In Rambagh, bikaner, women S.H.G's were running efficiently with rules , roles and responsibilities put forth and an institutional framework in place. But the change agent and leader was URMUL setu sansthan which made it a reality. It has been three years since the SHG's started but now also URMUL acts as a moderator and facilitator in the functioning of the SHG's.
Should An external facilitator look to detach itself from the collective action after a point of time? If yes then when can URMUL or any other institution take such a step?
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Any external agent with a true altruistic motive should act as a promoter rather than being provider so that they may help them making self sustainable in long run. We have all been associated with EKTA NAGAR INITIATIVE since a long time. We have failed them to make self sustainable; as a result they have become dependent on the students of IRMA. Now we have realized that it’s the appropriate time to leave this initiative in a phased manner which will help them realize their responsibility and make them confident to continue on their own.
Ritu kashyap (32037)
The SHG’s network facilitated by NGO’s like URMUL was initiated with a selfless motive of creating self managed community institution for developing saving and thrift habit among the women’s through mutual help and member saving. But these SHG’s rather than developing as self sustained units started increasingly dependent on the NGO. The external agent should draw its assistance in a phased manner once the community gets organized and the members understand the importance of the initiative and start taking their responsibilities.
Shipra Sharma
(32092)
Therotically speaking, external facilitator should detach itself after year or two from the time SHGs become self sustainable. But in reality they tend to act as facilitator as long as possible. In Andhra Pradesh, there are organisations like DARD, SERP etc,established by Government whose role is to facilitate SHGs and they are of permanent nature. Almost all SHGs are dependent on these organisations even after 15 years of their existence with a healthy balance sheets. This agencies wants to have close relationship with SHGs instead of detaching itself.
Sandesh N A
32090
The role of external agents depend upon the type of work and also on the people they are dealing with. In Bikaner, Women SHG's are running from the past 10 years but the transactions and records are still maintained by URMUL staff. The facilitator should detach itself at this point since it is a small SHG and doesn't involve huge transactions. But the women can't maintain records and do transactions on their own as they all are illiterate. This forces the external agent to facilitate the process for smooth running of the SHG.
Himanshu Pilania
32070
External Agents provide different capital sources in the successful conduct of a collective action. In case of SHGs also, these agents provide social and human capital to involve more and more active participation in the action. Developing these capacities requires promoting and facilitating processes of social learning, through which rural groups and communities can gradually develop their own human and social capital and these should not be transferred in a linear fashion from external agents to those involved in collective action. This learning could take time based on the actual development status of the concerned area.
Gaurav Singhal(32014)
An external agent might act as a moderator and a facilitator in functioning of collective action, but it is the 'core ideology' of the group which makes itself detached/attached to the external agent.
In my field work in orissa, what we observed that, our host NGO started and gave motive to 3 SHGs, they started planning and working of their own, at start though their were a few monitoring involved, but later on they started functioning without any further assistance from the NGO.
Durga Satapathy,32065
In order to start a collective action like an SHG, the role of an external agent is very important, as in many cases the villagers are not efficient enough to initiate the collective action. But after after a certain period of time, when the unit has become strong enough to take care of its own, the external facilitator should detach itself. In case of URMUL, it can detach itself after the SHG passes the Grade I (an indication that the SHG can take care of its routine transactions of its own).
- Abhishek Misra
(32001)
The role of external agent should be only limited to facilitating the collective action, identifying the problems and needs of members, developing strategies to address them by mobilising the resources and finally helping the concerned group develop institutional arrangements to keep the collective action going on. If the external agent continues to assist the group even after the achievement of basic sustenance level it will defeat its ultimate goal of achieving something on their own. After careful evaluation of skill and capacity build-up of the group the external agent should detach itself gradually.
Ashish (32010)
Exit of an NGO/development agency from a project is as important as its entry. A community cannot for ever remain dependent on external support for its survival or growth. However, when the exit is made will decide the future prospects of a scheme/project. In the given case, URMUL should exit when it becomes sure that it has created an institution, not just an organisation, which will be able to sustain itself without an external support.
