NGO: Government is their middle name

Come to think of it, "Non-Governmental Organization" is a pretty lame moniker for these agencies. All private companies are non-Governmental too. "Non-profit" is a better fit. Perhaps the name signals that these agencies will fill in cracks in Governance.

In any case, NGOs are slowly becoming a central feature of our Government. It is remarkable that our Government cheers on and cedes power to agencies that reflect its failure. Just how bad is the NGO "problem"? The Government's own portal of NGO Partnership system lists over 200,000 NGOs. They are categorized under different heads, for example: Minority Issues: 3609, Youth Affairs: 4806 etc. This does not however truly reflect the religious nature of a lot of NGOs - many of them as we all know are religious organizations in the guise of "development" and political groups in the guise of "human rights".

Now the Government is planning to outsource the NREGA scheme to NGOs.

It is clear that the UPA Government is anxious to bypass local and state Governments. Part of the reason is that they want to make sure the political advantage from the schemes accrue only to the secular party. It is well known that in states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat the electoral benefits appeared to accrue to the local incumbent parties. The second aspect to it is less savory - it reflects the command and control, central planning based approach the party has always favored, only to cede reluctantly to a more federalist approach post-liberalization.

NGOs do not reflect progress and the employment it generates is illusory. Adding Government to the mix will merely transfer a lot of productive human capital into non-functioning areas. Already we see that NGOs are everything about profit - political patronage abounds, and so does corruption and pilferage. NGOs have also allegedly diverted funds for Naxals and terrorists of other hues. Worse - they have actively participated in distributing cash on behalf of political parties during elections.

NGOs can completely skew public opinion and destroy public mandate. Imagine when welfare schemes are cornered by religious institutions. These organizations have a policy of denying their private services to people who refuse to convert - what are the guarantees they will change their ways armed with a booty of Government cash?

The NGO culture being unleashed on us reflects the pathologies of the secular party and its cheerleaders - the socialists. Nothing good will come of it except more social disharmony. Of course, that may be by design.