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| Govt. grants have been misused | | Several NGOs play undesirable role | |
B L KAK
New Delhi, OCT. 5: The government of India has been cautioned against the dangers inherent in the far-from-satisfactory performance of a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). And the government cannot afford to be indifferent after parliamentary standing committee on Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) put in black and white the undesirable role of several NGOs in different parts of the country.
The Department of Women and Child Development, forming part of the HRD Ministry, is a highly important establishment. The parliamentary standing committee, while taking cognizance of the HRD Ministry engaging NGOs for implementing some schemes of the Department of Women and Child Development, has made public its judgment on two points. First, idea of involving NGOs is good. Second, functioning of some of the NGOs leaves much to be desired.
All NGOs are not unscrupulous. The parliamentary panel insists that “many of them were rendering yeomen service”. At the same time, another side of the coin is a bit stained. In other words, Department of Women and Child development has blacklisted several NGOs. This step has not satisfied the members of the panel. Their verdict: Simply blacklisting some NGOs will not deter the delinquent ones; they might resurface with change of nomenclature and address. The parliamentary panel has strongly recommended penal provisions for recovering the grants given to defaulting NGOs. The panel laments that no restriction is in force for having a maximum number of NGOs in a particular area. A glaring example in this connection: Of the 60 NGOs provided financial assistance to the tune of Rs 2.53 crores under the National Creche Fund during 2003-04, as many as 31 are from Andhra Pradesh with 18 NGOs based in one district alone.
The number of NGOs in India is reported to be 1,20,000. And the bad news: Almost half of them are unregistered. As many as 14 Ministries in the Union Government have contracted 15,468 NGOs to implement their various projects. How many of these NGOs are run by retired Government officials? A precise answer to this question is not forthcoming, although it has been admitted officially that some retired IAS officers, three of them based in Jammu and Kashmir, have already set up their own NGOs.
The Ministry of Rural Development has created history by contracting the largest number of NGOs—6,467. The two other important establishments, namely, Ministry of social Justice and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare do not lag behind. If the former has contracted as many as 2,944 NGOs, the number of NGOs contracted by the later is 1,038.
According to the parliamentary panel, substantial funds under different heads are lying with State government or NGOs and utilization certificates have not come from them for years together. And there is no clear information whether these funds have been utilized at all. The panel has reasons to voice dissatisfaction over the manner in which a large number of NGOs have failed to submit utilization certificates. This notwithstanding, some NGOs were given funds for the subsequent years also. |
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