Opinion Corruption 2.0

How amusing that the people Anna Hazare selected to craft the definitive law against Indian corruption now find themselves squirming in some very murky ground

April 24, 2011 01:13 AM IST First published on: Apr 24, 2011 at 01:13 AM IST

How amusing that the people Anna Hazare selected to craft the definitive law against Indian corruption now find themselves squirming in some very murky ground. Those who till last week were lecturing the rest of us on probity and high moral standards,now have huge estates and dark secrets tumbling out of their closets. And,how did they react? They railed and ranted against unsubstantiated charges being thrown at them without noticing that this has been the leitmotif of Annas own campaign. He refused to allow Sharad Pawar on the committee to make the Lokpal bill on the grounds that he was corrupt. What are the charges? Have they been proven?

Now that NGO types are for the first time ever being asked questions about their sources of income and their assets,there is high dudgeon about unsubstantiated charges and smear campaigns. Anna and his fellow travellers made such a noise about this that Sonia Gandhi,who presides over the largest NGO conglomerate in India,had to personally intervene. In a letter to Anna,she asserted sweetly that she was totally against smear campaigns. And he instantly made the letter public revealing inadvertently his pleasure at obtaining the attentions of so important a personage. Meanwhile,he distanced himself from the Bhushans,pere et fils,saying he hardly knew them and had put them on the Lokpal committee only because they came with good references.

While he remains the Darling of our tweeting,texting,English speaking middle classes,may I humbly suggest that he include in his anti-corruption campaign,a little research into the NGOs who have piggybacked on his caravan. He could begin by asking how Medha Patkar manages to travel so much every week. As someone who believes that this particular NGO lady has a special proclivity for blocking projects that benefit India,I pay close attention to her wanderings. This lady,with her raggedy clothes and unwashed hair,travels so fast and so frequently that in the course of a week she can wander from Mumbai to Trivandrum to Delhi and back to Mumbai. Even if she travels cattle class,she would end up with a huge bill. Who pays?

When I tried to investigate her source of funds,I found that the Peoples Movement she heads is not listed as a charity and so there are no accounts at all. This is true of all our NGOs. They collect as much money as they want from who they want and spend it how they like. But,because the media favours them with a gentle touch,no questions get asked. Why should Anna Hazare,our shining new hero,not demand a law that makes it compulsory for NGOs to declare their assets and account for their annual income and expenditure?

It is because such a law exists in the United States that the CBS programme 60 Minutes was able to reveal recently that Greg Mortenson,best-selling author and famed philanthropist,was spending more charity money on his book tours than on the schools he was building in Afghanistan and Pakistan. India is one of the few countries in the world where NGOs are not accountable and this has caused most of them to become rotten to the core. Examine the activities of our so-called environmental NGOs and you will find that they attack only those things that give them big publicity. So big Indian companies and famous multi-nationals become regular targets instead of municipal governments that supply filthy water to hapless citizens and state governments that have turned the Ganga and Yamuna into sewers. It is unsurprising that their impact on improving Indias environment has been less than negligible.

The other corrupt practice that Indian NGOs routinely indulge in is switching causes when the fashion changes. So an NGO espousing livelihood issues transforms effortlessly into an expert on the environment when needed and if it is saving the tiger that becomes more fashionable than saving the tribal way of life,then they easily become wildlife experts.

This column is known for not pulling any punches so let me put it even more bluntly: most of our NGOs are frauds. They have been given more importance than usual in recent times because they have excellent relations with our TV channels and because they have managed to convince some ministers in Dr Manmohan Singhs government that they are holier than anyone else. They are not. But,they have every right to participate in public life and join the fight against corruption. To do this,they need to follow the rules that everyone else does who enters public life. They must declare their assets and produce an annual balance sheet. Surely,this is not too much to ask of people who spend their time giving everyone else long moral science lectures. Or is it?