Beyond civil society

'Protectionism' in social services is impractical

Civil society and the government of India have been at odds for quite some time but confrontation has increased in the recent period. After tightening regulation that led to 6,677 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) losing their licences to access foreign funding between 2017 and 2021, according to the home ministry data, the latest move is to restrict access to domestic funding as well. Recently, at least two institutions have received letters from the government, ordering them to stop their fund-raising, in addition to directing states to restrict NGO activities in areas where the Central government assumes primary responsibility.

According to reports by the Deccan Herald and the website Article 14, the two institutions in question are Save the Children, the India chapter of a global child rights group, and Sightsavers India, a 57-year-old organisation that works on eye health services and disability rights advocacy for the blind.

It is significant that neither of the NGOs has broken any law, nor have they been penalised. Their activities merely appear to irritate the government. A letter from the Ministry of Women and Child Development to the states complains about the “false information being spread by NGOs” and asks local administrations to raise awareness about the government’s nutrition schemes. In the case of Save the Children, the order is to take down an advertisement that shows a severely malnourished tribal child, which the government has interpreted as an indictment of its anti-poverty measures. In the case of Sightsavers, the Ministry of Health requested it to shut down its fund-raising exercise from the public for blindness control, which is “against the spirit” of the government’s National Control for Blindness and Visual Impairment, where the government delivers services free.

Apart from revealing the thinking of the government, which views the presence of social work organisations as inimical, the relevance of these strictures is unclear and counter-productive. For instance, serial internal surveys, including the government’s National Family Health Surveys, have flagged child malnourishment as a serious issue. Given this, it should surely be in the government’s interests to work with reputed organisations towards improving child nourishment. The experience of Bangladesh in significantly improving its human development indicators in cooperation with NGOs stands as a useful lesson. Ironically, Save the Children has worked closely with the government in the past on several programmes. Likewise blindness or varying degrees of visual impairment are also a problem, especially among poor people, so any programme to promote eye health must be considered unexceptionable.

Beyond the specificity of the restrictions on these NGOs lie two related questions. One concerns the signals the government is sending to the NGO universe. Since the government, by its very nature, is active in the delivery of social services such as health and education, where does this leave other NGOs usefully engaged in these fields? Should all of them now back down so as not to violate the spirit of work the government does with taxpayers’ money? Two, improving education and tribal welfare is part of the list of activities under corporate social responsibility mandates. Companies may justifiably be confused about the status of programmes in which they have invested money. Enforcing protectionism in social services in a country like India cannot be considered sound policy.