1)About Rahat Welfare2 2)Social Capital and development.4 3)Social Capital repository of Rahat Welfare..

6 4)Building the Social Capital of its members 7 5)Minorities and development 8 6)Conclusion .. 8

About Rahat Welfare Trust Rahat Welfare Trust is an organisation that promotes the welfare of Muslim women and children. It began in 1992 to cater to the need of widows, divorcees and deserted women and their children. According to Mr. Irfan Merchant founder of Rahat Welfare, catering to this vulnerable group of women within the Muslim minority community is what makes Rahat a different organization. These untrained and uneducated deserted women almost universally want to educate their children. Rahat Welfare helps them to do that through Total Educational Support Scheme (TESS).TESS is a sponsoring scheme under which a student once selected is provided with almost everything required by a child to go to school. Rahat provides for Bus, computer and school fees, text-books, note-books, work-books, uniforms, stationery, raincoats, shoes, socks, ties, badges, extra-curricular activities expenses of more than a thousand children every year. Majority of the Rahat scholars sponsored under TESS are orphans, or children of divorcees and deserted women. Rahat ensures that these children do not dropout from the educational system due to their poverty. Rahat also supports Shaheen Urdu High School, a recognised school for girls in a slum locality in North Mumbai. (www.rahatwelfaretrust.org)

An understanding of Social Capital Social capital is defined as the value of social networks, bonding similar people and bridging between diverse people, with norms of reciprocity. Thus social capital has three main dimensions: Bonding social capital referring to strong family ties, bridging social capital referring to weak ties among friends and acquaintances and more formal ties linking members of voluntary organizations. Social capital is also understood as a social support system that exists within a community, both inside and outside of the family.(Chopra,2002) Social Capital is networking that helps create linkages both macro level institutions and micro level personal networks. The initiation of the networking at all levels may be found in cultural values, social entities or economic interests. Thus the role of social capital is defined as the networks and relationships that both encourage trust and reciprocity and shape the quality and quantity of a societys social interactions in providing the inputs into growth. (Chopra,2002)

How does Social Capital contribute to the development process? 1)Social capital is best conceptualized as an input into the process by which institutions for development are created.(Chopra,2002) The starting point for development processes is the reaching out between agents in different sectors. This idea of reaching out initiates the development process. The initiation of this process of creating an institution for development like Rahat Welfare required pooling in of human as well as financial capital. Mr. Irfan at first shared his idea of an organization like Rahat with his small group of family and friends who he believed would support his idea.(Interview,Mr.Merchant). This was the beginning of networking to create Rahat Welfare an organization as it stands today. The next step is the rules, norms and institutions for development are created and gradually the financial capital begins to flow in. Thus it is this linking, bridging and interaction among agents that creates the institutional structures for development. State Society Synergy as a catalyst for development. Development process is as a result of the co-production. Co-production implies that there exists a complementarity between the role of agents who are a part of government and those who belong to non-government organizations. The interaction between civil society actors, the state and the market will lead to better governance and development (Perrault, 2003) There may be a need for intervention that impacts legal or political structures. It is only such an intervention that will ensure the embeddedness of the development process. That is social capital that makes a qualitative change in the procedures governing the development process.(Chopra,2002)

Social Capital repository inherent in Rahat Welfare In an interview with Mr. Irfan Merchant he mentioned that education alone is the foundation for development of a community and that formal education alone will ensure ones survival in todays world. Indian Muslims are backward and education is the main reason for this backwardness. Only 5% of Muslims in India reach secondary school. When educated concerned persons of the Muslim community like Mr. Irfan began to ask questions about the backwardness of the Indian Muslim community, they found a large number of children of divorcees and deserted women had to drop out of school due to poverty and they thus took it upon them to take action and prevent children dropping out for these reasons. When we look at social capital according to Webber as a network of personal relations. The function of these personal relations is to enable circulation of information, trust and reaching out to one another. Rahat Welfare website mentions that the founders of Rahat were into social work 30 years prior to setting up Rahat. This in a big way strengthened networks of cooperation or the social capital that has been instrumental in setting up of this organization. (Interview, Mr. Merchant) Rahat draws all of its funds through Zakat, alms giving during the season of Ramadaan. This itself has started through networks and contacts of Rahats trustees and founding members. Zakat for a muslim involves great amount of loyalty on part of the person pledging his money to a particular underprivileged group. The benefactors contribution is thus guaranteed every year. Thus Rahat Welfare has through an efficient guaranteed method put in place a mechanism to fulfill its need for funds. This very clearly brings forth the effective use of a communitys resources i.e. the religious practice of alms giving or Zakat in the process of development of the minority Muslim community. However Mr. Irfan talked about the need to draw funds from corporates and generous persons of other communities in order to meet the ever increasing need of poor Muslim students who have been promised support through
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Rahat Welfare. For this he says integrity of the organization and the work they perform will alone ensure funds. This is one area that Rahat has to work on bridging its social capital where networks of its trustees, volunteers play a major role. Social capital is defined as the ability (of individuals) to secure resources by virtue of membership in social networks or larger social structures. (Portes and Landolt)Muslim women are able to secure the benefits of Rahat Welfare by virtue of being a part of the Muslim community. The 2000 plus women who benefit from Rahat have heard of Rahat through word of mouth as most of them are uneducated and many come from hinterlands of Mumbai and Thane. Social capital is regarded as an important ingredient in development as well as democracy. According to James Coleman Social Capital refers to peoples ability to work together in groups where people co-operate to achieve common objectives. According to Fukuyama social capital is understanding the role of cultural factors like values and norms in economic life. He further says that it is not just institutions but also cultural factors like social capital that play an important role in development as institution building itself requires social capital of co-operation and trust. Thus societies in which people are accustomed to co-operating and working together have much stronger institutions. Many Muslim women and men come together on Sundays to provide unpaid voluntary service to Rahat Welfare to carry out its administrative activities. This helps Rahat is carrying out its activities through co-operative efforts despite the fluid nature of its institution. Francis Fukuyama says that social capital is critical to democracy because it is social capital that permits people to band together to defend their interests and organize to support collective needs.

