There are around 85,000 NGOs in our small country. However, the NGOs registered in Social Welfare Council account for some 38, 500. Other countries in South Asia also share the similar fate, but to a lesser extent. Restoration of democracy in 1990 opened the avenue for foreign aids in different topics. With Cold War coming to an end, countries started helping each other. In this context, NGOs sprouted aplenty in Nepal. Soon enough, they started influencing even the national policies and priorities. They unprecedentedly enhanced peoples’ capacity for collective bargaining.
With the Maoist insurgency NGO business somehow dwindled. But as soon as the Comprehensive Peace Accord was signed between the Maoists and the government in 2006, NGOs started mushrooming again. Many projects came in the name of peace and reconstruction. For survival, even the existing NGOs changed tacks as per the changing contexts. For example, it’s unlikely to get peace projects now as peace process has almost come to a conclusion. The current lucrative projects are that of global warming, climate change, disease prevention, public policy endowments and so on.
Having completed his studies in American public policy, my friend mentioned above came up with the idea of opening an NGO with the theme of public policy to get lucrative endowments. He even emphasized that he had found someone from a multilateral donor organization who for a certain amount of commission would help us bag a project after a couple of years. The startling revelation seems shocking but a triadic nexus among politicians, government officers and NGO workers for embezzling the cash donated by the taxpayers of the first-world is a common story in developing countries.
As the country is yet to be industrialized, educated people have limited career options. Government jobs are not sufficient, therefore many choose to set up NGOs which fetch them handsome salary and lavish lifestyle. Most of their workshops and seminars are held in starred hotels or in city halls. With barely 30-odd audiences, the program officer overdraws the achievements of the organization’s operations targeted in the rural villages of Nepal.
Majority of the functional NGOs are centered within the ring-road of the capital city and only a handful of these non-state actors are sincerely devoted to their works. However, those business savvy NGOs inflate performance by manifold in order to show that they are dedicated to meet their objectives. This is what the donors take them to be. Unfortunately, donors are not truly concerned with the accountability of such organizations and NGOs behave as if they themselves are the recipients but not the linking bridges between donors and local communities.
It comes as no surprise that many donors and INGOs go to the host countries with their vested interests. For instance, it is said that the researchers who came to visually document the abominable snowman ‘Yeti’ in 1960s traded Uranium from the Himalayas of Nepal. Parts of the resources are driven away by the donors whereas 20-90 percent of the funds are misused by the receiver. I/NGOs’ vociferous chant of human rights, environment and development is just a ruse to amass wealth for themselves.
NGOs lack transparency and accountability. The financial indiscretion of these bodies is scarcely questioned. The only authorized institution to investigate into NGOs—District Administration Office—has no effective supervision. Consequently, the lack of monitoring bodies has bred corrupt outfits.The government should support only genuine NGO workers and punish wrongdoers.
We have observed foreign powers at play on several occasions but never introspected what might have triggered this. Obviously if someone gives us and we receive, we are obliged to listen to them. Basically the foreign powers have security issues and geo-political strategies. Nepal is the weakest country in South Asia when it comes to resistance to foreign influences. Our South Asian neighbor Sri Lanka has not fallen under the pressure of world powers despite scores of attempts for humanitarian intervention by the UN after the revelation of war crimes by Channel 4 of UK. This is because they are economically self-sufficient. Had they been aid dependent, they would have never been this unbending. We need to learn from them.
How long do we sell our poverty to the world and beg for aids and grants? Legacy of parasitism and foreign aid-led governance should come to an end. We need to employ our people inside the country and should stop the vast outflow of labor migrants to Gulf countries. Let us grow legitimate and lucrative jobs in our backyard.
The author is Fredskorpset Fellow at Kislay India
rajendrasenchury@yahoo.com
Published on 2014-12-10 in REPUBLICA
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