Strengthening Local Governance through GO-NGO Collaboration: A Study on Sharique Project in Bangladesh

Abstract

The main intention of this empirical study is to unearth the possible results of collaborative attempts (synergistic or incompatible) of Governmental Organisations (GOs) and Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs), which are intended to strengthen democratic governance of the local government institutions in general and of the UPs in particular. Endeavours have been made to discover the existing efforts of the government and GOs and NGOs’ collaborative efforts to establish citizen friendly local governance. In order to attain this objective, a collaborative effort named ‘Sharique: A Local Governance Project’ has been selected for the study due to the fact that it has been in operation since 2006 and working with both demand and supply side actors simultaneously. Thus, the study sheds light on the state of implementation of some of the most important provisions of the Local Government (Union Parishad) Act 2009 (hereinafter the UP Act of 2009) and UP operational manual of 2012 in broad spectrum, and institutionalisation of participatory planning and budgeting, holding officials accountable, dissemination of necessary information, ensuring fiscal autonomy and mainstreaming gender precisely. Primary and secondary sources of data have been used in the study. Qualitative data has been used dominantly while quantitative data has been used on a limited scale in order to understand the likely outcomes of collaboration. The study has come up with a number of important findings. The first set of findings is related to the extensive initiatives of the government to strengthen the governance of local bodies. The most striking finding is that despite many initiatives, none of the regimes could strengthen the local government bodies at an optimum level as most of the reforms of the government stemmed from political rationales and concentrated on cosmetic conversions through bringing modification of functions and organizational structures of local government. That is why, the devolution of executive and economic power to the LGIs remains rhetorical and merely helping the course of lip services. However, the most recent laws of the land, particularly the UP act of 2009 includes specific provisions for participatory governance, implementation of Rights to Information (RTI), and Citizens Charter (CC), establishment of inclusive governance having a particular focus on reducing gender gap to conform to the arguments of good governance, social accountability and New Public Management (NPM) techniques. The second set of results includes discussions on varied collaborative endeavours those were intended to strengthen governance mostly at the local level. This research exertion includes ten programmes in the study to examine commonalities among the schemes exhaustively. The results precisely reveal that these programmes invested their efforts targeting both supply and demand side actors for knowledge and awareness building, capacity building at individual, organisational and environmental level, developing Community Based Organizations (CBOs), sensitising on gender, effective advocacy to take along shift in policies, agency building, increasing people engagement, etc. to ensure improved service delivery and direct representation of the folk in local governance. The third comprehensive set of findings is based on five propositions, which include that extensive collaboration of Sharique project with UPs exert promising results in five areas: capacitation, people’s direct participation, accountability and transparency, fiscal autonomy and gender mainstreaming. The findings reveal that the UPs, which are meaningfully engaged in collaborative partnership with Sharique project for SLG, display an encouraging shift towards better governance as compared to control areas. Evidences uncover the fact that citizens have become conversant on their rights and entitlements, as well as their opportunity to portray influential roles in decision making that affect their means of support and dignity. The results suggest that the participation of citizens has been boosted along with social inclusiveness to place demands. In response, the officials’ receptiveness towards people’s demands follows the route of an upward curve. To meet the increased demands, the UPs of collaborative areas reinforce their conscious efforts to collect an increased amount of revenue from their own derivations through increasing tax rate and tax bases, as well as spreading out non-tax sources, which result in increased own revenue receipt. Women do not stay out of the process, as they claim expanded areas in the realm of governance for prominently displaying their visible presence both as political agents and as principals. However, the processes are not hassle-free, as some daunting challenges of democratic governance at local level impede the seamless progressions. The challenges include tokenistic participation, ominous presence of ‘partyarchy’ and patron-client culture, fragile shape of downward accountability, compromise in upward accountability, low level of fiscal autonomy with small own proceeds and substantial dependency on national government revenues, prevalence state of patriarchy and insubstantial state of cognitive and functional capacity of women members. The fourth set of experiential findings incorporates results regarding the collaboration practice itself and challenges of the same. Considerable evidences assist to detect development of social capital between officials of both Sharique and UPs, as well as between NGO officials and local citizens. The flourished social capital expedites the collaborative attempts, as the result suggests an increased level of social capital and lengthier period of stay of the programme in collaboration culminate in better outcomes. The formidable challenges of local level collaboration for SLG remain multidimensional including: making project outcome sustainable, institutionalisation and mainstreaming of the best practices of the project, the absence of statutory protection and policy guidelines, meeting of growing demands for matching funds, incorporating political leaders and local level bureaucrats in the process of teamwork to mention the few. Eventually, some practical suggestions for collaborative programmes have been forwarded as policy implications. Plausible suggestions invariably include: arrangement of government policy, and development of statutory documents to adequately support the possible GO-NGO collaboration for SLG, formation of potential tripartite committees of NGO and UP executives and dwellers to implement the project, and rigorously evaluate the project outcomes, inception of incentive mechanisms for citizen’s engagement, mobilisation of enabling services and assistance from CSOs/NGOs, political leaders, civil servants at field platforms, line agency officials, and initialisation of partnership governance with the LGIs. All these challenges entail strong political commitment of the central government along with backings of other actors. In this regard, the study offers a standard model of conceivable GO-NGO collaboration at local level for successful promotion of SLG.