-ankush khanna
As already mentioned, an external agent should detach itself from the collective. Experience teaches people to be the best judge of their requirements. However, in some SC villages particularly, women lack confidence to carry their group independently. This was the case with our village SHG. The NGO, after facilitating its formation and operations, planned an exit from the SHG but the women were unwilling to let the NGO worker go. Thus, the NGO should aim at making such people self-reliant by subsequently letting the women control the working of the SHG in a phased manner, thus smoothing the transition.
Arshia Gupta (32057)
In Kerala, I have seen that some of Kudumbashree NHGs were started for social and women empowerment. After the initial success the focus shifted towards economic empowerment. Also most of women who are ward members now were part of some NHG. So it has provided a platform for greater role of women in local governance. This might not have been possible if Kudumbashree had detached itself from collective action after some time. What I would like to say is that an institution, rather than detaching itself, should take a step further and aim towards higher goal.
Dhruv Mittal
32064
Having given the shape and direction to the SHG, the NGO/development agency must exit as it not only has to make the group autonomous and self-reliant but also focus on expanding its scale of operations in other dimensions and in different areas. Yet given the literacy level of women in the SHGs and their record keeping, URMUL must continuously monitor the proceedings. Also these SHGs serve as a medium, for URMUL to reach the communities and carry out their additional campaigns; it thus needs to consider several other dynamics.
Ajay Vikram Singh(32053)
Rather than completely detaching from the collective action it can work as an agent giving more independence to the women in the functioning of S.H.G's. In the case of S.H.G's in Andhra Pradesh where I went for field work external agent like government is acting as a facilitator with external agent like banks etc and laying down the procedures depending on changes taking place in the environment, but at the same time giving the independence to S.H.G's in setting their own norms like meetings, savings, distribution of loans etc.
Ankith Reddy(p32054)
The external agent helps in bringing together people to form groups to identify their day-to-day problems and address them strategically. Their role is to co-ordinate the goal achieving mechanism and to originate trust and interdependence among participants. The external agent should look to detach itself from collective action. In this case, URMUL can take such a step when it feels that the SHG is strong enough to withstand and that the institution(URMUL) has conjured enough confidence in the group members to take decisions on their own with the help of competent and efficacious leadership.
Tanu Shree Shekhawat (32044)
Initiation of a project needed an external facilitator as the women were not so financially and technically strong. URUMUL provided the initial push to organise the SHGs, helped them in bearing the initial transaction cost and provided them with necessary skills for running the SHG and adequate abilities to sustain the group. After this point the external agent should detach themselves to avoid dependency of SHG. The SHG should then find out own ways of expanding the functions with the minimal assistance of URUMUL. When the women would have authority on their SHG, they would become more responsibility towards it.
- Raunak Shashikant Rao (32036)
It is important for a facilitator agency to recede from a collective action in order to ensure that the people realize their responsibilities as well as power of being a part of the collective action. This should be done in a phased manner and not at once. Slowly and steadily the power should be delegated and responsibilities distributed in order to avoid the action to come to a standstill on an abrupt detachment of facilitator from the collective.
It seems that we are forgetting an important paraadigm of this scenario before commenting on whether the external agency should leave the operations of a grassroot initiative. It depends on the nature of the social divisions existing in the group which might come to the forefront when an external agency backs out.It is also important to consider the awareness and quality of decisions taken by the people in the S.H.G. to decide about the proper time to opt out of the system.
Shubham Tomar
32093
The role of external agent is critical in bringing in collective action which otherwise might not have been possible.It brings in the required leadership and various linkages for people to act together. An ideal external agent would work for bringing in self-sustainability in the group. But a great dilemma for these external agents is when to quit. They should work for capacity building and make leaders within the communities. And slowly responsibilities should be transferred to these identified leaders within the communities. it should not be a sudden development and it has to be a sequential process.
