In January 2011, I made a field trip to Delhi to study the Mission Convergence programme (Samajik Suvidha Sangam) of the Government of Delhi. The objective of this programme is to 'provide welfare services in an integrated manner to under-privileged citizens in an efficient, transparent, convenient, friendly and cost effective manner; to implement the action plan for welfare schemes in collaboration with community based organisations (CBOs) [...] and to promote the empowerment of women' (Mission Convergence, 2010). My research goal was to study the role of ICTs in public service delivery and community development, and in facilitating structural reform towards accountable governance.
In this context, to develop an understanding of the broader structural 
underpinnings of the programme, I visited a number of Gender Resource Centres-Suvidha Kendras (GRC-SKs) which serve as the point of interaction with the community. The centres are managed by NGOs which undertake a number of 'hard' and 'soft' tasks which includes data collection to identify vulnerable groups, information dissemination on government welfare schemes, managing and processing applications for entitlements as well as providing legal advice, health services and vocational training for women's empowerment. The rationale behind choosing to partner with NGOs is precisely to reach out to areas and vulnerable groups who are often unable to derive benefits from government outreach programmes.
On one such visit to a GRC-SK in Multani Danda in Paharganj, the role of an NGO in conducting governance activity hit home.
Unlike a sarkari office where the name of the government official you invoke is the ticket to what sort of treatment and attention you receive, or a private enterprise where the interaction is highly businesslike, the GRC-SK had a palpably different dynamic. My interview with the project coordinator took place amidst the buzz of activity at the centre, while she attended to a woman household head who had come to register for their RSBY (Rashtriya Swasthaya Bhima Yojna) health card, making arrangements for a health camp to be held the next day in the community and counselling a woman who she said had been coming to the centre four times a month for the last five months to check on the progress of her pension application. The differentiator here was the attitude adopted while interacting with community members, the time taken to sit and talk them through the process of filling out a form, often many times over. After observing the dynamic at the centre, it was also possible to distinguish between employees who were already working with the NGO and then took charge of the GRC-SK, and those who were specifically hired for that purpose. The community orientation of the former, many of whom were going beyond the 'call of duty' was evident in a number of GRC-SKs, as was a certain distance maintained by those who were hired only to coordinate the SK activities. As one coordinator who has been working with an NGO in Najafgarh for the last 4 years put it, 'Neither me nor my staff complains if we have to work on a Saturday or run a health camp past 5pm. The respect we get from the community makes the effort well worth it'.
It could be argued that 'sub-contracting' essential governance activity like data collection and beneficiary identification brings with it a whole new set of questions and challenges. However, in its present avatar, the energy and drive a community worker brings to working with the underprivileged is, I believe, a reason in itself to derive and examine structures in which such partnerships can be enduring, and to study what sort of role they could play in governance.
Deepika