The partnership for social development can be built on the strength and weakness of the three sectors: government, business and NGOs ‘working together as partners’ and complementing each other’s efforts.
The macro projects like, Khushhali and SME banks; the devolution plan envisaging the setting up of the ‘citizens’ community boards’ (CCBs), and the recent legislation by the Punjab Assembly for establishing ‘public-private partnership’ (PPP) are promising indicators in this direction.
Besides, a number of such small projects based on PPP are functioning in the rural areas. Still a lot needs to be done, especially; the relationship between these three sectors needs to be developed trouble-free.
Since the business sector is profit oriented, NGOs lack in capacity and the government’s resources are dwindling for ever increasing development challenges, the three sectors’ collaborative efforts are unavoidable to develop new ideas and strategies for social cause. The public sector may work better by forming partnerships with profit and non-profit organizations.
However, the answer lies not simply in introducing across the board privatization or market mechanisms to the provision of social services as present government is visualizing. Instead, the three sectors— public, business and NGOs—may work to achieve those set social objectives.
The three sectors have complementary strengths, which by combining can broaden the financial base for social services. In theory, the non-profit sector exists with a vision of social development through people’s initiatives, while business exists to make profit and therefore it applies market-based solutions to problems. The public sector, by contrast, attempts to ensure equity and access for citizens to assets and redresses problems arising out of market’s limitations.
Given the differences in character and nature of the public and private sectors, partnership means the sharing of benefits as well as responsibilities in a joint effort to solve social development problems. In the event of partnerships, a balance can be created between people’s participation, social goals with a profit motive, and how to support innovation. More focus needs to be placed on the potential for partnerships as a new tool for development. Partnerships need common objectives to function well, and this implies a vital role for joint leadership.
Sharing responsibilities of public sector by the private sector would also free up some public resources to target the needy in the poorest groups and rural inhabitants. There is also a largely untapped capacity in Pakistan to encourage the private sector to engage in ‘good corporate citizenship’ and enhance the performance of the public sector’s limited resources.
However, there are the areas of concerns in PPP context. There are examples of the PPP projects which has come at the low end and often involved institutions of questionable reputation. The major issues here include ensuring efficiency, preventing inequality in care, keeping costs down, and ensuring quality and managing the competition for resources, both economic and human, between the public and private sectors.
It may sometimes be in the public sector’s interest for the other two sectors activity to happen create a space and opportunity for partnership. In fact, an effective partnership between the three sectors might develop provided the maximum economic and political space is granted by the state to NGOs and business.
Though social development is a prime duty of state, the social sector would have not been developed if the private sectors was not involved in providing social services in the market economy. Given the basic nature of no pricing mechanism in the social sector, social services are not provided with optimal efficiency and effectiveness and tend to be over-consumed. They pose a serious problem by expanding the social sector with the misuse of resources, and increasing the government’s financial burden. One possible strategy to deal with such a problem is private sector involvement in social activities.
It is important to determine where to set the degree of mutual partnerships between public and private sectors.
The NGO sector can target groups who are most disadvantaged, such as educating girls where many parents do not see this as a priority. In particular, the local nature of NGOs allows them to do much more effective targeting than the government.
Often the most successful NGO activities tend to be small and localized in scope, so how can that achievement and example be taken to scale up or replicated? As for example, HANDS is working on three separate PPP projects at all the three tiers—city government, provincial and the federal government.
The general framework of government involvement with NGOs can assume four forms:
(i) establishment of infrastructure of health and education and handing over to NGOs in rural areas; (ii) provision of revolving funds/seed money to NGOs for micro credit disbursement; (iii) debt guarantee by the government for micro enterprise development and employment generating NGOs; (iv) working together in project implementations and management
The state can provide enabling environment for business and NGO sectors; business can solve the financial problems for the government’s agenda of development; and NGOs can implement the development agenda of government more economically and efficiently at the grass root level.
