Voluntary organizations play an important role in promoting participation in development efforts in India. They work to organize communities and mobilize social support for government development programs. They are seen as more flexible than government bureaucracy and can take on activities like organizing the poor that the government cannot. Voluntary organizations have been recognized in India's Five Year Plans since the first plan and their role in supplementing government development efforts has increased over time. They work on issues like poverty alleviation, education, healthcare, and more. While they have limitations in scale and accountability, voluntary organizations continue to make important contributions to grassroots development in India.

1. Role of Voluntary Organisation
in Promoting Participation in
Development
Submitted to:
Mr. Ajesh P. Joseph,
School of Social Work,
Marian College,
Kuttikkanam.
Submitted by:
Bimal Antony,
II MSW,
School of Social Work,
Marian College,
Kuttikkanam.
Date of Submission:
29th August 2011.

2. Voluntary Organisation and Development 2
Introduction
Non-Governmental organisations or NGOs in brief, have been engaged in many social
development activities. They are organised by a group of people who feel that they have a moral
duty to serve the community. They are organised on a voluntary basis on the principle of service
to the socially disadvantaged classes. Their efforts supplement those of the government. Also,
they can take up many activities, like organising the poor, which the government bureaucracy is
not generally capable of taking up. In the developing countries as well as in the least developed
countries, the role of NGOs in development activities is being increasingly emphasised in such
fields as child and woman’s development, slums improvement, poverty amelioration,
environmental conservation, educational development and political movements.
The success of the Rural Development depends upon the active participation and willing co-
operation of the rural people through self-help organizations and voluntary agencies. In recent
years, the voluntary agencies have acquired greater importance and significance than before.
Voluntary action stimulated and promoted by voluntary agencies engaged in development play a
significant role at the grass roots level in the Indian social milieu; The NGOs and Government
Departments are also struggling hard to organize the people through social mobilization process
for eliciting their participation in the successful implementation of the development programmes.
Some have succeeded in the process and some are still struggling in progressive direction. Also,
the guidelines issued by the Government of India on SGSY, strongly emphasized the need for
social mobilization for the successful implementation of the SGSY scheme through effective and
innovative role of NGOs.
Role of NGOs in five years plans
After Independence, India was declared as a welfare state and relevant provisions were included
in the Constitution of India. Social welfare was included as part of the Five Year Plans. The
major responsibility of organizing social welfare services continued with the voluntary
organizations. Hence, even today it is the voluntary organizations that are taking care of welfare
activities (Basanta Kumar - 1995).
The voluntary sector has been given due importance in the planning process right from the First
Five Year Plan, as emphasis was given on public cooperation in national development with the
help of VOs. It was highlighted in the First Plan document that the “Public cooperation and
public opinion constitute the principal force and sanction behind planning. A democracy working
for social ends has to base itself on the willing assent of the people and not the coercive power of
the State.” In the Second Plan, it was reiterated that public cooperation and public opinion
constitute the principal force and sanction behind India’s approach to planning. It was observed
that wherever the people, especially in rural areas, have been approached, they have responded
with eagerness. In national extension and community project areas, in local development works,

