Tuesday, January 12, 2010
NGO intervention in a village
An external agency trying to build cooperation may actually end up eroding the already existing cooperation among people. The village where we went for fieldwork, women had been successfully running a Mangal-Dal to save money to be used for community purposes. As our NGO intervened to build capacity by forming SHGs, it destabilized the existent cooperation because of differential incentives to those who cooperated and those who didn’t cooperate with the NGO, creating a new divide of ‘with’ NGO and ‘against’ NGO people. This is inevitable as any outside intervention is bound to face resistance from some groups of people.
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3 comments:
the NGO should have first tried to convince the village women about their scheme and rather than making it a competetion for the existing Mangal-Dal,it could have been integrated into the exisiting framework.but I want to ask a question as to how much time has been spent since the divide of ‘with’ NGO and ‘against’ NGO people was created since if it wasnt much then seeing the positive benefits alomost all of the women would join,
External Agency intervention as discussed can be a tricky issue. I believe every collective action reaches a stage where it needs external support to keep its momentum going, else it risks the danger of becoming static or benefits start to decline. In this case I agree with Vineet, starting another programme on same lines will never solve any problem. It is the existing action that should be taken ahead and new components added into it.
I was also in Uttarakhand village just close to your host village. Same organization had helped in forming SHGs(15 groups- both male and female SHGs) in my village.
I hardly believe that there was 'With' & 'against' like situations created by NGO. From past to present, without NGO or with NGO, in every situation people are cooperating if any issue becomes for collective action.
If the individual incentive increases and the cost decreases by joining any NGO, then the people will certainly join NGO. The work of NGO is to smoothen the function.
As there is no discrimination for becoming the members of NGO , so i don't think that there will be any 'With' or 'Against' like situation.
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