Rannveig Rajendram
Counsellor, Royal Norwegian Embassy, New Delhi

The beauty of Norway India Partnership Initiative (NIPI) is that it has a high risk profile and the willingness to take risk, which means the organisation is willing to fail, willing to test things and if they dont work out get rid of them and move on, says Rannveig Rajendram, Counsellor, Royal Norwegian Embassy, New Delhi, in an interview with Kartik Sharma of Elets News Network (ENN).

Norway is known worldwide as the top country when it comes to human index, how do you see Norway supporting India to improve on human development?

I think Norway doesnt have to teach a lot to India. India is probably more important to Norway than Norway is to India. This is because of its sheer size. NIPI (Norway India Partnership Initiative) is a good example in that sense because what we are providing in India is obviously not funding. It is all about technical support. We do not have a bilateral programme as such in India, but we have a 50-year-old relation. We were one of the first donors that had full-fledged programme in India.

As, over the time, India evolved and developed, there was no need of funding. So far as small donors are concerned, in 2003, India said that administrative cost of managing the funds is outweighing the benefits. So, the focus shifted on big donors. We do still have bilateral relations in trade, environment, renewable energy, etc, but we are not providing funding as such but only techno- managerial support.

However, because of a common interest between the then prime ministers Manmohan Singh and Jens Stoltenberg to cooperate in achieving the MDGs 4 and 5 to reduce maternal and child mortality, they agreed to have a programme despite the fact that we are not engaged bilaterally. So, we do not have a cooperation agreement with the government as such, but we are working through our partners.

What are the key areas where NIPI has been active over the years?

NIPI is only active in maternal and child health. We are working on research projects between Norway and India in other areas as well. But our main focus is on child and mother health. Its not a programme as such but we are testing innovations in this particular field and if any of these innovations found successful, it would be taken over by the government.

The beauty of NIPI is that we have a high risk profile and the willingness to take risk because without risks there are no gains. In development lingua, you always want to showcase the best example but dont want to fail. However, I have learnt a new phrase “ failing with dignity. It means that we are willing to fail, willing to test things and if they dont work out we have to get rid of them and then move on. It is the best example of how a development work should be carried out. It is one of the key success factors.

The second factor of our success is that we work only with and within government structures. We dont have any parallel structures and we work in total alignment with governments. We are a partner in the National Health Mission.

Survival of mother and child is one of the important targets, do you have any mission beyond that also? What about the overall development of the child?

Going by the fact that we are a small donor, our scope is up to the age of one year on the newborn projects. Obviously our job is not done after the child has survived and is oneyear- old, but beyond that our other partners are taking care of the overall development of the child and mother.

Do you see technology playing an important role in providing smarter healthcare?

Many actors are doing excellent work in the field of innovating technology for that purpose. But that is not our main concern. When we talk about innovation, many people see it as synonymous to technical innovation. But what our innovations are focusing on is finding new ways in organising the healthcare system.

Apart from Rajasthan which other states NIPI is focusing on?

Besides Rajasthan, we are focusing on Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha. We have limited support in Jammu and Kashmir.

What sort of challenges you face while working in these States?

There are challenges on the ground. Implementation always comes with challenges. I think innovations are always about finding ways around challenges. Everything we do is about identifying the bottlenecks. We face all the challenges that anyone with a sincere mission faces in the social or medical sector. But until now we havent encountered any challenges that we cannot work on.

Are you also providing funding for testing innovations?

There is limited funding involved when the innovations are tested. Obviously, when we are working on financial incentives for ASHAs to carry out our programmes, we need to provide some financial incentive to them through state health missions for a limited period.

The financial support from Norway is absolutely minimal. The money that we are providing is almost negligible when compared to what is put in by the National Health Mission itself.

Despite bottlenecks, what are the good things you find in India?

In India, there is a lot of energy, creativity and willingness to do something about the issues that we are facing.

We also find that India has an incredibly strong civil society which is very important in terms of accountability.

India is one of the few countries I have worked in where there is also demand from the general public to know about what is going on in terms of public spending or electoral process, etc.

Where do you see the maternal and child healthcare in India in the next few years? For how long Norwegian government plans to extend its support?

I think the challenges are incredible in India. However, much we achieve in the Indian health sector, the high population growth prompts us to do more.

This is the second phase of NIPI and we have been working here for 10 years, which is not very long in terms of human development programme. I think what we are looking into the future is how do we consolidate the results of what we have achieved so far. It is about learning from the results — both good ones and not so good ones. Then, building on the experiences in future to find common platform between India and Norway to see how we work in the future.

We are also looking for possibilities of using the experiences here so that India can play a role regionally. We know there are countries in close proximity that are interested in learning from Indias experiences. Then there is also the global agenda. India is a huge actor on the global level. So, I see there is a possibility of having more dialogue on global issues.

There is a young breed of startups in India, how do you see aligning your goals with the healthcare startups?

What we need to see is that we all need to work together. We need to work on regional as well as global level. There is a need for lot of common research to be done. The best minds from private sector need to be working closely, as there are enough issues to be addressed.

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