By Onkareshwar Pandey
New Delhi, March 03, 2022,
With the aim to develop a new partnership standards framework as envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during Covid 19 Response Sphere India (A National Coalition of Humanitarian, Development and Resilience Actors) and IICA (Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Corporate Affairs) organized a National consultation with various stakeholders and representatives from the Government, Corporate, Civil Society, Academia, Youth and Media on 26th February 2022 at New Delhi as part of the Azaadi ka Swarn Mahotsav.
For the first time in the post-COVID 19 scenarios over 30 experts from civil society, NGO, CSR, Government, and media participated and deliberated on the structures and challenges for futuristic collaborations to nurture trust between partners while promoting accountability, improving performance and overall collective impact in humanitarian, development and resilience-building works in India.
Shri Praveen Kumar DG & CEO IICA, while addressing the gathering as Chief Guest emphasized on the need to inculcate training and capacity building also for enhancing the impact. Shri Kumar, a 1987 Batch IAS, and former Secretary, Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, congratulated the team on the progress made and expressed his willingness to support for a larger consultative process on the new Partnership Standards framework for ownership of stakeholders and developing effective collaborations in future.
Welcoming the speakers and participants Mr. Vikrant Mahajan, CEO Sphere India, explained how the good practice available in the Corporate Sector for Project Management Standards by PMI and ISO Standards for CSR has been converged with global good practice on Core Humanitarian Standards and linked with technical standards like Sphere Standards to develop this new partnership standard framework.
Mr. Mahajan, who is an expert and a master trainer on both Corporate practices like Project Management Standards, Six Sigma quality processes and global standards like CHS and Sphere Standards, further shared how the new standards framework is going to address trust issues, concerns around performance, technical knowledge while keeping the focus on affected/ at-risk vulnerable population, localisation and our development goals/targets at the center and futuristic development that will usher in more effective collaborations between stakeholders, enhance the collective impact and accountability to people and law of the land.
Several top experts and speakers like Dr. Garima Dadhich, IICA, Ms. Nidhi Pundhir, Director, HCL Foundation, Mr. Tom White, Chief of DRR, UNICEF India, Mr. Anshu Gupta, Director Goonj, and Prof. Anil Kumar Gupta of NIDM shared their views in the plenary session.
Quoting, one of the sayings of the Apple Company founder that “No great innovations can happen without Collaborations” Dr. Garima Dadhich, IICA explained how mostly the single firm single CSO kind of collaborations have been happening so far with CSR which is developing and growing over the time. “The partnership standards framework provides the tools to expand these collaborations to multi-firm multi-stakeholders which will certainly enhance the collective impact of our work. It is a very futuristic development,” said Dr. Dadhich.
Ms. Nidhi Pundhir, Director, HCL Foundation said, “Stakeholders are equally responsible, should come together, share resources, bring resources, discuss and resolve challenges for collaborative partnerships.”
Mr. Tom White, Chief of DRR, UNICEF India was of the view that “India has done well with the whole society approach, but to make it better, we need to work together, the onus is on us, we need to share the responsibility.”
Underlining, that Covid-19 has given us a chance to foster these partnerships and work in a better way, Mr. Anshu Gupta, Director Goonj said, “If we wear the lenses of the people we are working for, we'll deliver better and it is high time we now value people and purpose more than policies and focus on issues of people.”
Prof. Anil Gupta of NIDM while complementing Sphere India and IICA for the big achievement on Partnership Standards, said, “Corporates still consider CSR investments as expenditures. Investments by CSR for disaster preparedness and risk reduction can get the return on investments by reducing in losses and creating multiple business opportunities at the same time.”
Major General Dilawar Singh, former DG, Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangthan, (under the Government of India) emphasised on the need to develop leaders by putting correct actors with correct competencies thus giving a well-structured background that the collaborative aspect needs and deserves, as part of the overall objective.
Session on Impactful CSRs: Challenges and Suggestions for larger collaboration
Panel on Impactful CSR had an insightful discussion on how to develop intercorporate resource-pooling mechanisms, the challenges, and opportunities linked with it. Dr. Garima Dadhich IICA, moderated the session with Mr. Sandeep Kumar, Head CSR, Indo Count Industries Ltd, Ms. Damyanti Bhowmik, Senior Manager, CSR, Anand Automotive, Mr. Abhishek Kumar, Lead CSR, LG, Mr. Anurag Pratap, CSR Leader, Capgemini, Mr. Antony Nellissery, Chief, School Excellence, Bharti Foundation, Mr. Rahul Bansal, Partnerships Manager, UNICEF India, Mr. Ravi Raj Atrey, IICA, and Dr. KK Upadhyay, Professor and Chairperson, BIMTECH shared their expert views on challenges and the way forward.
Emphasizing the need to develop an ecosystem that can train the next-generations for emerging issues, Mr. Sandeep Kumar, Head CSR, Indo Count Industries Ltd, said, “Witnessing corporates from the lenses of responsibility rather than a mandatory output shall be the ideal mechanism which will enable us to identify a single approach that can tackle 6-7 issues for which collaborations can work out altogether.”
While supporting the idea of collaborations, Ms. Damyanti Bhowmik, Senior Manager, CSR, Anand Automotive, cautioned about the challenges saying, “Whenever we are entering into collaboration, there are bound to be challenges. However, it goes well, because a large number of people are coming together, based on their experiences and the inter-company pooling mechanism has worked well, and what has worked more is the kind of leadership.”
Talking about varied behavior change across the corporate and NGO sector and the need to focus on such challenges comprehensively Mr. Abhishek Kumar, Lead CSR, LG, said, “Pool-funding can work well for smaller companies but companies with larger funds would not want to go with the pool funding mechanism.”
Mr. Anurag Pratap opined that “Networking basically implies knitting all the work we do collaboratively together.”
Mr. Antony Nellissery, Chief, School Excellence, Bharti Foundation suggested that “Pooling mechanism in India needs to be redeveloped, aligning with government order and stakeholders, available for public view, and correlated with innovative mechanisms, with this we’ll be able to move forward in a structured manner.”
Mr. Rahul Bansal, Partnerships Manager, UNICEF India said that “The language that we speak can be understood only by people of our sector. There is a need for deliberating partnerships between NGO-CSR so that we can learn what each of us does and comprehend each other’s expectations.”
Focussing on the common goal to bring people on at least at a Minimum Standard, Mr. Ravi Raj Atrey, IICA said, “Putting passion into thought may become a major revolution under the collaboration model.”
Mr. Vikrant Mahajan, CEO Sphere India stated that the concept of collaborations is working successfully in many other countries. “We can learn from other countries and mostly from the developed world. Common-resource pool is complex, complicated, and neither easy nor impossible. For this to work we must come together and find ways to go forward,” said Mahajan.
Dr. KK Upadhyay, Professor, and Chairperson, BIMTECH while recognizing that the pooling of resources is going to be a very challenging task, said, “It has a potential which should be leveraged while addressing concerns step by step.” He clarified that pooling resources/funds do not necessarily mean contributing funds in one account; it’s a concept through which resources with different actors can be coordinated for achieving a larger impact.
NIDM with Sphere India have released Sector Guidelines for Six important social sectors (for other sectors corresponding to each of SDG, it is under development), the implementation of it at state and district level opens the possibilities of identifying desired projects for emergency preparedness and response, Development with disaster risk reduction which can be implemented through collaborative partnerships of Govt, CSOs and CSRs while coordinating support from Project Management Units by IICA and Sphere India.