From the desk of the President
 |
| Dr. P. S. Shandilya |
I
am happy to represent Nirmal
Bahuddeshiya Sanstha that it has successfully
completed 2 years of its glorious
journey and as it enters its third year, it is my privilege to be its Secretary.
Ninrmal
was set up by a team of visionaries. That
partnerships and collaboration are important strategies for development, and
will become even more important in the era of open economy was something that
the founders visualized and wanted to set up mechanisms to be prepared for the
change. The vision statement of Nirmal holds good today.
Nirmal has over the past two years experimented with a variety of innovative
ideas to build and develop these partnerships. Some very interesting
initiatives have been undertaken and each of these has strengthened the
partnership processes. Yet a lot remains to be done. We need to build upon
these experiences. It has, despite its interesting format and idea, still
operated at the margins. We need to bring it centre stage to the new
initiatives that are developing in the areas of Public Private Partnerships.
Moving from the role of building collaboration, Nirmal has to expand and evolve the agenda of
Community VS (Voluntary Sector). During the past two years the idea has been
developed and linkages with the private sector have also been initiated that
can shape this agenda. One of the successes of Nirmal has been its ability to be able to interface
with both the government and the voluntary sector with equal ease and I am
happy to say that we have been able to maintain that faith in both sectors. We
have to be able to now also respond effectively to the demands that are being
placed on us. To expand outreach and make our program delivery more effective,
we have decided to develop Area offices gradually. This will ensure that Nirmal is closer to its target groups and can provide
more effective services and be more responsive and dynamic to people’s needs. This
year onward we the
team of Nirmal will
hope to broad base support of developmental organizations / govt.
departments / donors
etc. and hope to also increase the magnitude of work over the next few years.
We are also proposing to expand the membership to the General Body of Nirmal and have received a large number of
applications. By broad basing the membership, we will be able to generate more
interest in the organization and also make the programming and initiatives more
relevant.
As
a strategy, Nirmal has continued to
work with carefully identified smaller voluntary efforts. Our response from
this group has been an important motivation to go on. Capacity development in
the sector will thus remain an important agenda for the organization. Civil
society institutions like the voluntary agencies that Nirmal is working with and we need to be able to
encourage such initiatives and make them more widespread covering every
district of our operational states. More than just ‘projects’, it is an
institutional base that will help achieve the long term goals of development. Nirmal would like to see a large number of effective
development partnerships develop between the government and the voluntary
agencies and also the private sector in each district of the state and for that
to happen the voluntary agencies must have the intrinsic capacity to take on
such evolved roles.
