The three-day national conference organised by the Management Consultants of the PACS Programme was the last major event to be held under the aegis of the programme.

Over 700 participants from different parts of the country, including heads of CSOs supported by the PACS Programme, consultants associated with the programme and representatives of communities empowered by the programme attended the conference.

Addressing the gathering at the India Habitat Centre, Susanna Moorehead said DFID had a “strong commitment” to taking the PACS Programme forward. In the next few months, DFID is expected to launch the second phase of the PACS Programme, ‘PACS-II’, which will build on the achievements of the current phase, ‘PACS-I’.

“We will build on what works,” Susanna Moorehead said. Like PACS-I, PACS-II will focus on parts of India not adequately covered by government. DFID will continue to work with the civil society people who have been part of PACS-I, she said.

Describing the achievements of PACS-I as “enormous” and “extraordinary”, Susanna Moorehead said that it was DFID’s “favourite programme”. PACS was the “flagship programme” for DFID across the world, and DFID offices in other countries were extremely keen on hearing about PACS lessons and mistakes, she said.

What made PACS so unusual and noteworthy was that it supported a wide diversity of implementation channels, she added. Implementation of the programme across project locations was “very context-sensitive”, she observed. This “spirit of innovation” will be retained in PACS-II.

PACS was also notable on account of its sheer scale, Moorehead explained. The scale of the programme offered a “global lesson for civil society” -- it showed that civil society could address poverty over a large geographical area and not be limited to islands of excellence.

The DFID-India head commended PACS Management Consultants (MC) for doing an “outstanding job”. The programme was ably guided by the National Advisory Board and Project Selection Committee comprising people who had the “very best expertise in India” in their fields, she said.

Dwelling briefly on DFID’s expectations from PACS-II, Susanna Moorehead said that the key to sustainability of programme processes was the capacity of the poor to “change the way government thinks”. DFID would also lay emphasis on women’s empowerment and gender relations, she said.

Earlier, Development Alternatives Chairperson and Chief Advisor to the PACS Programme Ashok Khosla commended DFID for showing the courage to support an “innovative programme with a creative design”. PACS was one of the largest civil society programmes in the world, and DFID gave the MC the freedom to adapt it to different environments and needs, he said. The entire policymaking and programmatic decision-making roles were bestowed on the MC, he added.

The MC responded by putting in place a solid structure of governance, Khosla said. Project proposal selection, for instance, was done strictly through an independent committee with a systematic turnover of members.

DA was willing to work with DFID “in any way” to take PACS forward, Khosla concluded.