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So as the whole Fire Fighting system
started as NGO by Benjamin Franklin.
RB
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 11:46
AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Oh, What A
Racket!
The sherrif and deputies system of law enforcement in the Wild West days
was an NGO system? Invovling the local public in catching
criminals?
>But it cannot be a replacement for effective
governance.
And who says that? Nobody. So the
statement is irrelevant.
Rajen
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 8:14
AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Oh, What A
Racket!
Citizen participation, NGOs, are good for democracy. Even essential
to make govt. responsive. But it cannot be a replacement for effective
governance.
You can have the best NGOs in the world, but with a govt. like Indian
govt. things will still not change. Because the Indian govt.
controls the powers, the resources and holds the legitimate authority.
NGO's don't. All they can do is cry and scream. It helps, but is NOT a
SUBSTITUTE.
The absurdity involved in these arguments is that we are proposing to
resort to NGOs because the govt. is dysfunctional.
If NGOs are all we need, why do we need government?
Thought about that?
At 5:50 AM -0700 5/4/05, Dilip/Dil Deka wrote:
Never know. That idea may be in
incubation already.
"Anjan K. Nath"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
BLOCKQUOTE {
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0px } UL { PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px;
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Tsk again tsk!
Why not send a few GOOD NRAs back
home on retirement and set a good example.
AKN
----- Original Message -----
From: Chan
Mahanta
To: Dilip/Dil Deka ; ASSAMNETCOLORADO
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Oh, What A
Racket!
Tsk!
But we are talking about GOOD NGOs. Not all these
corrupt garbage. Why can't you understand that? All we need are a
few GOOD ones.
Let us look for a few good folks and maybe we NRAs can
incubate them :-).
It would be a riot if not for the fact that our best are
driven to act so clueless.
At 6:57 AM -0700 5/3/05, Dilip/Dil Deka wrote:
Want to know how NGO's function in
India? Below is an article written by Anupreeta Das, who was a
journalist with Outlook India and who happens to be my niece. Many
NGO's in India thrive on government grants and serve as employment
or source of income to the
founder/s.
Dilip
P.S. If you liked Anupreeta's writing, type in
"Anupreeta Das" in Google search and you will find many other
articles written by her.
===============================================================
Oh, What A
Racket!
Author: Anupreeta
Das
Publication:
Outlook
Date: September
22, 2003
Introduction: The hills
are alive with the buzz of self-seeking NGOs, many existing only
in name
Lush forests are not the
only bounty that Uttaranchal got in its kitty after it became a
state in November 2000. It also got close to 45,000 NGOs�
mind-boggling for a state so tiny, with a population of only
84.7 lakh. Records from the offices of the chief commissioner of
income tax and the registrar of societies confirm this huge NGO
presence. What has also come as a surprise to the authorities is
the unusually high density of NGOs in a state with 13 districts.
That's nearly 4,000 NGOs per district!
When Uttaranchal's IT
commissioner Ashwini Luthra initiated a survey of NGOs in May,
he did not expect to chance upon a fraud that runs into crores
of rupees. "When the IT department started collecting data, we
found that many NGOs did not actually exist or were
non-functional," says Luthra. "Yet, money is being pumped into
trusts, educational societies, NGOs and ashrams all over
Uttaranchal."
While the IT office
lists a total 44,824 groups, the office of the registrar puts
the figure at 41,826.
No wonder then that
Uttaranchal's NGO community is rife with allegations of
corruption and diversion of funds. Amidst the profusion, one can
find registered NGOs such as the Mahila Vikas Sansthan and
Priyadarshini Himalayan Seva Institute that don't exist at their
addresses, educational
societies that have run up huge accounting
discrepancies, and blacklisted NGOs that are ostensibly unaware
of their disrepute.
Take, for instance, the
Bal Evam Mahila Kalyan Sansthan in Dehradun's Nehru Nagar. This
NGO has been blacklisted by the Central Social Welfare Board
(CSWB) for "non-refund of loans and non-submission of accounts",
but its founder-director Parmanand Agarwal denies it outright.
"In the past, we have run a tailoring centre, training sessions
for making incense sticks and health relief camps with funds
from CAPART. Who says we have been blacklisted?" asks Agarwal.
He took voluntary retirement from the army to pursue his
"mission", which is to provide "literacy, health and employment
for the people of Uttaranchal". His tiny one-room office, which
sits atop his residence, houses the meagre tools of his mission:
a computer, a typewriter, two desks, government pamphlets and a
telephone.
