Extracting the best from a Team
All individuals with a similar attitude and interest come together on a common platform to form a team. It is not always that an individual alone is capable of doing a task; sometimes he needs the guidance and suggestions of others as well. You need a team to accomplish a complicated task where every team […]
Role of a Leader in an Organization
Following are the main roles of a leader in an organization: Required at all levels- Leadership is a function which is important at all levels of management. In the top level, it is important for getting co-operation in formulation of plans and policies. In the middle and lower level, it is required for interpretation and […]
Will Capitalism Destroy Itself?
Karl Marx was one of the most influential philosophers and economists during the 18th century. His ideas relating to economics are profound and have an enormous impact on the world today. The amazing thing about Karl Marx was that he was able to predict the crisis that capitalism would go through. Even though Marxism and […]
Effective Presentation Skills
Presentation can be defined as a formal event characterized by teamwork and use of audio-visual aids. The main purpose of presentation is to give information, to persuade the audience to act and to create goodwill. A good presentation should have a good subject matter, should match with the objective, should best fit the audience, and […]
Ways to Overcome Organizational Crisis
Sequence of unwanted events leading to uncertainty at the workplace is called as crisis. Crisis leads to major disturbances at the workplace and creates unrest amongst the employees. Employees must not lose hope during crisis. It is important for them to face inevitable threats with courage, determination and smile. Let us go through various ways […]
The phenomenon of the NGOs or the Non Governmental Organizations entering the field of social welfare accelerated in the 1990s. In earlier decades, though there were several charitable trusts and organizations like Red Cross, Medicine Sans Frontiers, and Doctors without Borders, the explosion in the number of NGOs and the concomitant rise in their profile were relatively muted. This aspect of the NGOs taking center stage has been attributed to the failure of the various governments across the world to deliver development and actualize the principles of social justice and social welfare.
Hence, the reasoning goes that the NGOs had to step in and deliver where the governments had failed. This trend became more noticeable in the first decade of this millennium wherein the NGOs were seen by many as the real votaries of social welfare with the rise in the failed states of Africa and other parts of the world where governance simply collapsed.
Having said that, it needs to be mentioned that even now the government is the best bet to actualize social welfare because it has the size and the scale to reach out to large populations. No matter how much the NGOs try, they simply cannot match the power of the governments in actualizing social welfare simply because the governments are the agencies tasked with the purpose of social welfare and because the amount of money that is at the disposal of the governments is something that even the biggest NGOs cannot match.
Hence, the implications of this are that the government and the NGOs are in a seesaw battle with each of them trying to outdo the other where social justice and social welfare are concerned. This is the reason why the governments and the NGOs exist in a state of tension with each other.
The ideal model for actualizing social welfare would be one where the government is directly in charge but where the NGOs are tasked with the objective of ensuring smooth delivery of social services and where they are called upon to monitor the delivery mechanisms and provide objective feedback. This means that the external audits of the programs undertaken by the government have to be done by the NGOs no matter how much the governments resist such efforts.
Further, this model of development is being practiced in India where the National Advisory Council or the NAC advises the government on schemes like the Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Food Security Bill and performs external audits of these schemes to ensure that the benefits are reaching the intended recipients.
Finally, both the government and the NGOs have to realize that each cannot do without the other and hence, instead of a tense relationship, a creative tension wherein each complements and supplements the other would be preferred. After all, social welfare is a topic that is of paramount importance and something that should not be marred by personality clashes or overlapping areas of interest.
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The Corporatization of the NGOs and How It Impacts Funders, Beneficiaries, and Others
February 12, 2025
