Non Government Organizations (NGOs) are essentially meant to lend a helping hand to the Governments in such developmental areas as somehow remain fully or partly outside the reach of its agencies. There are areas in social life that need very close and objective research and remedy and sometimes these escape the searching eye of the Government. When the role of NGOs was given importance by various international agencies including the United Nations, many countries in the world, especially the advanced countries floated large number of NGOs to work for national and international awareness of situations of human rights, development, justice, education, environment, women and children, science and technology and scores of other areas. Our country would not like to remain outside the pale of social advancement and as such we also adopted the practice of floating NGOs with assignments aimed at development and modernization of our rural areas. In the process not thousands but lakhs of NGOs, small and big, sprang throughout the length and breadth of the country. Ministry of Social Welfare receives enormous funding in annual budgets and it became the main source of funding for most of the NGOs who approach it and who were cleared under stipulated rules.
However, as days rolled by, it came to be known that a large number of NGOs were fake as these were only on paper but not functional on the ground. Yet somehow, by manipulating things, they had managed to secure huge amounts from the Social Welfare Ministry at the Centre and in the States under the cover of conducting one or the other project. When the media began exposing some of the fake NGOs, the Government became alert and took steps to stem the tide and in the process thousands of NGOs were disqualified since these were not found in order. It is highly satisfying that the Government has come down with a slew of new rules that make NGOs’ activities, operations, money management, funding and over all functionality a subject of close monitoring by the Auditor General and Income Tax authorities. The NGOs will have to execute a bond in favour of the President of India, and breach of trust will entail refund of grants while inviting the tag of “black listed” organization. This is what the Centre told the Supreme Court while reflecting on the handling of NGOs as per law of the land. It has to be reminded that in recent years a number of NGOs were exposed to have been prone to corruption and misuse of funds by making false entries in the books. Now any NGO receiving funding will have to go strictly by the rules framed to ensure that no fake NGO manages to obtain funding from non-descript sources. We hail this decision and we would also suggest that the Government keeps a close watch on activities of some of the NGOs with ill-repute.
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