Tri-sector approach
Partnership between Civil Society, the Private Sector and the State
Jeevika Trust is committed to pursuing, through workshops, networks and pilot-projects, the “tri-sector” approach to rural development’; business people and NGOs, along with the rest of civil society, must find ways together to fill the gaps in government programmes in order to have an impact on rural poverty.
Fritz Schumacher advocated in ‘Small is Beautiful’ that development is a ‘difficult task in which administrators, businessmen and communicators’ – so call A-B-C groups - should work in partnership. This is in tune with the contemporary approaches to the state, the private sector and civil society working together to make a dent in the enormous problem of poverty in the developing world.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1997, Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, called for new partnership between governments, the private sector and the international community to ensure that global economic growth would be equitable and sustainable. He argued that ‘this was the way to ensure that peace and social justice could become more than a distant dream’.
It is widely accepted that tri-sector synergy is a key to effective and sustainable development. But it has not proved an easy model to put into practice. Why are good intentions and common vision not getting translated into practical action? Mutual suspicions and lack of a genuine will to collaborate have resulted from a fragmentation of activities and a failure to develop a common vision while maintaining individual roles and missions. Collaboration tends at best to be technical and self-interested (as between the private sector and the government) or hostile (between the civil society opposing business and/or the government).
But each sector has a real role to play and enormous potential for synergy. The state provides legitimacy and policy framework, the business sector can offer resources and professionalism and civil society has the capacity to mobilise people for participation in and eventual ownership of the development process.
