The Kindness of Stangers

Context: Community actions can help overcome the failures of state and market in tackling the Covid crisis.

Significance of community actions in overcoming the failure of the state and market

• Prime Minister’s support: For active engagement of civil society in coping with the pandemic assumes great significance.
• At the time of the First Five Year Plan, J D Sethi and other Gandhian economists had called for community participation.
  • At that point, community groups collected money and supplemented government efforts for development.
• Introduction of micro-models: Small groups of students or one district collector, or even a gurdwara are capable of reducing misery.
  • In Nandurbar, for instance, a dedicated district collector has received wide attention for his apt handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • Breathe India and HelpNow represent an array of options that have come up from IITians, facilitating oxygen concentrators, hospitals and ambulances.

Way Forward:

• Role of NITI Aayog:
  • Engage government institutions that encourage public participation.
  • Support new frameworks for crisis management that critically look into the weaknesses and failures of the existing ones in attracting community participation.
  • This would also help in NITI’s own goal of localisation of development as part of its SDG strategy.
  • Should leverage advanced technologies (ABCD — artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and data analytics) for bridging demand-supply gaps.
  • Partner with willing state governments to explore the launch of platforms that promote cross-learning and experience-sharing to reduce the cost of operations.
  • Utilise DARPAN (portal for all non-governmental organisations) to involve Several in- formal entities, start-ups and others.
• Scaling up of micro-models: A unique characteristic of these models is that there is a unidirectional transfer, that is, a quid for which there is no quo.
• Spreading awareness about the achievements of community participation: Though newspaper and media, motivating many more so that the dependence on the system is considerably reduced.

Conclusion: Effective social interactions and community participation can play an important role in scaling up some of the actions that have been found useful.