August 19, 2005

Darshan Patra

There was a live and off-line debate on BBC News in Feb.,’05 entitled “Africa NGOs: Achievers or Deceivers”. (See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3502733.stm for more.) The debate about NGOs, like anything non-trivial in life, has a spectrum of opinions expressed, the arguments often nuanced and contextual. Labels (NGO, rightist, secularist, etc.) don’t mean very much these days; one has to look deeper into their activities, and operations. No wonder that a lot of SEEDS efforts in project adoption and execution goes in studying, evaluating NGOs. SEEDS has found several very well-meaning and capable NGOs to successfully implement grass-roots development projects. We think that it is too naïve and too detrimental to characterize them as all god-send or all rascals. Sometimes the same NGO may have multiple personalities – one has to inspire the benevolent and democratic personae. Work with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is often seen as a step towards the strengthening of civil society, a term nebulously used to refer to all non-State structures that usually work for the common good. However, members of an NGO should not be thought of as volunteers with no expectation for any remuneration or compensation.

I am a strong proponent of e-governance. The same infrastructure and techniques that may be used to track government commissions and omissions, and actions and misuses, I could and should be used to track and possibly rate NGOs as well. One such effort can be glimpsed at http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com/ as an example. We ought to be
able to track funds from the donors to their eventual destination... and see results – at least when substantial funds are involved. Similarly scams and rip-offs need to be put on the record somewhere to encourage transparency and integrity among NGOs, and encourage confidence among donors and beneficiaries. Donors and sponsors need to be able to tell the difference between “the good, the bad and the ugly”.

http://www.unpan.org/ provides some insights from UN’s Public Administration arm. Also interesting to read is http://www.unhabitat.org/HD/hdv6n2/viewpoint.html

Good NGO’s do face many challenges, even from unexpected corners: recently I spoke to an NGO in Balangir who had done exceptional work with micro-irrigation and microcredit in a rural village. To strongly promote self-sustenance, and self-esteem, we had arranged a part of our funding to be (very low interest) loan that the farmers were supposed to return over time as they make profit selling the vegetables and fruits grown with the micro-irrigated lands. However, this year the farmers are angry when the NGO asked for the loan repayment – apparently because the “government” has constructed a well/pump completely free-of-charge in a neighboring village!

I strongly agree with Sri Gopal Mohanty, my SEEDS colleague, whom I quote:

"In fact, good NGOs work under double-jeopardy, one to prove what they want to do and second that too under often unproductive competition from the Government. One case in point is microcredit. When we are trying to promote the idea of giving loan to buy a pump, the Government gives it free. We know what happens. Often the pump given by the Government is misused and not accounted for. … Unless we experiment and take risks with good ideas, nothing will take its root…”

Finally, please visit this SEEDS page myseeds.home.comcast.net to read an article on “How to build a good small NGO”. Many of the ideas therein are applicable to big NGOs also, and can form a basis for rating NGOs.