Self-help organizations and good governance in Nepal

Bihari Krishna Shrestha, Former HMG bureaucrat/Anthropologist

While the government machinery is generally corrupt, unaccountable and non-transparent, it is just the reverse in the case of the self-help groups, SHG. The SHGs have immense advantages in terms of good governance over the government organizations. Three basic attributes characterize the functioning of self-help groups in Nepal. First, an SHG is invariably an exclusive organization of the direct stakeholders or users of a certain activity, infrastructure or service and is democratically organized.

Secondly, the members have valuable stakes in common. With the proliferation of externally-promoted or spontaneously organized self-help groups in the communities in recent years, reclaimable cash contributions by members to group savings have almost invariably emerged as the stake they hold in common and have been used as a group managed mini-credit scheme for themselves. Even when there are other stakes such as an irrigation scheme or a community forest, the emphasis on cash savings has been increasingly pronounced. This condition creates a vested interest on the part of the members in the proper functioning of the groups which, in turn, ensures the regular and effective participation of all members in the meetings and decision-making of their groups.

Such common stake holding in the groups has had very significant empowerment effect on the weaker sections of the people in the village communities, including women. Traditionally, the inter-caste, inter-class and gender disparities between people have been the principle barrier to effective participation by women, Dalits and poor members in the decision making in the communities. Invariably, it is the elite who takes the decision for the rest of the people in the community. And, for reasons cited earlier, those decisions went unchallenged even when they affected them adversely. However, when the poor and non-poor alike in the communities participated in the groups with common stake holding, these barriers have simply melted away. Their poverty and disadvantaged position in the communities notwithstanding, the members of the weaker sections too have found it necessary to assert themselves and to participate in the decisions of their groups to assure that their valuable stakes are properly managed and not misappropriated. And conversely, in the face of such new found assertiveness on the part of the weaker sections of the communities, the leaders in the groups too find themselves in a position of having to be more responsive, accountable and transparent. Thus, mobilization of such cash savings has not only established itself as an important source of local resource mobilization for development in the communities but also an effective equalizing instrument in favor of the poor and the disadvantaged in the community.

The third attributes of SHGs is their capacity to seek out and access new information, skills, technologies and inputs, in short, the ISTI support. As an organized collectivity the SHGs perceive and establish new horizons of possibilities for themselves which they, as single individuals, could not have done. This is one of the main advantages of the group approach to development. As members of an organized group, they are more confident of themselves and set out to access resources that can potentially contribute to their material, social or spiritual well being. This is where most members find meaning in organized self-help action.

Besides, the recent experiences of a number of both government and non-government programs, e.g SFCL, CEAPRED, SAPPROS, etc, have shown that a higher order of organizations at supra-grass-roots level is feasible and essential for greater sustainability and self-reliance of the SHGs. Under SFCL, for instance, the individual small farmer groups at the grass-roots with a limited membership 6 to 8 generally are federated into Inter-Group organizations at the ward level and the latter into the SFCL at the VDC level. With a large membership at the base of its pyramid, the SFCL is able to employ its own managers and other support staff without having to rely on any government officials, subsidies or grants to run them. Similarly, under CEAPRED experiment in Dhankuta, six cooperatives have been formed of some 85 producers' group at the grassroots. While the saving and credit functions are still performed at the smaller group level, the (federated) cooperative performs mainly the marketing function. CEAPRED has withdrawn itself from the project for a long time, and the cooperatives continue to function effectively. The essential lesson from these experiences is that certain functions such as the management of saving and credit is better performed at the small group level whereas they need higher order organizations to manage their higher order functions such as banking and marketing services for their large number of group members.

Whether at the level of the grassroots or of their higher order incarnation, democracy and the essential conditions of good governance are effectively at work in the organization and management of the SHGs in Nepal. The members of the organization effectively participate in their decision making; the SHG leadership is accountable to the members; and the functioning of the organization is transparent. Because of these good governance conditions in the groups, resources are mobilized and used for the greater good of the members; members are materially benefited in terms of increased income and employment opportunities, and they go on to effectively establish new norms of social existence wherein their mutual cooperation is heightened, evil practices such as gambling, drinking and extravagance are effectively curbed, and the whole group look to the future with vision and optimism.

