The lords of poverty

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The lords of poverty

ANITA CHERIA and EDWIN

Salaries of a lakh or two are not rare in India. But when such

salaries are in the voluntary sector, or NGOs, it's a matter of

concern. In the last couple of years, three charities advertised for

personnel for their Indian operations.

All positions offered over Rs 1 million per annum, and one even Rs

2.5 million. Surely, this is not the kind of millionaires we want to

create, or the voluntarism that the land of Gandhi needs.

Indian recipients of such largesse claim they get only in the range

of UK pounds 2,000-3,500 per month, the equivalent of a British

schoolteacher's salary. However, to comprehend the real magnitude of

this scam, other comparisons will be in order.

The sum equivalent to what top IT professionals make in India. It is

over double the salary of the Indian prime minister and president

combined. And yes, there are the perks — free housing, unlimited

telephone use, foreign travel. On joining these charities,

executives can expect a 300-600% jump in income.

Annual grants made by the agencies to some individual grass-roots

NGOs are even smaller than their executives' telephone bills.

Many NGOs get all of Rs 2,00,000-3,00,000 a year, and for that they

have to submit proposals, answer endless queries, and go through mid-

term and final evaluations. On the other hand, the charity

administrator is unaccountable, whether the project fails or

succeeds.

In any case, most of the actual work is outsourced either to

struggling grass-roots organisations, or activist consultants. The

only highly paid consultants are ex-charity administrators, who come

from the same nationally dominant caste and class.

The small, contractor-NGOs cannot even pay minimum wages to staff.

They hide behind accounting and legal technicalities such as part-

time staff, and volunteers employed by the community. This is

clearly creative accounting.

It also helps hide the enormous pay and perks, which is done by

putting it under different heads, and then making an analysis based

on percentages. The NGOs track the 100 largest economies of the

world, and report with glee that 52 are corporations.

If a similar analysis is done for the voluntary sector, we would

find that, of the 100 largest budget lines in their national

offices, over 60 would be salaries of administrators. While the

administrator gets over Rs 2,00,000 per month and his driver Rs

20,000 per month, the lowly field worker gets Rs 150-500.

This corporatisation of NGOs is not even efficient. The Indian

democracy had a Dalit president after 50 years. That has not

happened in a charity yet. There are numerous Dalit and Adivasi IAS

officers. There are less Dalit and Adivasi regional managers in

charities.

If these charities cannot make space within themselves for the

socially marginalised, with what legitimacy do they advocate, and

even seek to enforce, notions of social justice?

What we are seeing is the very antithesis of volun-tarism.

Unsurprisingly, cor-porates have caught on. They set up their

foundations and claim tax exemption. The spouse and kin of the

promoters, often unemployable elsewhere, are given fat pay cheques

by these NGOs.

Such organisations should be treated as private service providers —

they do provide an important service, but they are not voluntary

organisations. They do not deserve exemptions under Section 80G, 10A

or 12A of the Income Tax Act. There are many truly voluntary

organisations working unsung at the grass roots. They need the

exemptions.

Even the government pays NGO workers less than Rs 500 a month in

government-supported programmes. What the government needs is active

partnership with truly voluntary agencies. The government should

exempt from tax only those organisations whose staff draws less than

Rs 2,00,000 per annum.

Also, if an NGO does not pay its staff — part-time or voluntary —

the statutory minimum wages and benefits, it should lose its charity

status. It would help get the Indian voluntary sector back to its

roots and voluntary ethos.

Commitment, simplicity and sacrifice — none of which money can buy —

are the core of voluntarism. We do not need lords of poverty.

The writers have worked in the NGO sector

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