Aditi(32052)
Role of the external agent is to reduce firstly the information imperfection so that people realize the benefits of collective action coming out of their myopic prisoner’s dilemma behavior and secondly the transaction costs of getting together. However, when the people are not capable of evolving institutional arrangements on their own, the role of external agent extends to providing them a suitable incentive compatible institutional arrangement of rules, roles and responsibilities. For detachment as in case of SHG, it must wait till it finds that people from then onwards will be able to sustain the arrangements.
Raj kamal goldi
32033
The prime character of a successful and lasting collective is its self-sufficiency and independence. The prolonged presence of an external facilitator makes the collective dependent and prone to influence by it. The strength of a collective lies in the system that makes it self dependent in all kinds of situations. The decision about the time of detachment depends on the nature of collective, composition and external factors influencing it.
Arpit Bansal
32009
External agent needs to move out in phased manner when it has ensured sustainability of the SHG in future. In Bikaner District when women were asked reason for not attending SHG meetings regularly they answered that there was no substantial new information they gained after coming to SHG meetings. Why should we come from come leaving our household-cores to gain information we already know. External agent needs to take care that once it moves out what would be the new source for flow of information. Failing to achieve this would tend to dissociate people in the longer run.
Neelam (p32026)
Though it is always desirable that external agent should ebb from collective action, the question of when is difficult to answer. It depends on the type of action and type of crowd as well. I think, rather than completely abandoning it should made some changes in the goal, like initially SHG should develop habit of saving, then taking the benefits of banks and moving further to providing loans to members. This will increase bonding among members of collective action and the action will become more sustainable.
Gurpreet (32066)
Collective action is not just coming of people together but also working in a focused manner to achieve a common goal. Especially when an external agent is facilitating the process it becomes imperative that they monitor as to how much it has progressed, theoretically it should detach itself from the group but i do not find anything worrying in the fact that the group is being monitored by the Agency. If the group is self sufficient it can do without it but it becomes important for groups with low levels of information for a continuous external help.
Raja Panchal
32086
External agents role in collective action here SHGs should to actively provide necessary support for skills and capacity building(here inculcating habit of savings and managing SHGs fund) and also bearing the transactions cost for initial coming together of the people. After that it should act as consultant or advisor for SHGs and give suggestions rather than guidelines for working of SHGs. In case of SHGs this stage will occur when SHGs members define and understand rules, regulations, and responsibilities also able to manage it funds effectively and established linkages other institutions such as NGOs, Govt and Financial institutions.
Mahesh Dharap
P32019
It is very essential for any external organization to detach itself after a certain period of time. It cannot take their responsibility for longer period of time. In the beginning of any collective action, the role of external agent is the initiator and promoter. Later on, it should start focusing on developing leadership cadre among group members and try to make them self-sustainable and restrict its job to facilitator and gradually starts detaching itself. When it finds that its objective are achieved, they should move to make others life better.
Nilesh Sharma(32080)
I did my field work with URMUL Setu Sansthan. What i found there that the SHG members are mostly illiterate, so they can’t handle SHG operations efficiently. Apart from it, they trust URMUL very much, as they are getting support from it from the beginning. Even members don’t want to involve themselves in SHG operations as all the operations are being handled by URMUL staff like depositing and withdraw from bank etc. At this stage I don’t think, URMUL should detach itself, if it happens then many SHGs will be closed.
Rohitash 32088
In addition to providing capital and facilitating a collective action to happen the external agents provide formalisation and a defined structure to collective actions. Complete withdrawl may risk selfish interests to creep up again and there will be greater chances of misappropriation from the primary leaders of the collective action. So even when direct involvement of an external agent stops being necessary, according to me, the agent should keep providing the umbrella under which the collective action can continue without conflict.
SUNNU SETU
P32042
If an external agent does not detach itself from the collective action in phased manner, then there are chances that community for which collective action is taking place will become totally dependent on agent. But if an agent detaches itself from collective action in erroneous manner, then collective action may fail. So any external agent should detach itself from collective action, but the important point is the manner in which it should detach itself from collective action. Ideal time for detaching is when agent feels that strong leaders are emerging from community members.
