Yardsticks to trip over?

NGO accountability is a huge issue these days. For funders, government and the public, good governance becomes a measure by which to praise or berate the social sector. For the social sector, trying to regulate its own affairs, it is becoming a set of rigid standards based on an essentialised model of what NGOs do.

Take a look at this article by Vijay Nadkarni, former deputy director of Credibility Alliance, in a special issue of Agenda on civil society in India.

This week, Indian Express has carried a few articles on this question, that I am blogging here mainly to bookmark for later and clip.

NGO non-governance, Indian Express, July 8, 2010.
Mandakini Devasher Surie, Watching the Watchdogs, Indian Express, July 10, 2010.
Ratna Sudarshan, Learning to ask, Indian Express, July 17, 2010.

Standards for NGO governance appear to be derived from existing standards in government and the corporate sector, both of which, if truth be told are not always stellar examples of upright accounting or transparency. In principle, this is a wonderful thing, and the reason many organizations have sought out affiliation and accreditation.

However, there are two self-defeating aspects to this. First, the checklist of standards is rigid across different kinds of organizations in different stages of development. As Ratna Sudarshan points out, the rubric "NGO" includes a wide range of organizations: think-tanks from IDSA to Prajnya; welfare organizations from a village SHG to a PRIA, etc. The same standards of integrity must apply, but apply in different ways. For instance, in Prajnya, we really have no employees who could take leave or have travel allowances, nor an office where they could sign a register. What would we do with a personnel policy we could not apply? Of course, we should have one, and there should not be arbitrary human resources standards in our organization, but for that standard to apply, we should have both humans and resources first!

The second, more worrisome thing, is that rather than developing an optimistic approach that assumes NGO boards want to do things properly and then mentoring them in that direction as they grow, the growing community of governance monitoring agencies and consultants seems to carry with them the "guilty until proven innocent" assumptions of the government and the general suspicion about NGO motives that the corporate sector has.

To whom can NGO boards turn for help in the circumstances, even as these standards are becoming influential in funding circles?

As a non-profit founder, a citizen with a vested interest in good governance anywhere, and a political scientist who is fascinated by how regimes of different sorts acquire the backing of a consensus and then move forward, these are matters that concern me profoundly.

Founder's Blues: What's my story?

I do not understand why such a fine idea as our Education for Peace Initiative is so hard to talk about. I have spent a lot of time (as I usually do) wondering about what we (I) say and do not say that is so uninspiring.

I got to thinking about the campaign against gender violence for which it is possible to at least raise individual donations. People are not moved as much by what we say as by the memories of a person or an incident that it evokes. I think. It is certifiably a good cause.

So is peace education. And lord knows, it should take no marketing outside of the news headlines. Why would 14 year olds elect to fight in violent insurgencies? Why would high school kids pick up the gun on small playground disputes? And short of the gun, think of the many verbal hostilities children learn by the time they leave school. We should all be seriously upset by this. But we are not.

It is hard to narrate these things as a story, I think. Yes, it's true these things happen, but I don't know if I can narrate the teenaged suicide bomber's life as a familiar anecdote. And if I say, children are carrying guns, is that a child that lives in my building?

I could come at it from the experience of the two people whose brainchild this has been, but we are the very fortunate. We come at peace education from a sense that we who have been so lucky as to have grown up around farsighted educationists and very liberal parents need to share this privilege. We share two convictions: 1. We can make a difference through our efforts and 2. The way to do that is by teaching children peaceful ways of relating to each other and living with differences. 

We could come up with a variety of personal anecdotes about the peace-teaching people and experiences we have had, and we have to some extent in our occasional blog: http://prajnyaforpeace.wordpress.com/. But it's not the same as Abc, aged 8, beat her little sister, aged 4, to pulp because there was cream in her milk.

So now I am going to embark on a search for the story. And test some of them here, bewarned.

Founder's Blues: Fundraising, the BYOI party!

That's what it is. Fundraising is a "Bring your own imagination" party. Little wonder then, that it must be one of the world's worst attended gatherings!

I can write up the invitation in any format you name. I can strategically deploy the words you currently love. I can break up my 'ask' into children's portions or lump them together to sound impressive. I can give you a multicoloured brochure or an academic's document full of jargon.

I can speak to your heart. I can orate to your conference hall. I can make you a jazzy powerpoint. If you gave me money, I could throw it down the drain to make an animated film about my funding needs. I could even write a song and sing it for you, with the refrain: Tum ek paisa de do, voh dus lakh dega! (Or, in tune with our current needs, tum 6 lakh de do, voh 60 crore dega!)

I can share my vision with you in the medium of your choice. Bur if you have no imagination, I have no cure for that but prayer.

The treasure trove at Giri Stores, Mylapore

In my deeply ambivalent, often antagonistic, relationship with Madras/Chennai, shopping is something that usually has a positive cast.

And since I moved here, Giri Stores near the Kapaleeswarar Temple is one of the few places I really like to go to. It's full of surprises--things I never knew existed; things I never knew I was interested in; things I never knew I wanted.

It's also been a research mainstay. Since I moved here, I have done a little bit of work on Indian political ideas and in the absence of any decent research libraries, buy a lot of books. Mainstream bookstores don't carry the range of books on the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Puranas, or on Indian philosophy, that you can find at Giri Stores or at the Motilal Banarasidas store nearby in Luz. There are also two stores off Royapettah High Road, but Giri Stores is so much fun!

You walk into the floor with all the pooja samagri, everything smells wonderful. And yes, you do want to buy all the dhoop and agarbatti immediately! One flight up into the mezzanine, you find the many kinds of metal things that live in pooja rooms--kuttu vilakkus of different sizes, kamakshi vilakkus, yantrams, kalashams, etc. The next flight up, they stock music and DVDs and not just religious stuff. I saw good old Dev Anand gazing out of the 'Asli Naqli' DVD package! Finally, they have a floor of books. I spent a lot of time and money there this morning, all in the name of research! I was able to find academic books as well as the tiny pocket-book size edition of something my mother asked for.

The basement may be the most blah part of the store--it's where they stock "gift items." From pocket-size pictures of various deities to those now-ubiquitous Chinese-made idols, it may be both the most contemporary and the most generally tasteless floor.

All in all, a place at which you can really spend a lot of time browsing with no agenda. And did I mention how good it smells? (Yes, I did also buy lots of incense as well.)

Check it out!