously studied
and applauded for their timely and constructive intervention in the
development projects
4
in the Third World. Serious efforts are being made to draw on NGO
knowledge and the
experiences regarding the strategy framing and deciding on prioritization of
programmes
and projects. Most of the writers on NGO roles concentrate on this aspect.
5
Despande ( 1986 ) studied and highlighted the importance of Voluntary
Organizations or NGOs in achieving nations economic and community
development.
It was observed in the study that two totally different opinions have been
drawn by the
public about the voluntary agencies. Some people praised the contributions
of voluntary
agencies and found them to be sincere, dedicated and successful in making
a dent into the
problems of poverty and exploitation, in taking education to hitherto
neglected regions
and sections of the society, in giving relief to families affected by the natural
and social
calamities, in releasing the bonded laborers and so on. Some others
considered them
as the foreign agents, who in the pretext of helping the poor, undermined the
process of

national integration and social formation. The author found that, though
small in number,
the presence of NGOs has been strongly felt due to their effectiveness in
organizing the
downtrodden and enabling to articulate their grievances.
In the socio-economic sphere major reversals of policy were underway and
the long established
and cherished institutions of the state were withdrawing. The crucial
segments of the
economy were handed over to the private sector through policies of
liberalization, and
privatization. In such a context, the government truly wanted to involve the
NGOs in the
development efforts which enabled them to come together on a platform
irrespective of
ideological and other differences and materializing the moto reaching out to
the people.
The following observations were also made in the study: * Even though government could do better in heavy investment sector, NGOs
could do much better in the small investment interior development
programmes.
* The international donor agencies have discovered the NGO model to be the
most effective instrument in promoting their interest in the developing
countries.
* The government did not succeed in delivering development to the people
and therefore there was the preference for more autonomous development
agencies like
Non-governmental Organizations.
* The UN and other international donor agencies highly distrusted the
national
government in reaching out to the target population.
* The NGOs could, without inducing a shift in the development strategy,
speed
up development because of their flexibility, efficiency and amenability to
privatized and
individualized initiatives.
Regarding the specific functions NGOs are said to have as development
actors, scholars have generally come up with three categories. They function
as implementer[s], catalyst[s] as well as partner[s]. They work as
implementers in the sense that they mobilize resources to provide goods and
services to people in need of them. To this end, NGOs are often contracted
by the government or donors to deliver such services). NGOs are also viewed
as providing alternatives to current development approaches through
advocacy at different levels. Thus, they attempt to change institutions
through external pressure and protest, but also foster more appropriate and

effective policies by working within these institutions. NGOs thus function as

catalysts through their ability to inspire, facilitate or contribute to improved
thinking and action to promote change.
NGOs are also perceived as important partners for governments, donor
agencies as well as the private sector and have furthermore intensified the
ties among themselves, at local, national and international level.

Strengths of NGOs as development actors

Taking the above mentioned roles as basis, NGOs are generally said to have
the following strengths as development actors. According to Kang (2010),
NGOs focus on bottom-up development as opposed to the predominantly
growth-centered development approach pursued by many agencies and
governments. They consequently have the capacity to promote local
participation, since they are often rooted in local communities or tend to
develop bonds with the people they serve (Cernea 1988: 18). They thus
try to identify the needs of local people by directly involving them in the
agenda-setting and decision-making processes at different levels. NGOs
moreover foster empowerment by inspiring the marginalized and the poor
to organize themselves and advocate for their own rights (Hulme&Ibrahim
2010: 8).
The direct interaction with local communities consequently enables NGOs to
reach the rural poor and to promote service delivery in remote areas where
governments only have limited outreach (Cernea 1988). Moreover, their less
formal structures as compared to governments and aid agencies and their
small-scale focus render NGOs more flexible and responsive to local needs,
and also more cost-efficient (Kang 2010). Finally, due to their flexibility, they
have the capacity to innovate and adapt, using transfer technologies that
were already developed elsewhere and adapting them according to the local
conditions (Cernea 1988). Overall, NGOs are thus regarded as flexible,
innovative, grass-roots oriented and [as having] broad knowledge and strong
commitment to issues relating to the emancipation of the poor (Matanga
2010: 114).