Sonia NGO Gandhi

The majority of members on the national Advisory Panel are drawn from the non-governmental sector. In a stunning paradigm shift, NGOs — always oppositional to the government, groups with socio-economic rather than avowedly political aims — have now been embedded at the very top of the Congress administration. Aruna Roy heads the Rajasthan-based Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, which has fought an arduous battle for the right to information, Jayaprakash Narayan runs the Hyderabad-based Loksatta, well-known for compiling data on the criminalisation of politics, Madhav Chavan is the brains behind primary education programmes through his voluntary agency, ‘Pratham’, Mirai Chatterjee is co-ordinator social security for SEWA, that outstanding trade union of self-employed women. Advisors to governments are generally elderly eminences drawn from Delhi’s IIC, who have no public constituencies to protect. But when advisors to governments are hands-on public workers, who have often been stringently critical of administrations, then there is a danger that the watch dogs of society are being insidously transformed into decorations for the ruling party.

The Advisory Council exists to see if the Common Minimum Programme is being properly implemented or not. Suppose, for example, the promises of the CMP are, in true government fashion, passed on to some (ho hum) joint secretary in charge of X commission to process X number of files then what, in the end, has been the function of yoking the expertise of these talented people on to the Council, beyond burdening them with the tag of “Congress-wallah”?

Today, of course, within the NGO sector as well as in the government, the belief is that the state and NGOs must be partners in development. In India, NGOs of one form or another have even been a traditional method of providing help to the needy. Kinship-based organisations, temple trusts, waqf boards, dharamshalas, fishermens’ organisations, even Gandhian ashrams can be seen as NGOs. There have always been a plurality of voluntary groups, or NGOs, in India, at state and national levels. During the Janata regime, in fact, there was a strong emphasis on voluntary agencies and the Fifth Draft Plan supported the development of NGOs and pledged state support to them. In fact there’s even a body of opinion that the state should withdraw from development and entrust it to voluntary agencies.

To be partners in work on the ground is one thing. But to be allies in government and ideology is quite another. What would be the implications, for instance, if the NDA government had constituted an Advisory Council in which Sangh Parivar or RSS-affliated NGOs were coopted as members of the team? If the single-minded workers of Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams, or zealous teachers from Saraswati Shishu Mandirs, were invited to monitor the workings of the NDA manifesto? Conversely, would the panelists have similarly advised an NDA government? Or would they have felt ideologically opposed to the sangh? But if the primary aim of NGOs is to provide succour to the suffering, why should political colour determine which government to advise and which not to?

This is never to suggest that the individuals who make up the present Advisory Council are in any way partisan, or that they buy into the Congress’ family obsessions, but it is precisely because they are so credible that the dilemma arises and leads to the larger question: to what extent should civil society participate in government. If, hypothetically, every NGO is an advisor to the Congress, every journalist is seeking entry into the Rajya Sabha and every academic either writing or rewriting history texts according to party lines, then who on earth will speak for society’s concerns and how will society challenge governments, as the prime minister says it should? In a scarcity society as ours, sheer lack of money drives individuals to the state, thus blunting dissent.

NGOs have often been unfairly vilified by both Left and Right. Paradoxically the Left has always hated NGOs and seen them as competitors for a radical social agenda. Comrade Karat has blustered noisily about the imperialist strategy of voluntary agencies, how NGOs are foreign-funded subversives who are eroding The Party’s (mostly the CPM’s) divine right to transform society. The Right hates NGOs too. How many times has the articulate Arun Jaitley poured scorn on “foreign funded jholawallahs” who are engaged in a conspiracy to undermine Bharat? Both views are only partial truths and ignore the extraordinary work that many NGOs have slaved at, unrecognised, for years.

The question really is, why does the Congress constantly feel impelled to co-opt credibility? The discipline of History is the mute victim of the ravages of years of state-sponsored intellectuals. Historians, artists and dancers have through years of Congress rule been appointed head of this or that institution and their talents have been transformed through time, as inexorably happens to anyone associated with the Congress for too long,into satellites of The Family. This ‘institute-packing’ was faithfully imitated by the sangh and now even NGOs have been brought into the Congress parivar. Sure, development workers believe that there is need to transform from within and Roy, Dreze, Chatterjee and others can inform the government on the rural poor better than almost anyone else. Yet, the dilemma will surely remain: if the National Advisory Council becomes an elite Sonia Gandhi coterie, India’s civil society will become as impoverished as its rural poor.