The repository Social Capital that builds social capital of its beneficiaries Social Capital within a group network produces positive outcomes of teaching people virtues of reciprocity, dependability and honesty thus further building, expanding and creating more social capital. Hence it is seen that the once beneficiaries of Rahat doing well regularly contribute to funds. Girls of the Shaheen Urdu School many of whom are sponsored by Rahat, volunteer on Sundays at Rahat Welfare. Mr. Irfan mentioned the urgent need to track all of the Rahat sponsored children who are doing well and request their financial support for Rahat welfare. Fukuyama says that Social capital can also be created through conventional education that also involves inculcation of shared norms and values. According to Mr.Irfan, it is sponsored education that encourages many students especially girls to study well. The teachers at the Shaheen Urdu School are also once beneficiaries of Rahat. Rahat Welfare is proud of one its female student Hijrabi Gause who went to Sweden on a study tour. Beneficiaries of Rahat sponsored education thus grow to develop norms of reciprocity that enhances social capital.

Minorities and development Mr. Irfan mentioned that Prime Ministers new fifteen point programme for welfare of minorities provides scholarships for meritorious minority students. Unfortunately vey few or hardly any Principals of minority institutions are aware of it. To add to it in order to avail of the scholarship students have to produce documents that are difficult to procure. This he feels are serious impediments to state initiated development programmes. Also, given the red tapeism and difficulty in getting government sanctions that are mandatory for the working of an NGO.e.g. .80G certificate of exemption from tax for donors etc. Mr. Irfan maintains that the government should never be looked upon as an enemy and that working with the system (government) is fundamental to development. It can be seen that the Muslim community in India shares strong social capital in terms of bonding among their own community members but they seem to lack bridging that is networks with other majority and minority communities which is one of the reasons for under development of the community. Bridging that is establishing contacts in the plural space spanning religious differences is necessary in making the voice of the community stronger and moving ahead.(Mohan, Lecture 21/3/2011) Conclusion Rahat Welfare a non governmental organization run by the Muslims for the benefit of the Muslim community in Mumbai has effectively used its existing social capital of the educated concerned members to benefit the unfortunate members of its community. Given the lack of accountability and implementation of government initiated minority welfare programmes that leave the minorities to depend on the social capital with the community Rahat Welfare has been instrumental in recognizing and catering to this need and bringing in development.

References www.rahatwelfaretrust.org Interview with Mr.Irfan Merchant,Founder of Rahat Welfare Trust. Potential of Social Capital for Community Development, Published by the Asian Productivity Organization, 20032005 Social Capital and Development:The Coming Agenda, Francis Fukuyama, SAIS Review vol. XXII no. 1 (WinterSpring 2002) Social Capital and Development Processes Role of Formal and InformalInstitutions , Kanchan Chopra , Vol 37 No.28 July 13, 2002 Social Capital and Local Development,Carlo Trigilia (University of Florence), European Journal of Social Theory 4 (4), 2001. Fast Disappearing Social Capital among the Sidama of southern Ethiopia and its implication on Food Security: Part I Mulugeta Bakkalo Daye June 17, 2010 The Usefulness and Limitations of Social Capital as an Analytical Tool for Progressives,Thad Williamson, Department of Government, Harvard University,Cambridge,MA.USA Lecture on Social Capital, Elective-Development Discourse -Shaping Development, 21/3/2011,Dr.Sudha Mohan. Building Social Capital and Education,The Experiences of Pakistani Muslims in the UK,Suruchi Thapar, International Journal of Social Inquiry.Volume 3 Number 2, 2010.