“It listens all the time, but what do civil society organizations have to suggest? Usually their suggestion is:
You must have involvement with the local community. We completely agree with that. The central government keeps telling the state “please empower your local community”. The central government doe snot have the power to do that, only the stare government has.
You should involve the NGOs, and we agree with that too. When good NGOs get involved they improve the quality of implementation and we encourage people to involve good NGOs. But the central government cannot start saying that this NGO is better than that NGO; it is the local body which controls the decision which has to choose the NGO. The problem is that if local bodies don’t want change they will surely not choose NGOs which want change… that is social capital, social harmony.”
“No scheme is perfect, it is impossible to have a scheme which has zero leakage. When you say that they don’t reach at the bottom do you mean that the leakage is 100… absolutely not! Leakage are high, even as high as 30%, but 70% is reaching at people. The other reason people think that the schemes are not having the effect that the effect that were expected, is that the challenges are very complex one… you can have very good schemes but you don’t deliver the result.”
(Gives example of education) and says that
“Pratham brings out a report every year and saw that 37% percent of children in class 5 cannot read a text for class 2. Now if you say that therefore the benefits are not reaching the target population, in a sense you are right. But what can the government do? It sets up schools, it highers teachers… we say that you need to have more parent-teacher involvement, you must have local communities enforcing accountability, techers must be made to teach.
These are things that are not just done by governments, these are things done by social pressure, social awareness, social mobilization and it would not surpeise me that it takes time.
It is not true that nothing is happening, lots is happening! “
“If you are moving towards a world which is more peaceful and more prosperous somehow, somewhere, on the whole you may make a difference to everyone in a positive way. But linking what you do to the poorest in the world is romantic idea but it does not translate itself into anything practical. In my present position i can definitely make a difference to the poorest in India… i may not succeed but can argue for policies in India which can do that. Rather than distract myself with some global objective let us concentrate to do something in India.”
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