| 3rd Annual Konkan Fruit Fest, Goa - May 6-8, 2005 |
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| Today's Events include Fruit Carving - Decor - Watermelon eating |
| Fancy Dress. Check out http://konkanfruit.swiki.net | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yesterday's Gomantak Times (6th May) had a letter from Claude & Norma Alvares and a reply from the Editor of Gomantak Times. Reproduced below. Interesting.
Cecil
----- letter from Alvares -----
Dear Editor,
We are both immensely saddened and distressed by your wholly inappropriate and unjust labeling of Jan Ugahi as a 'non-giving organisation'.
What are the facts on which GT has based this evaluation? A street child dies while running away from police custody. Jan Ugahi, as an organization long working with slumdwellers, tries to help. They organize meetings and get the press to highlight not just this tragedy, but the general callousness of society towards street children, and the need for reform in the system. They ask the mother to help as well in the campaign. They came to us for legal advice.
We saw the case was difficult because of the nature of the FIR filed by the police and the fact that there was no intention on the part of anyone to kill the child. But the activists said they would keep on trying nonetheless at least for compensation. They haven't succeeded as yet. But they are still trying. Now the mother feels they have let her down.
The GT uses the mother's words (and some of its own) to run the organization down as if they are a worthless bunch. Was it a mistake for Jan Ugahi to have even tried to help?
If GT were interested in a proper evaluation of the work done by Jan Ugahi, surely it could have done a far better job.
Greg and Bernie who founded Jan Ugahi in 1996 have worked with the abject poor, even before they came to Goa. For the past eight years they have worked among the people of the several slum settlements of Margao and Salcette. They run non-formal education and adult literacy classes for children and women in their center, with vocational training (including tailoring, embroidery, batik and tie-dying, paper bags and utility items) for generating income among self-help groups. They introduced group savings schemes for women and children and a counseling center for women in crisis situations. They try and obtain government schemes for deserted women, widows, scheduled castes and other backward groups. They also conduct awareness sessions and health camps for reproductive and fertility awareness for girls and women.
The organization was instrumental in the arrest of Colin John Middleton, a notorious pederast, in March 2001. They have worked hard to investigate cases of child sex abuse on the beaches of Goa. In all this they have pursued neither money nor fame.
Trying to get the press to highlight a moral issue can hardly be construed as self-publicity. Bernie and Greg are neither fancy vehicle owners nor merit any of the other unsavoury accusations GT has made against them. They are simple people who have long ago decided to do something different among people whom no one cares about. And your paper calls them a 'non-giving organisation'! What a travesty!
GT has become a great paper under your editorship and is probably today one of Goa's best. We are writing to protest because the article was entirely out of character. The last thing we know you want to do is kill good work since there is so little of it around. We feel you owe the organisation an apology. I hope you will be generous enough to concede that. You could have roundly criticized them if they had not taken up the case, but you can hardly blame them because they (and all of us, the press included) tried and failed. The failure is not theirs alone, but our society's as well, because we still have to work and
live under an administration that does not believe a mother should be compensated even when her child died while technically in police custody.
Claude and Norma Alvares
------ end of Alvares letter ---
++++++++++
------- letter from GT Editor -----
Dear Mr and Mrs Alvares,
Thank you for taking some time off from your busy schedule to write in with your comments.
Our report on Jan Ugahi's involvement with the case, as part of our series 'Non-Giving Organization', was not an attack on the organization's work as a whole but on its handling of the Kalia case in particular.
Also the entire article was based on the mother's comments to our reporters. In addition, Bernie D'Souza of Jan Ugahi was informed about the mother's tirade and her comments in response were duly - and prominently - published in a separate box.
Your comment questioning whether Jan Ugahi made a "mistake" by trying to help is itself surprising. After all isn't the social sector all about helping those in need? Or is it that when Jan Ugahi, or for that matter any NGO in the state, steps in to intervene in a case they are doing somebody a favour? If so, then what exactly is the role to be played by NGOs and what is it that differentiates an NGO from a company in the private sector?
Also, there was never any attempt to "evaluate" the work of Jan Ugahi or any NGO working in the state. The whole idea behind the Non-Giving Organizations campaign was to highlight cases taken up with great hue and cry by NGOs, but which reached unsatisfactory conclusions.
We respect your views about Jan Ugahi and NGO's and have no serious disagreement. But we feel that most NGO's and those supporting them shy away from any consistent audit of their work. While their positive interventions have been reported and the causes NGOs champion have supported by GT, it should come as no surprise if certain failings are reported. This hasn't been done with the intention to malign but to inform and highlight.
There has been a general tendency amongst NGOs in Goa to restrict themselves to the mundane, while conveniently ignoring the serious. For example, children's rights organizations staged rallies on No Child Labour Day, but how many voices were raised in protest when a 9-year-old girl, working as a maid servant was brutally murdered?
Barring one organization, everyone else was so quiet; the silence was, and still is, deafening. Surprisingly, there were more voices protesting our campaign than the child's death and this fact speaks volumes about the priorities of the social sector.
Coming to your comment about the quantum of "good work going around". We agree that there are genuine social workers but we also know that their work is largely uncelebrated because they do not send off instant mailers to funding organizations abroad detailing their achievements.
Most of the "good work" is not being done under the garb of being a celebrated social worker but by individuals or informal groups who are simply trying to make a small difference.
The social sector is itself plagued by controversy and hypocrisy, most of which is cleverly covered up by the holier-than-thou attitude and heckles are raised when critics come calling. For example, how can a woman who evicted her own physically challenged sister-in-law from the house, work towards the betterment of womankind? Or how does a social worker who employs a child worker at home, do her job with a clean conscience?
What about the cases, like the River Princess for example, that have never been taken up by our environmentalists because they claim they are too busy? Or the lists of suspected paedophiles maintained by some organizations who wait till a child is raped before providing details to the authorities?
Why are some NGOs restricted to being mere paper tigers, whose only form of activism is the press note or the public-rally in the capital city where all can see and admire their 'work'?
With reference to your comment that GT could have done a better job, I say, yes, all of can always do a better a better job. While, you as involved citizens and very respected readers have liberty to audit our work, we have the same liberty to audit yours and other NGO's.
GT has always celebrated genuine work performed by people without vested interests. What is travesty for some is truth for others. We stand by our story and reaffirm our commitment, to our readers and society as a whole, to continue exposing misdeeds, no matter who is responsible. - Editor
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