The following framework seems a practical approach of developing partnership between government and NGOs: identification of the projects, making operational plan and implementation by NGOs; financing of these projects from business advertisement’s fund and local government’s social development budget; joint monitoring and evaluation by the three sectors; sharing the benefits of the project by the three sectors in terms of the realization of state’s ideals, business promotions, and NGOs accomplishment of development agenda.
The relations between governments and NGOs are complex and vary considerably from country to country. In many cases, NGOs have considerable impacts on governments, either by offering models for government programmes, proposing reforms of existing policies, or criticizing proposed government policies, even to the point of organizing demonstrations or using more confrontational tactics.
Government-NGO relations hinge on several factors including the nature of government, the political system and the type and location of particular NGO projects. NGOs work even as sub-contractor for government programmes to act as catalyst in changing the socio-economic conditions. When no other option exists to affect change, NGOs confront the government to express their concerns. The basis of strained relationship of NGOs with governments in South Asian context can be summed up as follows:
• lack of understanding of each others goals; inability of government to identify the types of NGO which might become reliable working partners; restrictive government procedures; problems of attitude on both sides (mistrust;) lack of clear governmental policies and guidelines to NGOs; poor communications among NGOs and between NGOs and governments; sharp contrasts between the top-down working methods of government and the participatory approaches of NGOs; lack of existing linkages with initiatives of various actors; poor understanding of relative strengths and weaknesses on both sides; lack of NGOs accountability to their clients, or to the public at large, for the ways in which resources are used.
The success in partnership can be achieved through the following steps: reconciliation of different cultures; choosing the right projects; extending commitment towards new projects; gaining local support; packaging the projects properly; having patience, as the process takes time; building mutual trust.
In the light of the character, nature, responsibilities, strengths and weaknesses of the three partners, there is a need to develop an effective model for partnership. A tentative model for PPP developed by this writer indicating its operational mechanism is shown in the chart:
In the operational model of PPP, the circle indicates the boundary of a society; at the top of the circle there is state and below, there are government organizations and the other two sectors of society; business and NGOs. At the bottom there is the outcome of the joint efforts of the three sectors as social development.
The state and the two sectors have been assigned important roles and responsibilities in order to achieve the target of social development as: the state, being responsible for good governance, setting social vision, provision of justice to citizen, developing and maintaining social structures and processes are the state’s responsibility.
Hence, the state can provide an enabling environment; especially a supporting legal and fiscal framework under which the three sectors may work with greater ease and commitment. The public organizations are referred here as executive branch of state.
In working with other two sectors, the public organizations can set development priorities availing the assistance of NGOs, relate those priorities to their development programmes, plan in collaboration with the other two sectors, and allocate the budget to finance those programmes/projects.
Public organization may also develop joint monitoring system with the other two sectors. The corporate sector, which operates to earn profit, can be involved for social development making it clear that a prosperous society can safeguard their business interests.
The corporate sector can help government organizations for sparing financial and technical resources for the social development project and may involve in joint monitoring of the projects in which it has contributed. In this model, NGOs will be responsible for the community and resource mobilization at the grass root level for getting people’s commitment and ownership for the projects. NGOs have been found efficient and effective in small and even big projects throughout South Asia; hence, they should be responsible for project designing, implementation and project management.
NGOs can also be part of project monitoring and evaluation with other sectors. The outcome of the combined efforts of the three sectors as explained above will be a developed civil society in which there will be increased socio-political awareness, good governance, improved health and education indicators, better living standards and an equilibrium of the relationship between the three sectors.
The interaction among the three sectors have been shown by the two way linking arrows, which means that while working on social development projects, the three sectors will be involved at the most appropriate levels. Here appropriate levels mean, nearest to as equal partners, keeping in view the responsibilities of the respective sectors.
At the same time, state’s link with the business and NGO sectors have been shown with two doted lines, which means that state remains in touch with all the three sectors of society with its formal and informal interactive mechanism. The two ways linking arrows with the three sectors also indicate that while working together, the three sectors will be influenced by the culture and over all development in the society.
There is a need to develop a shared vision to promote the formulae of co-existence and positive approach towards each other as the binding force to form a sustainable public-private partnership.