Non-Governmental Organizations and non-development

The Left movement in Sri Lanka was led by a small group of intellectuals, who forged a coalition with the workers and farmers. As the movement built up, it was joined by more members of the intelligentsia, who provided part of the middle-level leadership.

These artists and intellectuals were driven by a spirit of nationalism, combined with a feeling of sympathy for the poor. Their participation in the movement was segregated from their careers, which latter provided them with their means and income.

When the left parties entered the government, it was this cohort of intelligentsia which provided it with its cadre of administrators, chairpersons and directors of state institutions and advisers.

New era

The classic example was Dr Senaka Bibile, the founder Chairman of the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation. However, there were many others, who contributed to the development of Sri Lanka through their participation in politics and through their own careers.

Anna Hazare	Arundhati Roy

In the 1980s the drift of young intellectuals to the Left suddenly stopped. This was due mostly to the proliferation of an alternative: the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

Of course there had been NGOs before this, such as the Christian Workers' Fellowship Marga Institute and Sarvodaya, which did much sterling work. These organizations were principally involved with the development effort, both economic and social.

However, the new era saw the spread of so-called 'civil society' as never before. The new wave of NGOs recruited, by and large, the young intelligentsia who would normally have been attracted to political organization of the Left and centre.

Unlike political organizations, which depended primarily of the dues of members and contributions of supporters, the NGOs actually paid the young intellectuals to do what they loved. Moreover, they were offered the prospect of conferences and workshops overseas, a chance to travel.

National development

The NGOs gradually transformed the intelligentsia from a force working for social change and national development to a body of pen-pushers concerned primarily with their own financial advancement, obsessed with trips abroad.

Many of the people in 'civil society' may have pure motives or may have had pristine motives when they began. However, the atmosphere of corruption, of personal ambition and of greed which envelops the NGO sector tends to leave all of them tainted.

This was achieved by means of funding. This is provided, of course, by people who have the funds, which are donor foundations sponsored by the large multinational corporations, by Western governments or by right-wing religious organizations.

The sources of funding of the Ford Foundation and the Hewlett-Packard Foundation are pretty obvious. The same is the case with Canada's CIDA, Norway's NORAD and Sweden's SIDA. The feudal-capitalist complex owned by the Duke of Westminster funds the Westminster Foundation.

Other sources of funds may not be so obvious. The Dutch NGO, HIVOS has been accused of receiving funds from oil multinationals.

Social research

The sums that are skimmed off these benevolent transactions can be quite substantial. It has been estimated that, of the financial contributions made to Third World NGOs, up to one half remains in the donor country and as little as a tenth reaches the actual target.

This cornucopia reached fantastic levels in the aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami. Huge amounts were spent by NGOs on expensive vehicles and renting air-conditioned premises. Building prices sky-rocketed as NGO-funded housing was constructed at double the actual cost. Naturally, these funders will not be willing to sponsor projects that go against their interests or the corporations and governments which are the ultimate source of their funds. They guide the work done by the NGOs down the paths which are to their own advantage.

Whereas at the very beginning much of the time of NGOs was devoted to activities directly linked to development later the emphasis switched to social research, hardly any to scientific or technological research.

Corporate sector

Even the social research carried out is constrained by the need to include highly valued 'key words' which will ensure the continued flow of funds. These include 'civil society', 'empowerment', 'geographic specificity', 'participatory framework', 'sustainability' and 'workshop'.

Not that these concepts may not be important on their own. However, they are all squeezed into reports written in a jargon indecipherable to the common person. These are important in building up the dependent NGO mindset.

The sum total of all this activity is to prevent meaningful development and transformation from taking place. The location of the individual agenda of each NGO within the general 'civil society' agenda makes this impossible, despite often heroic efforts by individuals in the sector.

Booker Award-winning author Arundhati Roy recently spoke out, controversially, against the 'anti-corruption' campaign of Anna Hazare in India. She pointed out that the movement was ultimately funded by multinational corporations such as Ford, Coca Cola and Lehman Brothers.

Anna was not concerned, she said, about vital development matters such as farmer suicides. She identified an agenda by which the public sphere is to be removed from the hands of the state and placed in the hands of the corporate sector.

Roy also showed that the anti-corruption campaign did not extend to increasing the accountability of the NGO sector which is, after all, answerable not to the people but only to the donor agencies.

In Sri Lanka, too, 'civil society' is the thin end of the wedge. The state is ultimately responsible to democratically-elected representatives. It is only right that the course of development should be in their hands, and we should be wary of attempts to diminish their control.