Development Processes: Civil Society, SHGs, NGOs and Pressure Groups

What the official syllabus says

GPSC Main Examination, Paper V: General Studies-II, (B) Governance and Social Justice:

• Development processes: the role of civil society, SHG, NGOs, pressure groups and other stakeholders.

Topics in detail

Civil society

• Meaning: the space between the family, the market and the State
• Forms: voluntary organisations, community-based organisations, trade unions, co-operatives, professional bodies, religious and charitable trusts, media
• Roles: service delivery, advocacy, watchdog, awareness, building social capital
• Movements that shaped laws: the right to information campaign, the right to food campaign

Self-help groups

• Concept: small groups, mostly of women, that save, lend internally and borrow from banks
• SHG-Bank Linkage Programme of NABARD (1992)
• Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (launched as NRLM in 2011)
• Federations of SHGs at village and cluster levels
• Benefits: financial inclusion, women's empowerment, livelihoods
• Issues: dependence on subsidy, quality of groups, market linkage
• Gujarat example: the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), founded in Ahmedabad in 1972

Non-governmental organisations

• Legal forms: societies (Societies Registration Act, 1860), trusts, Section 8 companies (Companies Act, 2013)
• Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 and its amendments
• NGO-government partnership: NGO Darpan portal of NITI Aayog
• Issues: accountability, transparency of funds, dependence on grants

Pressure groups

• Meaning and how pressure groups differ from political parties
• Types: business groups, trade unions, farmers' organisations, professional associations, caste and religious groups, student organisations
• Methods: lobbying, representations, public campaigns, litigation, protest
• Role in democracy and the risk of capture of policy by narrow interests

Social movements and participation

• Role of social movements in development debates: environment, displacement and rehabilitation, rights of forest dwellers, women's rights
• National Policy on the Voluntary Sector, 2007
• Media and citizen journalism as stakeholders
• Relations between the State and civil society: partnership, contestation and regulation

Other stakeholders in development

• Corporate social responsibility under Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013
• Co-operatives (Part IXB of the Constitution)
• Community participation in planning: Gram Sabha, Gram Panchayat Development Plans
• Philanthropy and international development partners
• Ministry of Co-operation (2021) and the Multi-State Co-operative Societies Act, 2002
• Microfinance institutions and their regulation by the Reserve Bank
• Public-private partnership in service delivery
• Farmer producer organisations
• Resident welfare associations and user groups (water user associations, joint forest management committees)

Overlaps

Gujarat's own SHG and livelihood work is covered on Gujarat: Social Sector, Poverty and Welfare; the co-operative sector of Gujarat is in General Studies-III.