Parminder Singh (32083).
Drawing an analogy to the life of humans, we receive extensive care and guidance in the initial years which gradually decreases and the form in which it is administered changes. However, at no point of time is there a strong need to detach. Secondly, the facilitator is himself / herself closely associated with the growth of NGO and might feel uneasy and less confident detaching from it. New challenges over a period of time will need relevant guidance increasing the need to stay connected.
Darshit Shah (32062)
URMUL's support is critical in being a facilitator for the SHGs. But this in itself will not guarantee viability of the Group. The role of URMUL should be to enable these women to access and manage assets collectively and let the group become self-dependent gradually, both in terms of finance and temperament. And then, eventually detach itself from the Group so as there is no sense of dependence or need among the women members with regard to URMUL or such institutions which moderate the SHGs in their initial phase.
For any collective action to succeed and function smoothly, the role of an external power/leader is a must. The agent must be present to give the people a good start and inculcate confidence and make them realize their potential. However, after a certain point of time, the leader must detach himself from the group because then he would only increase their dependency on him for even trivial matters. When should a leader detach again varies from organization to organization,he should quit once he feels that the organization can now move on smoothly without him.
Avanita
32058
The SHG's are running efficiently; the institutional framework is well entrenched in the day to day workings. If URMUL forms a part of this framework, it cannot detach itself without disturbing the present functioning of the SHG's. In this case, URMUL should first facilitate transformation of the framework such that it has no association in the working of the SHG's. Having done this, it is for URMUL organization's vision, mission and resources to decide whether to stay attached or go. At this point sustenance of the SHG's has been ensured and URMUL's decision will be governed only by factors internal to the organization.
URMUL is quite aware of its responsibility to detach. It was the philosophy of Sh. Sanjay Ghosh to serve an area for 10 years and make its institutions selfdependent and leave to serve another area. This was the reason why he moved to Assam.
When an institution thinks of withdrawing it has to take care of many things and foremost among them is local context. 3 years or 5 years is not at all a criteria on which an NGO should decide to withdraw. Any step taken in hurry would kill the hard work of 3 years.
Abhishek Sharma (32051)
It depends on the mentoring that has been provided to those ladies to run the SHGs without external help. In Kerala women might become selfdependent to run a SHG in say 1 year but in Western Rajasthan they might take 3-5 years or even more. It depends on the mentoring, education, status of women, and local society as a whole. Also, not only the mentoring of women but also of the males who in the absence of URMUL wont allow their women to take part in the SHG activities.
Abhishek Sharma (32051)
URMUL must foster building leadership among members by developing an inherent empowering model of SHG, wherein most of the decisions are taken by the members of the group themselves. Thus URMUL should not completely detach itself from the SHG but should adopt a post sanction monitoring system and regular follow-up for recovery. Also it must create a mechanism that encourages members to seek advice on managing money and debt counseling. This will ensure that a dependency is not created among the members while simultaneously ascertaining the fulfillment of the motive of the SHG.
Deepika Agarwal (32063)
For every collective to succeed it is imperative that the external agent detach itself from it. The exit of the NGO is as important as the entry as the project should be self-sustainable and the people must learn to help themselves. URMUL or any other such institution should take this step whenever it feels that people are able to see the advantage of the collective action and would sustain it themselves even when the institution is gone.
HIMADRI SARKAR
32068
During my FWS , the host organisation ran a three tier structure which was supported in terms of finance and guidance at all levels, but on conversation with the founder she said that there was little difference between the wisdom and intelligence level of a villager and city dweller and the disparity was created primarily due to lack of proper information. This exactly should be the aim of an NGO while promoting SHGs it should support them with optimum information and training and in the long term should strive to make it self-sustainable.
