Networking For Survival

In the ever-burgeoning World of Causes and Causists, there’s now a Washington-based global health consortium which "promotes building partnerships in response to the AIDS pandemic". Can’t unscramble NGO-speak? Well, here’s a sample of what the consortium does. A fortnight ago, at the Fifth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) held in Kuala Lumpur, the consortium organised an "India Networking Session" to facilitate "a forum for the considerable NGO community in India to meet and determine ways of the future". Simply put, the consortium tried to help those working on HIV/AIDS in India meet up, get to know and help each other. Thanks to a net of e-mails that it had cast well in advance, it hauled in a fat chunk of the desi NGOs and delegates at the conference for its session.

The session, though, as one activist who walked out for coffee and cigarettes midway, said candidly, was "mostly PFAFF". It was generally about lengthy introductions by delegates who tended to get enthusiastic while speaking about themselves and uninterested when others did the same. Soon, Ramesh Gowd of SOS, a Nashik-based NGO that provides medical services and education for women through peer involvement, made the first dissenting noises: "There’s little purpose to this meeting if people are only interested in talking about themselves. Shouldn’t this also be about getting to know others?" Mumbai-based advocate Anand Grover, who’s been working on legal issues concerning HIV/AIDS, supplied the next biting comment: "This meeting demonstrates why networking never works in India. Most early speakers, after speaking for themselves and strengthening networks, have left." An apt finale, however, came from a desi delegate who, boosted by national ego and curiosity, got up to fling an irate query: "Why is a Washington-based agency trying to network Indian NGOs and that too in Malaysia? Why can’t we do it ourselves, in our own country?"

Why indeed? Perhaps because the consortium has more funds and better strategies to do so. Perhaps because it’s time that someone - even if Washington-based - puts his mind to making a team out of players working to achieve the same goal in a country that, even by cautious government estimates, has over four million HIV-positive people. A figure that, a recent World Bank estimate suggests, threatens to rise to 37 million by the early part of the next century. Also, perhaps, because most Indian NGOs and activists are too occupied playing lone rangers in a battle against AIDS that can’t be won without uniting forces.

Networking, that buzzword full of corporate connotations, is fast becoming an important part of the social-service sector vocabulary the world over. No more is it just about making credible acquaintances with donor agencies. Nor is it merely about nurturing solidarity between NGOs which join hands to lodge their protests and demands on streets. Networking is a strategy; an effort at forging alliances that are not just functionally convenient but deliberated. Alliances between intra- and inter-country NGOs and between activists and governments. Coalition partners who prioritise issues, learn from each other’s experiences, share expertise to prevent the spread of the virus and better the care provided to Positive People and those with AIDS.

But if the conference was any indication, our activists and government are far from the meaningful togetherness required to combat the virus. What with the government representatives at the conference seemingly displeased with the non-government sector most of the time. To a detached observer, they appeared more like adversaries tolerating each other, and that too not quite always. The first flashpoint was provided by a brochure brought out by a collective of NGOs that said "national response to AIDS is slow and sluggish". The bureaucracy couldn’t have taken it more personally! The sarkar was being bad-mouthed in an international forum. The activists obviously hadn’t worked out that in babudom’s mind, they’re the nation. "National" meant "civic society" not "government", was the justification offered.

Next, to the dismay of activists, Neelam Kapoor, a bureaucrat with National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), made an appeal to the NGOs for help. There are NGOs, she shared at the "India Networking Session", who when asked by NACO to conduct workshops have asked for fees as hefty as Rs 50,000. Though she spoke of casting off the "attitude of arrogance" the government has towards the non-governmental social sector, a true partnership between the two seemed a long way coming. As a delegate quipped: "Activists are supposed to be anti-establishment. Networking with the ‘government’ will be like selling out to them!" Maybe. But then, in this combat against AIDS, split forces might cost lives.

Not that NGO coalitions are any easier to forge. After all, competing as they are with each other for funding and attention, often activists too have been known to be the bitterest of rivals. The social-service sector is, on many occasions, as insecure, aggressive about turf, politicking and cliquing as any other segment of society. Getting its members to share a platform and priorities isn’t the smoothest of jobs. As Nithya Balaji of Nalamdana, a Chennai-based NGO that uses street theatre to spread HIV/AIDS awareness in slums and villages, says frankly: "Many are already threatened by each other over their shares in fundings, target groups and even publicity."

With an insider’s insight that comes from a close association with the NGO circuit, Geetanjali Misra, programme officer for Sexuality and Reproductive Health for the Ford Foundation, makes a more specific assessment of the problems that plague most NGO alliances. She lists egos, conflicting ideologies and the lack of patient listeners as the main problems. "Another difficulty with networks is that some become the Net and some others have to Work."

But having said so, she insists that networks do work sometimes. So, about two-and-a-half years ago, Misra initiated a process that saw 15 Ford-grantee NGOs working to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in India and Nepal group themselves as Net Works. They have met several times since then, with different organisations hosting the meetings by rotation. And it helps that these partner-organisations work with diverse constituencies, including the rural and the urban poor, the middle-class, truckers, people in prostitution, drug users, blood donors, homosexuals, non-literates, adolescents, community groups, health providers, the military and the police. The Net Works stall at the Kuala Lumpur conference, complete with brochures and posters, was the one united face of Indian activism with a definite agenda to wire up others.

Meanwhile, a lucky few Indian delegates did manage to stumble into affiliations - though more by chance than design. Participant Putul Singh, a sex worker in Calcutta’s Shethbagan, said that she had found "useful" friends at the conference. "The sex workers from Thailand have to walk the streets to solicit clients. We have landlord problems. We’ll keep each other posted on how we are tackling the problems," she says. Like Akhila Sivadas of the Delhi-based Centre for Advocacy and Research put it: "Meaningful networks happen not by thrashing out differences but cementing commonalties." Something that common concern did for a group of activists from five different countries who felt that the conference was largely ignoring lesbian issues while gay issues had taken centrestage. These activists signed a declaration of intent and put it up at the conference venue. "We demanded that lesbian issues be made more visible and be integrated into sexual and reproductive health programmes," says Radhika Chandiramani of tarshi, a sexual health helpline. "These are the informal networks that sustain us in our work."

But there aren’t many such - formal or informal networks - going around. And international conferences like the ICAAP that present the country’s government and the NGO sector with opportunity to wire up also seem to be frittered away. Said a thoughtful delegate from a Calcutta-based NGO: "It’s such a waste that most people seem to treat conferences in exotic locales as paid vacation." The Virus, though, never holidays.