Evidence also exists, although sporadically, that in those VDCs where most people are organized in such SHGs, the office bearers of the local bodies are more beholden to the wishes of their voters than otherwise. The VDC members in them are much more accountable in their behavior and the management of the VDCs themselves are more transparent. Two examples of such VDCs would be Chhatre Deurali in Dhading and Prithivi Nagar in Jhapa where most of the households in the villages are organized in small farmer groups and the SFCLs. Similarly, most of the nine VDCs in northern Gorkha under CARE Nepal RABNP project too are more transparent and accountable, given the fact that most people there are organized in the large number of SHGs there.

In these situations, the social and economic stratification in the villages notwithstanding, an association seems to exist between the majority of the people being organized in SHGs on the one hand and the increasing degree of accountability and transparency of the local leaders on the other. Should this proposition hold on a larger scale in the country, then there is a very compelling case for devolving authority all the way down to the level of the SHGs at the grassroots and to drastically redefine the roles of the VDCs, DDCs and the government service delivery agencies accordingly. With such pressure being built up from below, both the politics and bureaucracy at the national level will have to tame themselves and be increasingly accountable in their behavior in order to successfully respond to the demands from the SHGs at the grass-roots. The demand themselves are bound to be ever more persistent because of the compulsion for the local leaders to have to be responsive to the needs and priorities of their own constituents.

So far, however, there has been no purposive effort on the part of the government for instituting a well-informed policy of decentralization in the country to promote and backstop such self-help initiatives at the grassroots where Nepalese poverty is at its worst. Despite decades of rhetoric favoring decentralization, effective devolution of powers has remained a mirage. While centralized planning has persisted as the basis for national resource allocation, it has been inherently incapable to respond to the specificity of local needs and priorities. The national planning mechanism has thus stubbornly continued to preside over the continuous wastage of scarce national resources. This situation is brought to the full glare by the fact that the expenditure of enormous sums of resources over the decades has failed to make any significant dent on the continued underdevelopment and worsening poverty in the country. The national planning mechanism must acknowledge that SHGs at the grassroots are critical for successfully reaching the poor and bringing about overall socio-economic development in the communities. They have the demonstrated capacity to generate savings, promote income generating activities, adopt better health and sanitation practices, enhance access to literacy and education facilities, establish more progressive norms for population control, and ensure more effective management of infrastructure. The whole super-structure of the development bureaucracy must be geared to providing support to such self-help organizations at the grassroots.

The donors' side too assures us no better. Despite five full decades of foreign aid to Nepal, the socio-economic condition of the vast majority of the people in the country has gone only from bad to worse. The country continues to languish in abject poverty, stark under-development, unacceptability high population growth rates, ill-developed infrastructures, poor health and educational systems, acute social and economic stratification, and discriminatory access to limited social services. The numerous donors in the country whose number is steadily on the rise can't absolve themselves of their share of responsibility in perpetrating and perpetuating this mess. This raises a very fundamental question about the very justification and legitimacy of their continued cooperation in Nepal.

The mounting debt burden of Nepal, which affects the poor and the weak the most, results primarily from this largely irresponsible conduct of foreign aid both by the donor officials and their respective counterparts in the country. There are a number of regions in Nepal which after having gone through more than fifteen years of implementation of prominent bilaterally funded and donor-directed rural development projects, have now turned not into the promised oases of prosperity but into the strongholds of Maoists insurgency. The responsible donor officials and the government counterparts themselves are now ensconced conveniently away from those political hotbeds, enjoying the perks and privileges associated with their elevated positions in their organizations. And it is the very poor local people who, having been denied any role to influence the donor projects, are now left to face the music of the Maoists inserrection.

Text courtesy: "NGO, Civil Society and Government in Nepal" published by TU Sociology/Anthropology Central Department and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung-Chief editor.

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