Mayank Gupta(32022)
During my FWS , the host organisation ran a three tier structure which was supported in terms of finance and guidance at all levels, but on conversation with the founder she said that there was little difference between the wisdom and intelligence level of a villager and city dweller and the disparity was created primarily due to lack of proper information. This exactly should be the aim of an NGO while promoting SHGs it should support them with optimum information and training and in the long term should strive to make it self-sustainable.
Mayank Gupta(32022)
The time when an external agency should detach itself from something it started, will elicit contradicting answers. There is no universal answer to this. My take on the issue is that the agency should detach itself from the facilitated institution when it is able to find out a leader in the group, whom they think can lead the group forward. Lets see whether we are able to find an appropriate answer to this 'collectively'. The group members should be involved in the decision making while selecting the leader.
Arjun Sood
32008
Having FWS in Bikaner, i have seen URMUL staff in facilitating SHG meetings. Some such SHGs are running for more than four years. The external agency may or may not detach from collective action. For the members of collective action they would never want the facilitator to detach because it helps in keeping transparency, motivation for the group and resolving conflicts in the group which may be frequent without it. But I think in the long collective action can be sustained only if members are running it.
varun
32046
An external agent like an NGO acts as a facilitator in generating and promoting collective action within any group. However, the NGO can detach itself from the activities in a phased manner only after the village community finds its feet and carries on its activities on a self-sustaining basis. The NGO will have to decide when to withdraw from the activities totally keeping in view the nature and extent of social divergences within the community. The NGO, therefore, should continue monitoring the village activities and play an advisory role whenever fresh challenges and problems crop up.
Ayan Roy(32061)
External agent can promote collective action through making people realise benefits of collective action and guiding them to overcome attempts to foil collective action. They have role in mediating organisation of people for collective action, designing institutional frameworks, capacity building of members and smooth functioning of these organisations. External facilitator role is important till people develop capacity and confidence to manage and sustain collective action. The timing of withdrawal by external facilitator should depend upon capability achieved by participants involved in collective action, complexity of rules and mechanism governing collective action along with strength of forces opposed to collective action.
Prerna Gupta (32030)
The role of external agent is a must in collective action as he plays the role of integrating the community. As the role of agent is to make people independent, the agent should detach himself from the action after sometime. But it can be done only in a phased manner. Agent should encourage the leadership among the community while working with them. These leaders must be well connected to the community. These leaders should possess good skills required during the action. When agent finds such kind of people, he plays the role of an advisor in generating collective action.
Avinash Singh(32060)
The working of any External agent can be understood in terms of three phases. Active support, less active support and finally complete withdrawal. The problem occurs because of movement from less active support to complete withdrawal stage at a faster pace. This hampers the progress of the group. So in order to ensure the group’s sustainability in the long run, this transition should take place slowly.
Sanjana Arora
32039
In my perspective, we cannot define a definite stage of collective action, when the facilitator should withdraw, however any external facilitator should be clear that it will be there as a facilitator and will withdrew itself once the collective action becomes sustainable and institutionalised. The external facilitator should make it clear to the local residents that it’s them who need to come forward and participate actively. Once locals realise the responsibility on them, their learning curve will be high. It will eventually help the locals to find a suitable leader amongst them.
Tijil Thomas -32045
External agent in SHG has an important responsibility of making the members self-dependent. This is the ultimate motive of forming SHG i.e. people become more self-dependent, see opportunities, benefit from them and finally be a participant in the overall development. External agent plays an important role in providing the right direction and necessary means if needed to begin this journey for self-dependence. Its entry and exit both are equally important. The right exit will further ignite the development and when they detach then members learn many new dynamics of collective action which probably can’t be explored under somebody’s guidance.
Supriya Bajaj
32097
Building confidence and ability to take the decisions can result in self-reliance for any group.In order to acheve this building of capacities apart from searching and nurturing right leaders is necessary.There are also certain pre-requisite skills eg. basic knowledge of finance,ability to deal with banks and giving and taking back of loans should be known to members.But most importantly people should realise the importance of collective action and SHG group which will lead to constant motivation for members to be with the group even after any outside organisation detach itself.
Manas Mittal(P32020)
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