Rajnath Singh: Need coordinated solutions to deal with world’s problems, says Rajnath | Jaipur News
Addressing the Civil 20 (C20) India Summit in Jaipur, Singh said that the advantages of the CSOs and traditional government structures need to be harnessed to achieve the goal of holistic development.
“While the government apparatus is more rigidly structured and institutionalised and the initiatives broadly represent the ideas of a substantial majority; the CSOs have fluid structures that provide a greater scope for new ideas and practices to play out in the society,” said Singh.
In modern state structures, he said, the governments cannot act in a hasty manner on novel and untested ideas, but the CSOs have a plenty of scope as they operate in a bottom-up approach and are more responsive towards the ever-shifting ground realities.
“The CSOs can act as force-multipliers for the governments,” he added.
There are various C20 groups working on diverse domains ranging from integrated holistic health, education and digital transformation, gender equality to technology, security and transparency. The Defence minister emphasised that these groups have the potential to impact official policies and programmes, across all the dimensions of today’s social, economic and environmental challenges. Singh listed out a number of examples, where both the government and civil society played a complementary role in enhancing the human well-being. “Many of the government’s landmark initiatives such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Abhiyan etc., which have brought significant transformational and attitudinal changes in the society, were complemented by the herculean efforts made by various CSOs in these fields, he said.
At a broader level, it can be asserted that a robust and enlightened civil society is essential for a functioning democracy, as it enables the citizens to engage in deliberative dialogues and cooperative efforts, outside the adversarial arena of electoral politics, towards achieving the national objectives,” he said. He pointed out that while G20 is a rigidly structured forum, C20 represents numerous CSOs from across the spectrum. “The flexible, inclusive approach of C20 forum can both learn from and teach the G20, leading to further improvement in the design and implementation of policies and programmes at the global level. Thus, at the levels of C20 and G20, there exists a symbiotic relationship through which a positive feedback mechanism can be established,” added Singh.
