Bypassing funds crunch: Top Ahmedabad NGO to go all-India with its new business model for social cause

Gagan Sethi, Madhava Menon, Rajendra Joshi

In an apparent move to bypass foreign funding dilemma, a top Ahmedabad-based NGO, Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), working in the arena of social justice lawyering, has decided to go all-India with its Nyayika experiment, operating as a non-profit company under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956. The Act allows setting up private limited companies to “promote” commerce, art, science, charity or any other “useful” activities on a no-profit-no-loss basis. Currently, Nyayika operates from eight centres in Gujarat -- Ahwa, Modasa, Mandvi, Bharuch, Palanpur, Amreli, Vadodara and Ahmedabad – providing affordable legal services to vulnerable sections.
A high-level seminar at Vishwa Yuvak Kendra, Chanakyapuri, Delhi, sponsored by CSJ, was told, over the next five years, Nyayika envisages setting up new centres in Gujarat but also expanding to Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab. In all 30 centres will be opened, it was pointed out at the seminar, adding, they will work within the framework of combining the business model of a law firm and the NGO model of empowering vulnerable sections through outreach programmes.
Critical of “voluntary organization-run free legal aid centres” which Nyayika said face issues of “poor accountability towards clients and lack of continued funding, making them unsustainable over a long period of time”, a book showcasing Nayika insisted, “As a result of this, people seeking legal services are left with no option but to face exploitation in the hands of mainstream lawyers who often charge fees arbitrarily and offer mediocre services.”
While the decision to take the Nyayika experiment all-India comes amidst shrinking scope for foreign funding to NGOs in the recent past, first during the UPA regime and now under the NDA, a demonstration at the seminar was made before senior lawyers, social activists and experts suggested how the model of providing legal services at affordable fees from clients to sustain its operations could actually become viable.

The Nyayika book titled “Setting up Social Justice Law Firms: Experiences of Nyayika” released on November 9 at the seminar said the Nyayika experiment in Gujarat was based on a “business model with its own revenue generation and expenditure plans and which is dependent on collection of fees for services provided for its sustainability and growth.” It added, Nyayika provides “quality professional legal services charging affordable fee in order to subsidize those who cannot pay”.
Called “National Meet of Social Justice Lawyers”, the Nyayika seminar saw release of the book by top legal luminary Prof Madhava Menon, currently chancellor, Guru Ghasidas Central University, Chhattisgarh. Participants included Nyayika founders Rajendra Joshi of the SAATH Charitable Trust, Ahmedabad; Gagan Sethi, chairman of Janvikas, Ahmedabad; Nupur Sinha, executive director of Centre for Social Justice, Ahmedabad; and Satyajeet Majumdar, CEO, Nyayika.
The book, which points towards how Nyayika has functioned ever since it was founded in October 2013, says the organization is based on a revenue sharing model where 70 per cent of the earnings are used to meet recurring expenditure of those who enter into agreement with Nyayika as associates to provide legal services, and 30 per cent are taken by the company to meet its expenses. At the same time, Nyayika promotes a franchise model, under which overall operations are planned, coordinated and monitored by a central team, and the local operators are responsibility of the franchisee. The company invests in fixed costs while the recurring costs are borne by the franchisee.
The total number of cases handled so far by Nyayika is 1,217, the book informs, adding, Nyayika centres “provided legal advice, assisted entitlement holders to apply for benefits under government schemes, and carried out conciliation and filed court cases on behalf of the clients, all of which is included in this figure. The cases handled mostly comprised of cases of violence against women (193 cases), cases of workmen’s rights (59 cases) and land rights (301 cases).” It also took up “consumer disputes, cases of fraud, dishonor of cheques and property disputes.”

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog