Moving Pakistan to a higher development trajectory will require improving the effectiveness of government policies, programmes and projects. While the whole process - from design, to implementation to ensuring impact - presents challenges, there are a set of last mile issues: how do make the final connection between the projects and programmes with the individual households and communities who are the final targets of development work.
There have been many attempts to address this. These include efforts by NGOs to build community organizations, helping them undertake activities and eventually linking them with government service providers; efforts by governments to extend outreach of public institutions and initiatives; and, most recently, efforts by the corporate sector, as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) work, to help the poor and needy that are associated in some way with their commercial operations. All these approaches have had their success and failures. Impact could be improved if NGOs, governments and the corporate sector talked more to each other about learning from these successes and failures and to seek synergies. This is not happening and needs to change.
Community development efforts by NGOs in Pakistan started in the 1950/60s, when Akthar Hameed Khan launched his bottom-up participatory rural development programme in the Comilla district, in what was then East Pakistan. Given the weakness of government, the idea was to organize people to take charge of their own development by undertaking local community actions, to improve living conditions and to promote income generating activities. This work was continued through the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme in Gilgit Baltistan, and more recently the National Rural Support Programme, various provincial rural support programmes, and the Rural Support Programme Network. Much of the effort has gone into building relationships, trust and confidence within local communities. While this effort has given excellent results in increasing what we now call social capital, community organizations generally tend to work in isolation from the government which is often seen as corrupt, inefficient and excessively politicised.
Real impact is limited by the resources communities can mobilise themselves and additional funding, if any, comes mainly from external donors. This reliance on donors has resulted in many NGOs and rural support programmes investing heavily in catering to donor needs, including use of the latest development jargon and slick presentations.
Delivering services and helping the weaker sections of society is a public function and over the years the government’s approach to reaching poorer households and communities has been evolving. The traditional approach has been through the local government and rural development departments that undertake small scale community infrastructure works such as for drinking water, sanitation and local roads and paths. However, the proportion of public funds allocated to these programmes has been, and remains, very limited. Efforts have been made, usually at the behest of donors, to make the bigger spending departments, - such as the Irrigation Department - more participatory and responsive to peoples’ needs. These efforts have had limited success. The big spending government departments remain highly centralised and top-down with programmes that reflect political returns and rent seeking opportunities.
Other efforts have been underway for over two decades to strengthen local representative bodies, such as union councils, municipalities and district councils in order to improve government outreach. It was also anticipated that these bodies would be better able to oversee and coordinate the work of government line departments and service providers. The experience of decentralisation in Pakistan has been mixed. There has been, and continues to be, a high risk of domination of these representative bodies by local elites and political parties. As a result, different regimes have not had a strong and consistent approach to decentralisation and have blown hot and cold with regard to decentralisation initiatives.
Another response to weaknesses in the regular government structures has been the launching “special initiatives.” These are high profile public efforts but are, to a large extent, outside the purview of regular line departments. These include activities such as the Saaf Paani (clean water) programme in the Punjab and the People’s Primary Healthcare Initiative in Sindh. These programmes have benefited from strong political support, often from the highest levels of government. Moreover, government has appointed strong and charismatic managers who often operate independently, cutting through bureaucratic and inefficient government procedures. Special initiatives have certainly succeeded in getting public services to larger numbers of beneficiaries. However, traditional government departments tend to resent their high visibility and often generous funding. As a result they have not been mainstreamed and success has been much dependent on strong political support which can be unreliable and fragile. Another constraint of government programmes has been their limited collaboration with NGOs who are often perceived as over-paid and too closely linked to donors and in some cases to foreign governments.
A recent addition to the local development landscape has been the entry of the corporate sector under their CSR umbrella. Engro Foundation now runs an outreach programme to teach farmers about better fertilizer use. Assessments of their extension and training programmes suggest that they have proved highly effective. Similarly, Nestle runs programmes for small scale dairy producers In the Tharparkar District, the Thar Foundation is doing excellent work to ensure that the poor communities living around the coal mines are provided support and services in accordance with standards set under the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In Karachi, the Aman Foundation and Karigar are providing marketable skills to youth in poor areas. Such corporate initiatives are excellent and bring a result oriented management rigor to local development work. However, they tend to work in isolation with limited contact with other local development actors. This means that they miss opportunities to leverage their activities through collaboration with government departments and NGOs.
Would there be benefits if the government, NGOs and the corporate sector were to work together? The answer is a resounding Yes.
Government programmes would certainly benefit from the social capital built up by NGOs and the management systems of the corporate sector. NGOs would be more accountable if a greater proportion of their funding was channelled through the government and if they conducted the audits and financial and effectives reviews that are commonplace in large companies. Similarly, the corporate sector’s CSR efforts would be more leveraged if they were to draw on government staff, building and other facilities already existing in the areas where they work and on the community organizations developed by the NGOs.
Some work to get better collaboration between governments, NGOs and corporates is already underway. Management of some government schools and health facilities are being handed over to NGOs to operate under well-defined conditions. In Thar, the Foundation is drawing on technical skills of government’s livestock department for their aquaculture initiatives. And generally government oversight of NGOs is being improved – in fact as a result of greater scrutiny a number of NGOs have recently been prohibited from working in Pakistan.
Government, donors, think tanks and academia should now try and evaluate the impact of this collaboration and help design programmes that draw on the strengths of different actors to really benefit the people of Pakistan.
Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands.
Daud Khan is a retired UN staff based in Rome.
There have been many attempts to address this. These include efforts by NGOs to build community organizations, helping them undertake activities and eventually linking them with government service providers; efforts by governments to extend outreach of public institutions and initiatives; and, most recently, efforts by the corporate sector, as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) work, to help the poor and needy that are associated in some way with their commercial operations. All these approaches have had their success and failures. Impact could be improved if NGOs, governments and the corporate sector talked more to each other about learning from these successes and failures and to seek synergies. This is not happening and needs to change.
Community development efforts by NGOs in Pakistan started in the 1950/60s, when Akthar Hameed Khan launched his bottom-up participatory rural development programme in the Comilla district, in what was then East Pakistan. Given the weakness of government, the idea was to organize people to take charge of their own development by undertaking local community actions, to improve living conditions and to promote income generating activities. This work was continued through the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme in Gilgit Baltistan, and more recently the National Rural Support Programme, various provincial rural support programmes, and the Rural Support Programme Network. Much of the effort has gone into building relationships, trust and confidence within local communities. While this effort has given excellent results in increasing what we now call social capital, community organizations generally tend to work in isolation from the government which is often seen as corrupt, inefficient and excessively politicised.
Real impact is limited by the resources communities can mobilise themselves and additional funding, if any, comes mainly from external donors. This reliance on donors has resulted in many NGOs and rural support programmes investing heavily in catering to donor needs, including use of the latest development jargon and slick presentations.
Delivering services and helping the weaker sections of society is a public function and over the years the government’s approach to reaching poorer households and communities has been evolving. The traditional approach has been through the local government and rural development departments that undertake small scale community infrastructure works such as for drinking water, sanitation and local roads and paths. However, the proportion of public funds allocated to these programmes has been, and remains, very limited. Efforts have been made, usually at the behest of donors, to make the bigger spending departments, - such as the Irrigation Department - more participatory and responsive to peoples’ needs. These efforts have had limited success. The big spending government departments remain highly centralised and top-down with programmes that reflect political returns and rent seeking opportunities.
Other efforts have been underway for over two decades to strengthen local representative bodies, such as union councils, municipalities and district councils in order to improve government outreach. It was also anticipated that these bodies would be better able to oversee and coordinate the work of government line departments and service providers. The experience of decentralisation in Pakistan has been mixed. There has been, and continues to be, a high risk of domination of these representative bodies by local elites and political parties. As a result, different regimes have not had a strong and consistent approach to decentralisation and have blown hot and cold with regard to decentralisation initiatives.
Another response to weaknesses in the regular government structures has been the launching “special initiatives.” These are high profile public efforts but are, to a large extent, outside the purview of regular line departments. These include activities such as the Saaf Paani (clean water) programme in the Punjab and the People’s Primary Healthcare Initiative in Sindh. These programmes have benefited from strong political support, often from the highest levels of government. Moreover, government has appointed strong and charismatic managers who often operate independently, cutting through bureaucratic and inefficient government procedures. Special initiatives have certainly succeeded in getting public services to larger numbers of beneficiaries. However, traditional government departments tend to resent their high visibility and often generous funding. As a result they have not been mainstreamed and success has been much dependent on strong political support which can be unreliable and fragile. Another constraint of government programmes has been their limited collaboration with NGOs who are often perceived as over-paid and too closely linked to donors and in some cases to foreign governments.
A recent addition to the local development landscape has been the entry of the corporate sector under their CSR umbrella. Engro Foundation now runs an outreach programme to teach farmers about better fertilizer use. Assessments of their extension and training programmes suggest that they have proved highly effective. Similarly, Nestle runs programmes for small scale dairy producers In the Tharparkar District, the Thar Foundation is doing excellent work to ensure that the poor communities living around the coal mines are provided support and services in accordance with standards set under the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In Karachi, the Aman Foundation and Karigar are providing marketable skills to youth in poor areas. Such corporate initiatives are excellent and bring a result oriented management rigor to local development work. However, they tend to work in isolation with limited contact with other local development actors. This means that they miss opportunities to leverage their activities through collaboration with government departments and NGOs.
Would there be benefits if the government, NGOs and the corporate sector were to work together? The answer is a resounding Yes.
Government programmes would certainly benefit from the social capital built up by NGOs and the management systems of the corporate sector. NGOs would be more accountable if a greater proportion of their funding was channelled through the government and if they conducted the audits and financial and effectives reviews that are commonplace in large companies. Similarly, the corporate sector’s CSR efforts would be more leveraged if they were to draw on government staff, building and other facilities already existing in the areas where they work and on the community organizations developed by the NGOs.
Some work to get better collaboration between governments, NGOs and corporates is already underway. Management of some government schools and health facilities are being handed over to NGOs to operate under well-defined conditions. In Thar, the Foundation is drawing on technical skills of government’s livestock department for their aquaculture initiatives. And generally government oversight of NGOs is being improved – in fact as a result of greater scrutiny a number of NGOs have recently been prohibited from working in Pakistan.
Government, donors, think tanks and academia should now try and evaluate the impact of this collaboration and help design programmes that draw on the strengths of different actors to really benefit the people of Pakistan.
Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands.
Daud Khan is a retired UN staff based in Rome.