Since 2001, Agarwal's
NGO has been running a tele- counselling centre for HIV/AIDS
under a Rs 2.74 lakh grant from the National AIDS Control
Organisation. "People call every few minutes asking about HIV/
AIDS," he informs us and opens a register to show calls recorded
at two-minute and three- minute intervals. However, in the one
hour we sat in his office, there was not a single call. Agarwal
insists it is because it's "lunch break", presumably for callers
too. Neither he nor his colleague Dinesh Chand seem to know much
about HIV/ AIDS. "Hum pamphlet se padh ke batate hain (We read
out answers to queries from the pamphlets)," explains
Chand.
Faced with reports and
allegations of such misconduct, Dehradun's district magistrate
ordered a survey of registered NGOs and societies in June last
year. Dehradun district is home to 7,469 NGOs, the largest
concentration in the state. The initial results of the survey
show that of 223 organisations checked so far, 139 NGOs and
societies are fraudulent or registered only on paper. "It is
quite evident that barely 10 per cent of the NGOs in Dehradun
district are functional. The rest just sit there, waiting for
funds to come by," says chief development officer P.S.
Jangpangi. He says the situation in the rest of Uttaranchal is
"even worse".
Examination of bank
accounts has yielded irregularities in the funds of many NGOs.
The Van Karamchari Welfare Society, for instance, could not
identify the source of Rs 4.6 lakh in its bank account when
questioned by officials of the District Programmes Office
(DPO).Setting up schools appears to be another racket. In
October last year, a survey of educational societies by the IT
department showed unaccounted funds to the "tune of several
crores", says an IT official. However, Devender Mann, chairman
of the Doon International School Education Society (not to be
confused with the renowned Doon School), which is one of the
schools surveyed, dismisses it as "baseless". "We are a no
profit, no loss society. All the money we earn from students is
spent on improving school facilities," he
says.
Furthermore, a rough
estimate by the registrar's office shows that nearly 10,000 NGOs
and societies have been registered since Uttaranchal was
created. "After schools, NGOs are the sunrise industry," says
Geetanjali, a social worker with the development NGO Rural
Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK).
"Many paratroopers,
lured by the funds on offer for a newborn state, have come in
and set up NGOs," alleges RLEK chairman Avdhesh Kaushal.
Uttaranchal is one of the few states that enjoys special status
with regard to central government development funds. Besides,
several international aid agencies too have pitched their tents
here. "There is money to be had, respect to be earned and very
little work to be done. No wonder, starting an NGO is a very
attractive option," says Kadambari Gosain, who helps her husband
S.S. Gosain run the Kunwari Human Development Institute in
Dehradun.
The Gosains, however,
have run into financial difficulties and now run private
vocational training courses even though their institute is
registered as a 'no profit, no loss' one. "We are poor and
honest. Why don't you talk to all those relatives of government
officials who have also started their own NGOs?" asks
Gosain.
There is much
speculation among the NGO community about the wives of
Uttaranchal's bureaucrats running NGOs to line their pockets.
But in the absence of any proof, the suspicion is mostly based
on observation and hearsay. "These NGOs never participate in
workshops and meetings, so we don't know what they do. They say
they have no sources of funds but they bring out glossy
calendars and stationery every year," says J.M. Singh of NGO
Mamta Samajik Kendra, which works on health- related issues in
the Chakrata region.
The government policy
itself may be a reason for the mushrooming of NGOs. Says Sushil
Sharma of Aarohi, which has been working in the Nainital-Almora
region for 15 years, "Top government officials have been
mindlessly promoting development through the creation of women's
self-help groups, which are registered as societies." At
present, registered mahila and yuva mandals, which are intended
as grassroots empowerment groups for women and the youth under a
CSWB scheme, number 20,401. Meanwhile, Singh argues that
development NGOs should be registered separately from religious,
cultural and educational societies in order to bring the number
down to "manageable" levels.
Uttaranchal is not the
only state in the country with such a large number of registered
NGOs and societies�Maharashtra has approximately 50,000.But the
number is suspect because of the state's size. According to
Sanjay Bapat of the website www.indianngos.com, which maintains
a database of NGOs in India, of the 20 lakh registered NGOs and
societies in the country, only 30,000 or so are actually doing
developmental work. How many of these are in Uttaranchal is
anybody's guess.
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