3. Voluntary Organisation and Development 3
in shramdan, in social welfare extension projects and in the work of voluntary organisations,
there has always been willingness and enthusiasm on the part of the people to contribute in
labour and local resources have been made freely available.
The Third Five Year Plan emphasised that “The concept of public cooperation is related to the
much larger sphere of voluntary action in which the initiative and organisational responsibility
rest completely with the people and their leaders, and does not rely on legal sanctions or the
power of the State for achieving its aims. It was realised that so vast are the unsatisfied needs of
the people that all the investments in the public and private sectors together can only make a
limited provision for them. Properly organised voluntary effort may go for towards augmenting
the facilities available to the community for helping the weakest to a somewhat better life. The
wherewithal for this has to come from time, energy and other resources of millions of people for
whom VOs can find constructive channels suited to the varying conditions in the country.”
During the Fourth and Fifth Plan, the thrust on public cooperation and involvement of people’s
organisation was lost due to attack on over territory and recession that followed. During this
period investment was focussed especially in intensive agricultural programmes.
In the Sixth Five Year Plan, the idea of participation of people’s organisations was again
recognised. Success stories in the field, of VOs like the Jamkhed Project on child and health care
in Maharashtra, Bharat Agro Industries Foundation’s work in animal husbandry and social
forestry and Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) were quoted and it was stated that
the country is dotted with numerous examples of highly successful voluntary action of this
nature.
Role of VOs in development got a further fillip in the Seventh Five Year Plan where it was
declared that serious efforts would be made to involve VOs in various development programmes
to supplement the government efforts to offer the rural poor choices and alternatives. The
emphasis continued till the ongoing Ninth Plan, wherein efforts are being made to promote
peoples’ participatory bodies like Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), Self-help Groups and
NGOs for development. The following criteria were identified for identifying voluntary agencies
for enlisting help in relation to the rural development programmes:
(i) The organisation should be a legal entity.
(ii) It should be based in a rural area and be working there for a minimum of three years.
(iii) It should have broad-based objectives serving the social and economic needs of the
community as a whole and mainly the weaker sections. It must not work for profit but on 'no
profit and no loss basis'.
(iv) Its activities should be open to all citizens of India irrespective of religion, caste, creed, sex
or race.

4. Voluntary Organisation and Development 4
(v) It should have the necessary flexibility, professional competence and organisational skills to
implement programmes.
(vi) Its office bearers should not be elected members of any political party.
(vii) It declares that it will adopt constitutional and non-violent means for rural development
purposes.
(viii) It is committed to secular and democratic concepts and methods of functioning.
In the Eight Plan Document, due emphasis was given on building up people's institutions. It was
admitted that developmental activities undertaken with people's active participation have a
greater chance of success and can also be more cost-effective as compared to the development
activities undertaken by the Government where people become passive observers.
In the Ninth Five Year Plan, it was admitted that private initiative, whether individual collective
or community based, forms the essence the development strategy articulated in the Plan and
efforts to be made to remove disadvantages which had prevented some segment of our society in
participating effectively in the development process. Keeping up with this line of thinking,
“promoting and developing people’s participatory bodies like Panchayati Raj Institutions,
cooperatives and self-help groups” was one of the objectives of the Ninth Plan.
Certain disadvantages or shortcomings of voluntary sector are also well known, namely, their
inability to cooperate with each other in a way which would allow for coherent policy making,
their accountability & transparency is not perfect and their operations are smaller in scale.
Therefore, there is a need to improvise the working of VOs by scaling up their operations and by
making them transparent and accountable.
Role of NGOs in Social Mobilization
In recent times, many Non Governmental organisations have been concentrating social
mobilization on contemporary issues of importance such as women empowerment, human rights,
and implementation of various central and state government development programmes. The
NGOs in India have contributed handsomely towards social mobilization and social activism
through their intensive campaigns, people’s mobilization programmes and effective networks.
The NGO as a social force facilitates collective action and people mobilization for the purpose of
achieving the desired objectives. The NGOs are deploying various people-oriented as well as
people-centered strategies, and these organizations build rapport with the people and mobilize
them. The NGOs play in making the people environmentally aware and sensitive to take part in
the development process (Biswambhar Panda et.al -2003).

