Nurturing Civil Society Partnerships in Uncertain Times

In February 1989, a public discussion of ‘support functions’ in civil society for grassroots initiatives took place in PRIA's backyard , then celebrating seven years of our work. Findings of an external evaluation were shared with nearly 100 partners, colleagues and supporters. One of the key recommendations emerging from that public discussion was the need to provide such support more widely in different regions of the country, but in a manner and language relevant to the diversity of India’s civil society.

Against some good advice to open state branches of PRIA, the leadership explored a different route. It encouraged emergence of  support organisations within civil society, both new and existing, in different parts of the country. They were all committed to strengthening grassroots initiatives which promoted participation, agency and voice of collectives of the marginalized communities. By 1995, this effort resulted in a Network of Regional Support Organisations (NCRSOs) comprising a dozen such entities spread over nearly 20 states of the country.

During 2000-08, this partnership ‘mainstreamed’ panchayats in most socio-economic development programming of the government and capacitated thousands of development activists and organisations to work with panchayats around the country.

The present post-pandemic context is creating enormous uncertainties for civil society in India and around the world. With shrinking civic space and rapidly shifting nature of funding, the need for greater collaboration amongst civil society organisations cannot be overstated.

While PRIA’s partnership focused on shared purpose of participatory development and accountable governance, other civil society partnerships have also emerged around many issues like gender equality, sustainable development and child rights.

What have been the lessons from NCRSO partnerships?

What can we learn from past and current partnerships in terms of impacting on scale, inter-organisational collaboration and resource/expertise sharing?

As part of its PRIA@40 celebrations, a conversation is being organized by PRIA in partnership with UNNATI (Ahmedabad), Sahbhagi Shikshan Kendra (Lucknow), CYSD (Bhubaneshwar) and Samarthan (Bhopal) on September 2, 2021 between 3.30-5 pm in hybrid mode, to discuss the following questions:

1. How do civil society partnerships around shared purposes sustain themselves over time?
2. Which principles under-pin the vibrancy of such partnerships?
3. What challenges emerge in the course of such partnerships (competition for resources, contestation for leadership, conflicts around accountability, etc.)?
4. In today’s context, what will it take to nurture many more such partnerships amongst civil society?

For more detailed webinar report: Click here

For webinar recording: Click here