Please Do no harm

NGOs can perform better in Kashmir only if they take into account social, economic and cultural components of Kashmir, writes Suhail Masoodi

Some time back I attended a seminar organized by "KOSHISH" a local NGO on community care or institutional care for orphans. As a student of this sector I was expecting to learn new things on this important topic from the esteemed speakers, but alas that didn't happen.

While listening to many speakers on the topic I understood we have to do a lot of home work before we engage with it seriously. It has been rightly said "little knowledge is a dangerous thing". A superficial knowledge about things will not help us achieve the mission of helping orphans. One may be the jack of all trades but surely one cannot be the master of all. We can speak for hours and hours on a topic, but without any proper expertise one cannot do justice to it. In the American medical system there is a term called "Do no harm", which means if you do not have expertise on a particular subject, you can sometimes do harm unconsciously. We in Kashmir mostly do harm without having an understanding of the concerns which we seek to address. Here I am not going to talk about our medical system, but our NGO system, where we call ourselves, professional social workers, development experts, child rights experts, human rights experts or what not, without having any proper training in these fields.
In any intervention lack of proper expertise often leads to more harm than good. The manifest example of this kind could be found during 2005 earthquake, where we created begging culture in the earthquake affected areas by making people habitual of taking relief. I remember a day in the aftermath of the earthquake when I was coming down from Kamalkote Uri, a girl hardly 7 or 8 waved at me. I asked my driver to stop the car. No sooner had we stopped, she forwarded her hand for relief (relief melay ga). I was shocked to see a little girl turn to begging in the wake of relief efforts carried out by Kashmiri civil society. Later I was to encounter many a young beggar in the same area. A new and young breed of beggars had cropped up after the quake affected areas had been swarmed by troupes of NGOs to undertake relief operations.
Back to the earlier point of community care or institutional care, I heard speakers arguing whether we needed to support orphans in their respective homes or in orphanages. Most of the speaker supported community care and argued that they (orphans) should be kept in their homes where their needs could be taken care of.
I find myself in agreement with the same argument, but the question that arises is, do we have resources to support an orphan at his/her home? Is our society capable of catering to the needs of orphans?
Technically, if a child has lost only one of his or her parents, he or she is not an orphan. Only if he/she has lost both of his or her parents then only he/she is called an orphan. Since ours is a patriarchal society, the male being the head of the family, if some body lose his/her father he/she is called an orphan. If the same kid has lost his or her mother, he or she would not be considered an orphan. So to define it more clearly it is a matter of economics and social system. The classification may be seen to hinge more on economics than on any other criterion since most of the orphans come from poor family backgrounds and their mothers tend to be usually house wives and illiterate. So only financial assistance to these kids will not solve their problem. We need to take a family as unit and support the whole family rather than an orphan in the family. Because supporting only an orphan in a family will not help us reach our goal. Moreover, we need to build a community based system, where educated people from the adjacent localities will make regular visits to these families to check the progress of the kids. It has been observed those orphans who are being supported in their homes usually lack the literary culture as the families are not educated. So members of our society can fill this gap by making regular visits. Some people argue that there is more number of orphans in Chechnya, Palestine and many other conflict-hit areas than Kashmir. Why then orphanages were not created in these places? The answer is simple; the countries like Palestine, Chechnya etc are much ahead of us in literacy, economic development and community care. Their average literacy and average house hold income is much higher than ours. So they didn't have to negotiate huge problems regarding handling these kids. In Palestine or Chechnya, a mother is largely able to provide all sort of necessary assistance to a child, be it in terms of education or in any other critical realm but same couldn't hold true for mothers of Kashmiri orphans. As we have seen in our orphanages most of the kids are from very poor households. The ones who have better economic conditions live in their homes.
One of the biggest draw backs of our NGO system is: while making strategies for projects and programs we look at symptoms and not at the problems. We want quick fix solutions to every major problem. We are not able to develop goal and time bound strategies for our projects. We don't look at projects critically. Besides our own drawbacks, NGOs accept whatever project comes from their donor agencies, irrespective of whether the program can be fruitful at the ground level or not. Most of the times projects and strategies are formed in Delhi, Europe or the U.S; devised for their own local settings and implemented in toto in Kashmir. Usually organizations should have a bottom-up approach, but in Kashmir we tend to take a top-down approach. Projects should be formed and implemented at the grassroots level. It is the people on the ground who understand the needs and problems of the locals in a better way than somebody located thousands of miles away and largely unaware of the socio-economic dimensions of a far away region. Most of our NGOs fail to develop a sustainable program strategy, proper exit strategy, good planning, and clear cut field domain of work.
There is no transparency of funds in NGO sector in Kashmir. Hardly any NGO makes their monthly and yearly expenses public. No doubt NGO's are answerable to their donors, but they are answerable to the target group community as well. Target group here does not mean if an NGO is working in Uri, they are answerable to the people of Uri only, but they are answerable to the whole Kashmiri community. In spite of their drawbacks there are agencies like Vigilance, Crime Branch and other organizations to monitor the functioning of government departments, but we do not have any such independent organization to monitor the functioning of NGOs. Be it local, Indian or an international NGO. We need to build a system where functioning of all organizations can be checked to ensure transparency and accountability. We have seen surveys done by some Indian and international NGOs in Kashmir which are totally distorting. Things like Conflict and Peace-building are being sold to gain personal interests. For example, according to a survey done by an International NGO, 50% of youth in district Islamabad are drug addicts. What is the authenticity of the survey? On the basis of samples collected in few villages one cannot make sweeping generalizations about one of the most populous districts of the Valley. Surveys are being done to fetch more and more money from donors. Some believe there are one lakh orphans, some contend that there are fifty thousand orphans in Kashmir and some claim the number of orphans to be around 2 lakh. We don't know the authenticity of these reports. There are thousands of NGOs in Kashmir, majority of them have been created by government or government run agencies. These so called NGOs supposedly fetch money for the development of Kashmir. Where does this money go? Nobody seems to know? Most of the times money is donated for the Kashmir region as it is the worst hit conflict area as compared to Jammu and Ladakh regions. But unfortunately people running these NGOs invest this money for the development of Jammu and Ladakh regions. Problems don't end here. Some NGOs even go further, spending hefty amounts of money on various research and development projects which don't yield any effective results. The position of many orphanages in Kashmir is somewhat similar. They too are not ready to share their expenditures. Moreover, if you are a Kashmiri you are not allowed to meet orphans in the most of the orphanages in Kashmir. However, people visiting from foreign countries are welcomed in these orphanages by their managers.
In Kashmir NGO culture is very nascent and people are not much aware of their scope, functioning, roles, source of funding etc. So civil society needs to come forward and define the scope and functioning of NGOs. It has been seen mostly after the 2005 earthquake that most of the NGOs are being dubbed as Christian missionaries, which is not true. There is no doubt that there are NGOs which aim to spread Christianity, but not all the NGOs can be bracketed in the same category, as has been perceived by some of our people.
Most of the times government funds meant for development are lapsed because project proposals do not justify the purpose and equally fail to justify the outcome of the program or the project. A government official disclosed in a workshop, organized by IMPA for the capacity building of NGOs, that thousands of project proposals are rejected as they are not written in a professional way. So we need to train people in Project designing, Monitoring and evaluation to reach our goal effectively
International and national NGOs need to build capacity of local NGOs to pave the way for local people to change their lives according to their wishes and needs. It is the local people who understand the situation in a better way. We have seen in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake some NGOs distributing lipstick, mineral water and other luxury items in Tanghdar, Kupwara. So to start work in a particular area or region, we have to have a good knowledge of the culture, topography, demography, social inhibitions. Without keeping these factors in mind we would end up harming a community instead of helping them.

