Two-day Development Dialogue of Deshpande Foundation begins
Principal Secretary to Government of Karnataka, Department of IT, BT, Science and Technology, V. Manjula, has said that non-governmental organisations working with the government were failing in the process of expanding their activities despite having successfully executed pilot projects.
She was speaking at the keynote panel discussion on “What does it take to scale: Leveraging Public-Private Partnerships” on the inaugural day of the 10th Development Dialogue organised by Deshpande Foundation here on Saturday.
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In the panel discussion moderated by Founder of Deshpande Foundation and serial entrepreneur Gururaj Deshpande, Ms. Manjula pointed out that while the NGOs were good in executing focused programmes in association with the government, they somehow failed in execution when asked to scale up.
She said: “In the government sector, programmes are first implemented on pilot basis and then based on the result, further scaling up takes place. However, when asked to scale up, the organisations often fail to ensure proper execution, and monitoring is also poor. I believe the problem is due to failure to enhance one’s capacity before expanding the area of work”.
However she said there was enough scope for the organisations to work with the government provided they had a good replicable model. She also pointed out that without good use of technology scaling up would not be possible.
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Government’s role
Emphasising the government’s role in funding NGOs in reaching out to more people, Vice-President of ISKCON Chalapati Dasa said the Akshaya Patra Foundation was now feeding 1.6 million children in Karnataka with the government’s help. “Our plan is to reach at least 5% of the 100 million children by 2020. We have an MoU with the Uttar Pradesh Government now and another with Jharkhand is under process”, he said.
Ramji Raghavan of Agastya International Foundation said that apart from funding, the government’s association was required in social initiatives for getting various permissions. Dilip Modi of Ek Soch Sandbox said a combination of ‘not for profit’ and ‘for profit’ initiatives was required to make scaling up more effective. Executive Vice-President of Jain Irrigaton R.V. Jain presented his model of scaling up.
Fellow Programme
Earlier in the kick-off session, Mr. Gururaj Deshpande presented the organisation’s plan for the next decade. Announcing the launch of ‘Fellow Programme’ of three months, he invited government and private sector representatives to participate to take forward the social initiatives. Delegates from across the country and from United States and Canada are participating in the two-day event.