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WAY back in 1977, the newly elected Janata Party government in Rajasthan blacklisted the Social Work and Research Centre Tilonia from participating in any official programmes, froze all its grants and instituted an enquiry into the functioning of the NGO. Sanjit (Bunker) Roy, the Director of SWRC was known to be close to Indira Gandhi and had studied with Rajiv Gandhi in Doon School. In the immediate post-Emergency days, he and SWRC were seen as fair game. It helped that an ex-employee of SWRC, sacked for incompetence, had been returned as a Janata Party MLA.

Those, however, were different days. Few, including those who differed with the SWRC strategy and approach, were willing to buy the official charge of financial skullduggery and misappropriation of funds by the NGO. Many wrote to the chief minister protesting against what they perceived was a witch-hunt. Fortunately, better sense prevailed, the enquiry was wound up and SWRC was permitted to continue its work.

The trauma of public calumny having been successfully weathered, the organization went on to make significant contributions in the areas of education, women’s rights and rights of the poor and landless. What is less known is that much of the subsequent work on ensuring transparency in development projects and the national campaigns for a right to information and employment have their genesis in the activities and organizations spawned off by the SWRC.

Today, we live in different times and climes. Once again, a prominent NGO, SEWA of Ahmedabad is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Disregarding decades of its stellar work in organizing the self-employed women in the informal sector through a range of innovative schemes, the government of Gujarat has charged the organization of financial irregularities in its Jeevika programme designed to provide employment to earthquake affected families – not following prudential norms, overcharging on expenses and surreptitiously handing out padded contracts to those related to the organization’s leadership.

In addition to instituting a special audit enquiry, freezing funds and thereby jeopardizing the livelihoods of many poor women and so on, the government has also launched a vicious campaign questioning the personal integrity of those involved. Evidently, all the clarifications provided by SEWA have failed to convince the authorities. The net result is that the Jeevika programme stands suspended as do all relationships between the NGO and the government.

In itself, these unfortunate turn of events do not come as a surprise. The Narendra Modi government hardly enjoys an enviable reputation for tolerance. Nor does, in fact, Gujarat society. In the past, civil society organizations and individuals supporting ‘unpopular’ causes – reservations for OBCs, questioning the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada, and most recently, the pogrom against Muslim minorities – have all had to face official ire. Some of the above, in particular the unwillingness to discriminate against Muslim women, as also not paying the customary obeisance to political and bureaucratic authorities is, as SEWA claims, responsible for the current stand-off.

More intriguing and disturbing, however, is the relative lack of support for SEWA both from within Gujarat and from similar organizations elsewhere. Is this only a reflection of the ‘terrorized’ atmosphere in the state, or does it also tell us something of SEWA’s changing relations with other NGOs and activist groups? Or have most of us just stopped caring, bothered only about our own safety and work, little realising that relations strengthen only in an environment of reciprocity, that unless we stand up for others in times of need we too are likely to be left in the lurch when it is our turn.

There is another issue that has still to sufficiently engage the voluntary development sector – of ensuring transparency and accountability in the manner organizations are run. Despite a quantum increase in the resources now available to the sector and the enlarged scale of involvement, there is little attempt to modernize and professionalize management structures and practices. Surely it is not only the politicians and bureaucrats who need to be accountable?

An earlier initiative by Bunker Roy to formulate a ‘code of conduct’ for voluntary agencies met with howls of protest and was seen as yet another way to ‘discipline’ civil society. Today, self-professed claims to integrity by any individual or organization carry little conviction. Possibly, even while resisting the effort to malign a fellow organization, we also need to evolve a fresh code of conduct for ourselves, and one which invites greater public scrutiny. Otherwise, SEWA and other such organizations may well lose the battle for societal credibility.

Harsh Sethi