M D Nalapat
While some NGOs are run by sincere individuals interested not in personal but in social gain, many of the organisations active in India act as milch cows for those controlling them. For example,a top journalist got formed an NGO headed by his son,and then used his contacts in foreign embassies to ensure a huge flow of grants to the organisation, enough to ensure that Junior could leave India and live in Europe. Several senior officials set up NGOs and “Think-tanks” after retirement that are creative only in the ways in which they collect funds. Many times,the so-called “independent” NGO acts as a mouthpiece for foreign donors, expressing their point of view as “Indian opinon”, an example being a well-funded NGO run by a former naval officer who joins many others in faithfully parroting any line that is fed to him by US or EU agencies during the many occasions when he gets invited there to nod approvingly at the grotesque policy prescriptions that they adopt for India. Across the world, the debris of states that have failed because of following such advice is ubiquitious, yet because of the fact that the only way to get funding and fellowships from the US or the EU is to toe their general line, the big cities are filled with “analysts” and “experts” who fill newspaper columns and television space retailing what their benefactors in Washington,Paris and London (the three “saviours of the Libyan people” ) want them to say.The first priority in India - and other countries in the vicinity – is to take care of family and friends.An example is the so-called National Security Advisory Board. Members of this august body come at least once a month to the national capital, where they are put up in 5-star hotels in exchange for giving their views on subjects as diverse as Fiji and Moratua. Not that any of these opinions gets taken seriously, much less gets integrated into policy.The purpose of the NSAB is to accomodate old friends in a comfortable sinecure and make them understand how much they are appreciated. Most of the distinguished members are regular guests of the nominating authority.
