Will the real India CCM stand up?, Please?

[Guest guest]

Will the real India CCM stand up? Please?

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria has among many things to

its credit, tried to bring all stakeholders in the fight against the 3

diseases together, both at its international board governance level

and at the implementing country level.

Different countries interpret the Global Fund and its country

coordinating mechanisms (CCM) differently.

Some view it as an ATM or Cash machine, where proposals are expected

to go in and cash flows out to them, with the CCM being a mere

postmark on the application coverpage. Others use the opportunity the

fund and the CCM provide to make significant changes to the way the 3

diseases, and indeed all of health, is managed.

Where CCM's are truly representative, the impact of the Fund goes way

beyond additional resources: it transforms the partnership between

government and non government structures, breathing fresh air into

the life of health systems and individual disease control programs.

At such CCM's, technical partners and donors sit around the table,

not as dispensers of occasional dollops of monetary assistance or

wisdom obtained from Geneva or New York or their respective

capitals, but as facilitators of change, and encouragers of local

ownership.

Petty CCM's are not an endangered species. In fact, they abound.

Hallmarks: token representation of non state actors, overbearing

technical partners who know it all, and are constantly on the lookout

to preserve and augment technical assistance budget line items, and

donors who frankly couldn't care less.

Variations of the 2 models are the norm. With the India CCM, one has

to ask the question: what kind is it?

Here is something to point you to an answer:

With 7 rounds of funding gone, and the 8th in process, India has no

dearth of experience of the Global Fund, or for that matter, of

anything.

There are more than enough 'hands on the deck', to 'manage' the India

CM. Why? Because there is money attached to managing the CCM.

Technical agencies like UNAIDS become arbiters of what good TB and

Malaria proposals look like, while venerable WHO looks on. CSO

representatives: either given up the search for their vertebrae and

vocal chords, or racking their brains to figure out how to get their

proposals in without triggering charges of conflict of interest.

Donors love this scene, because a CCM in disarray is a great place to

be playing the role they best know: control, with strings of external

assistance.

India is the land of the unexpected: the national flower Lotus blooms

in muddy water. Perhaps, that's what India is waiting for: clarity,

partnership and leadership to emerge from the muddied waters called

the India CCM.

As Gurudev Tagore wrote: 'into that heaven of freedom, my father, let

my country awake.'

Anonymous