Four NGOs are facing government probes over foreign funding they received and whether they misused funds by spending it on funding the protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. The Prime Minister’s statements that US-based NGOs who don’t appreciate India’s energy needs may be funding the Indian NGOs orchestrating the protests here, have raised a furore over NGOs and their regulation.
The NGOs often focus on niche developmental or social projects, and there are also numerous registered social groups which are involved in both religious and social activities.
That NGOs cannot be above regulation is not without doubt. But the receipt of foreign funding alone cannot be used to discredit their activities given even some of the best known NGOs in the country also receive funds from abroad.
“The fact is most NGOs in the country would be more than willing to use domestic rather than foreign funds, especially for advocacy purposes, if only they were available and if the funding practices of governments or other indigenous donors were as sympathetic and progressive as those of foreign donors,” Pushpa Sundar says in The Indian Express today.
She points out that while government funding is often tied up in bureaucratic tangles, individual donors in India are more willing to donate directly to individuals or religious causes they are less likely to donate to NGOs working towards social change.
Research and advocacy groups are often at the bottom of the rung when it comes to receiving grants or funds and it doesn’t help when their findings are dismissed as being biased purely because of the foreign funding that they may have received.
That there are NGOs and groups that misuse funds and don’t carry out the work they claimed isn’t in doubt. But labelling them under a common category does not benefit the organisations that are doing good work.
In many cases the NGOs would not be able to operate but for foreign funding, so what is the route ahead? Selective targetting of NGOs by the government when they raise thorny issues or a more liberal yet regulated atmosphere?
Sundar suggests the creation of a Charities Commission on the lines of one that is present in the UK and can regulate both the funding and monitor of non-governmental organisations.
Perhaps a middle road which allows financial regulation and allows the NGOs to take up developmental projects is in our and the government’s best interests.
—Agencies