suggestions
We need to have goal oriented and time bound projects and programs, which will help us check whether we are reach our goals in stipulated time or not. We have seen some international NGOs working here from last one or two decades without producing any substantial results. NGOs need to be time bound and specific. Many NGOs are shifting from one sector to another. Some times NGOs consider themselves parallel to the government. It is not easy to replace the government. Even if it is, one should not try to. Otherwise they tend to overstretch their domain and as a result they are not able to do justice with the particular issue. A marvelous example of specific and goal oriented project undertaken can be that of Muhammad Yunus who established Grameen Bank (an organisation established for the sole purpose of providing micro-credit loans to poorest of the poor in Bangladesh). Yunus gave 27 dollars to 42 hardworking skilled people to start their business, with an agreement that they will pay him back. It was not a big deal for Yunus to donate this money to these poor people but he didn't want to build a begging culture, unlike most of our NGOs. After many disappointments from different quarters, he planned to establish his own bank and thus he laid the foundation of Grameen Bank on October 2nd, 1983. Grameen Bank works now in more than 46,000 villages, through 1,267 branches and over 12,000 staff. The bank lent more than 4.5 billion dollars. They have now started giving loans to beggars to help them come out of begging and start selling things. Had Muhammad Yunus switched from one project to other he would not have reached anywhere. So our NGOs need to be focused to reach their goals. We need to develop the strategy to be effective in our work in a way so that do no harm, even unintentionally.
Tail piece
There is no doubt that there are some NGOs in Kashmir who have been doing a commendable job for the upliftment of the needy in our society. Some NGOs have played an important role for the rehabilitation of earthquake affected families in different parts of Valley. NGOs in Kashmir have been working in odd conditions, under the threat from many sides in the conflict. At the same time many NGOs have been hijacked by different people and organizations to further their personal interests. It is high time that NGOs in Kashmir work more positively, transparently and with a clear cut strategy so that people will not look at them with suspicion and stop giving this noble profession a bad name. NGOs in Kashmir are known for money swindling, nepotism, shady character, and what not. Hope the NGOs in Kashmir would turn a new leaf and prove to be agents of a positive and fruitful social change.