Self-Help Organizations and Good Governance

Bihari Krishna Shrestha , Freelance Anthropologist, Nepal

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 characterise the functioning of self-help groups in Nepal. First, an SHG is invariably an exclusive organisation of the direct stakeholders or users of a certain activity, infrastructure or service and is democratically organised.

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 where 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 part9icipation of all the 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 principal barrier to effective participation by women, Dalits and other poorer members in the decision-making in the communities. Invariably, it is the elite who take 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 decision 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 mobilisation for development in the communities but also an effective equalizing instrument in favour of the poor and the disadvantaged in the community.

The third attribute of Self-help Groups (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 organised self-help action.

These days, there are many non-government initiatives under which the SHOs have significantly benefited from the ISTI support provided or promoted by the concerned NGOs. Important examples of such NGOs would be CEAPRED, DSD, RSDC, SAPPROS, VDRC, etc. Even under government promoted projects such as the Remote Area Basic Needs Project of CARE-Nepal in northern Gorkha (1992-1999), the local self-help groups, 170 of them in nine VDCs, were able to bring about significant improvements in the living conditions in their remote villages due to the smooth ISTI support provided by its Project Office at Arughat in the district (Shrestha, et al, 2000). Even where no such NGOs or agency is formally committed, the spontaneously established SHGs have been able to access ISTI support from the environment although in a more limited scale than otherwise such as the Didi Banini Bachat Tatha Reen Shakari Shantha in the Amarapuri VDC of Nawalparasi district. There is, therefore, a crying need in the country for redefining the role of the government service delivery agencies so that the burgeoning population of the Self-help Organizations (SHOs) all across the country can have easy access to the ISTI support represented by them.

Besides, the recent experiences of a number of both government and non-government programs (e.g. SFCL, CEAPRED, SAPPROS, etc.) have show3n that a higher order of organisaitons 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 grassroots with a limited membership 6 to 8 generally are federated into Inter-Group organisations 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, formed of some 85 producers’ groups at the grassroots. While the saving and credit functions are still performed at the smaller groups level, the (federated) co-operative performs mainly the marketing function. CEAPRED has withdrawn itself from the project for a long time, and the co-operatives continued to function effectively (Adhikari and Shrestha, 1994). 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 organisations 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 organizations 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 mobilished 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 practice such as gambling, drinking and extravagance are effectively curbed, and the whole groups look to the future with vision an optimism.

Evidence also exists, although sporadically, that in those VDCs here most people are organised 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 behaviors and the management of the VDCs themselves are more transparent. Two examples of such VDCs would be Chhatre Deurali in Dhading and Prithivi Narayan in Jhapa where most of the households in the villages are organised in small farmer groups and 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 numbers of SHGs there.

In these situations, the social and economic stratification in the village notwithstanding, an association seems to exist between the majority of the people being organised 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 re-define 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 grassroots. The demands themselves are bound to be ever more persistent because of the compulsion for the local leaders to have to be responsive to 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 decentralisation 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 decentralisation, effective devolution of powers has remained a mirage. While centralised planning has persisted as the basis for national resource allocation, it has been inherently incapable to respond to the specificities of local needs and priorities. The national planning mechanism has thus stubbornly continued to preside over the 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 SHOs at the grassroots are critical for successfully reaching the poor and for 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 donor’s 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 only gone from bad to worse. The country continues to languish in abject poverty, stark under-development, unacceptably 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 cannot 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 operations 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 receiving counterparts in the country. There are a number of regions in Nepal which, after having gone through more than fifteen years of the implementation of prominent bilaterally funded and donor-directed rural development projects, have now turned not into the promised oases of prosperity but into strongholds of Maoist 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 Maoist insurrection.

(Excerpts from the author’s article on " The Sociological Context of (I)NGO Work in Nepal from a book, NGO, Civil Society and Government in Nepal published by Central Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, T.U in cooperation with the FES: Chief editor.)

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