5. Voluntary Organisation and Development 5
Social mobilization and development process
There is a symbiotic relationship between social mobilization and development process. Social
mobilization lies at the genuine development. It gives impetus to the necessary changes that must
occur before developmentwhether social, political or economic-can be realized (Prasad 2003).
Social mobilization, argues Ikoiwak (1989), in fact, is an essential surgical operation for the
removal or virulent tissues of development in a polity. These malignant tissues are old or
traditional economic, social,institutional, administrative, cultural system.
Social mobilization is methodologies for making the poor contribute to economic growth. Rana
(2001) is of the opinion that “social mobilization provides a non-violent way of the morass of
deprivation, alienation, insecurity, political graft, and corruption experienced relentlessly over
the past fifty years of development and democracy”.
Deutsch (1961) states that social mobilization is a name given to an overall process of change
that happens to sustainable parts of human population in countries that are moving from
traditional to modern ways of life. This specific process of change, he says, affects residence,
occupation, social setting, associates, institutions, roles and ways of acting, demands and
capabilities. Later, Deutsch gave a rather short hand definition of his concept of social
mobilization as “the process in which major clusters of old social, economic, and psychological
commitments are eroded or broken and people become available for new patterns of
socializations and behaviour”.
Jarry Gana (1987) argues, “Social Mobilization is the process of pooling together, harnessing,
actualizing and utilizing potential human resources for the purpose of development. It is process
whereby human beings are made aware of the resources at their disposal, and are also motivated
and energized to collectively utilize such resources for the improvement of their spiritual and
material conditions of living”.
Role of Voluntary Organizations in Social Capital
opportunity for face-to-face interaction provided by participation in voluntary organizations not
only teaches essential civics skills, such as trust, compromise and reciprocity, but also binds
society together by creating bridges between diverse groups (de Tocqueville, as summarized by
Newton, 1997). These bridges are viewed as difficult to create because they necessitate people
going outside their social circles (Wuthnow, 2002).
Leonard and Onyx (2003) explore the role of strong and weak ties in the context of voluntary
organizations. Their qualitative study was conducted in three different communities in New
South Wales with respondents who had some association with community or voluntary
organizations. The conventional wisdom is that strong ties are associated with bonding and weak
ties are associated with bridging, but Leonard and Onyx’s findings do not support this
conclusion. Their analysis indicates that bridging social capital associated with voluntary
organizations is in fact dependent on strong, not weak ties. It is more likely that two different

6. Voluntary Organisation and Development 6
networks will link if they can work through a trusted intermediary. Bridging using loose ties is
only possible when the linking person is a professional who is trusted because his/her status
provides legitimacy and credibility, and he/she has demonstrated commitment.
Newton (1997) suggests that the impact of voluntary organizations on social capital depends on
the type of organization. For example, highly formalized bureaucratic organizations may have
less impact because there is not much involvement of members in the daily activities. Instead
members pay a fee to access services or benefits or maintain a symbolic attachment to the
organization because of its support of a particular social cause. This research highlights the role
of face-to-face organizational involvement in the development of trust.
There is also a question of the relative importance of voluntary organizations compared to other
societal structures promoting social capital. Marsden and Campbell (1983) found that emotional
intensity is a better indicator of tie strength than duration and frequency of contact. Thus, when
considering the importance of voluntary organizations as the “glue” that holds society together, it
may be that participation in school, family work and community may have stronger internal
effects because they take up more time and involve stronger emotional commitment (Newton,
1997).
Onyx and Bullen (2000) would agree that voluntary organizations do not have a monopoly on
the development of social capital. Their research indicates that social capital can be produced
anywhere there are dense lateral networks involving voluntary engagement, trust and mutual
benefit. While voluntary organizations are important so are informal networking among friends
and neighbours, the workplace and the educational system.
Conclusion
Voluntary organizations can play a crucial role in rural development by supplementing
Government efforts as they are close to the mind and hearts of the rural people. In the changing
scenario of the liberalization they can experiment new approaches to rural development and self
employment training. Now a days, there is huge investment by voluntary organization in rural
development and self employment training in rural area. Here, there is scope for researchers to
measure efficiency of fund utilization by the voluntary organizations in contrast to the
Government. There is need to evaluate voluntary organizations owing to their changed role.
Efficiency measure would help us to evolve an appropriate auditing / accounting model for
voluntary sector.

7. Voluntary Organisation and Development 7
References
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Bonding or Both?, Ryerson University, Working Paper Series, Number 22, November
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SGSY, State Institute of Rural Development: Maraimalai Nagar.
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