Social Sector in India: Post-pandemic challenges and opportunities

The devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on communities and countries across the world has led to the erosion of decades of progress made towards sustainable development goals.

The economic impact of the pandemic in India is echoed in several reports and statics such as the Centre for Monitoring of the Indian Economy’s (CMIE) statistics about 10 million Indians losing their jobs during the second wave of the pandemic. Even though a semblance of normalcy that has returned, we cannot rely on it to be permanent or erase the damage that has already been done.

For things to improve drastically on the health, economic and social front, the government needs additional support from India’s social sector to help create true positive change. India’s social sector has always been a vibrant one with over 3.17 million registered non-profits working across different fields.

Like most other countries, civil society, voluntary and non-governmental organisations have constituted the backbone of our society. And for a country such as India with its vastness of geography and population, the social sector plays an even more crucial role as they step up to further support and bolster the government’s efforts to reach as many people as possible.

The social sector in India was particularly hit hard with the onset of the pandemic as all funding streams were rightly rerouted towards emergency and relief work. Funding and cash flow were the biggest challenges for NGOs and all non-profit organisations across the board.

In fact, a rapid research study conducted by the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy (CSIP) during the early months of the pandemic found that one-third of Indian NGOs didn’t have adequate funds to survive for the next six months.

Faced with such existential threats, most NGOs were forced to cut down on programmes and staff to just survive. Despite these seemingly insurmountable challenges, most social sector organisations have adapted to the best of their abilities and continue to find ways to rebuild people’s lives and work for the public good.

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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

However, we will be remiss to not see the gleaming opportunity amidst this crisis – the chance to reimagine relationships between social sector organisations, businesses, and the government. And this is where the role of CSR comes in. Currently, as per the Ministry of Corporate Affairs mandate, companies are required to spend two per cent of their profits on CSR projects.

However, the scale of the devastation during the pandemic makes it abundantly clear that companies need to do more than this and not pay mere lip service to social causes.

Nearly 75 million people were pushed into poverty during the pandemic, and so Covid-19 has thus presented the corporate world with an opportunity to redefine the way they look at social causes and widen the ambit of CSR from being just compliance-based to an outlook that percolates into every aspect of doing business.

In addition to increasing CSR commitments, the government and the social sector have an immense opportunity to leverage technology to bring about change. And this can be done through initiating more socio-tech ventures.

By integrating technology into the core of their programmes, more and more non-profits can deliver lasting impact at scale – something that is crucial for India due to its vast numbers and myriad socio-economic challenges.

In the future, advances made in artificial intelligence and other technology will be able to solve age-old systemic problems that on the surface don’t even have anything to do with tech.

We are already seeing this happen in the for-profit sector, whether it is healthcare apps that are making it easier to book our next appointment or traditional farming practices that are being revived using emerging technology. Technology, if not driven by profit alone, can be immensely beneficial to the social sector.

The pandemic continues to be one the biggest destabilising events of the 21^st century that will cause long-term structural ramifications. For us to tackle these multi-fold challenges, the social sector will have to be brave enough to battle challenges and clever enough to recognise opportunities to create a better future for everyone.