 |
||
|
||
|
||
Susantha Goonatilake
SAGE Publications
New Delhi / Thousand Oaks / London
Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd.
B-42, Panchsheel Enclave
New Delhi 110 017.
www.indiasage.com
ISBN: 10:0-7619-3466-9 (PB)
13:978-0-7619-3466-0 (PB)
10:81-7829-616-0 (India-PB)
13:978-81-7829-616-6 (India-PB)
==============================
Preface
As the Cold War ended, there was a conscious policy change in the Western countries and through them in international agencies to sponsor non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the developing world. The argument was that developing countries were not democratic, their leaders were prone to thievery, they were not transparent and indulged in gross violations of human rights. Some of these characteristics were partly true, especially in areas like Africa and Latin America where the Cold War had raged. On the one hand were right-wing autocratic leaders propped up by the US as bastions against any inroads from the Soviet Union and its allies. On the other hand were those in the opposite camp who had led national liberation struggles-especially in Africa-who adopted a Leninist structure of centralised control, which after their countries' independence often gave way to an autocratic one-man rule. Two tendencies of the Cold War-one right wing and the other left wing-both had led to the emasculation of free association.
The aid and exclusive funding of NGOs by the West aimed at promoting and sponsoring areas of free association-civil society-in the developing world. This was greatly facilitated by the collapse of the Eastern Bloc (a result of the rediscovery of civil society) in the 1980s and, as in Poland, by the alliance between the Catholic Church, in particular the last Pope and the CIA, as has been described by so many writers.
Large amounts of foreign funds poured into NGOs in developing countries in search of the associational revolution. Countries like India, China and Malaysia were circumspect about unhesitatingly accepting unfettered foreign money to fund often hitherto relatively unknown groups to achieve national prominence in areas as varied as foreign relations, the structure of the state, human rights, and economic and social development. Especially in India, which had its own tradition of voluntary association, from trade unions, to political parties, to Gandhian movements as well as a strong commitment to democracy and a sense of national worth, penetration by foreign funded NGOs was limited.
At the time when foreign funded NGOs began their penetration of Sri Lanka in earnest, Sri Lanka had had a long tradition of trade unions, political parties and elections for at least a hundred years. Further, the country had also had a tradition of locally grown civic organisations in the form of Buddhist monk organisations, which had provided some associational space outside rigid government structures for over 2,000 years. NGO penetration occurred in Sri Lanka in the 1980s almost parallel to the growth of an authoritarian state. The NGOs have subsequently penetrated large areas of visible civic life through leverage brought by foreign funds. From restructuring the state, to demobilising the armed forces, privatising foreign relations, and controlling key segments of academia and media, NGO money and personnel can be found.
In the last five years or so, there has been an increase in the international literature which questions the role of foreign funded NGOs. (My studies in the field go back to nearly 20 years.) The enthusiasm with which sections of the West accepted NGOs in the late 1980s as unfettered good has now begun to erode under impartial academic scrutiny. Yet, existing studies have only looked at the different sectors of NGO penetration. None has attempted to sketch the political economy of NGO activity of a country as a whole. There have especially been no studies of NGO activity in a country which once had a vibrant democratic tradition and a functioning civil society on many associational fronts, but was under the twin confluence of the simultaneous growth of an authoritarian state suppressing existing organic civil society and that of foreign funded NGOs. Such a study could be paradigmatic on many counts. Sri Lanka is such a case and the present study attempts to fill that vacuum. We believe that the case of Sri Lanka could be very instructive to other ex-colonial countries including India as they try to guard their sovereignty as well as develop real civil society structures.
==============================
A Postscript to the Preface
This book presents material on foreign funded NGOs transgressing basic norms of not only national sovereignty but also those very standards that they themselves have required Third World governments to follow as desirable goals, that is, transparency and accountability. The attempts to bring out the facts related in this book have fallen on the same misfortune that is described in the chapters that follow, and it would not be out of place to briefly recount the attempts to prevent this book from being published.
The most recent attempt was when the publisher, Sage, advertised the book in its catalogue, giving only a partial insight into the book along with a list of chapter headings. Apparently, some of the Sri Lankan NGOs, on seeing this, went into a panic. Someone associated with a foreign funded human rights organisation wrote to the Sage office in London implying that he would take legal action if the book was published. (The gentleman had not seen the contents of the book.) Later, another gentleman, against whom the elected president of Sierra Leone had written to the secretary general of the United Nations, accusing him of helping stage a coup ?état on behalf of a terrorist organisation there, also wrote to Sage to prevent its publication. He got nine other representatives of various NGOs (some of whom are referred to in this book) to join the protest. They, too, were not familiar with the contents of the book.
Protests on the contents of this book had also happened earlier. A Sinhalese language magazine began to serialise some of the facts incorporated in this book, stating that these had been taken from the notes of my forthcoming book. Some of the material in that magazine was presented by a politician at a public meeting, who said that such foreign funded NGOs should be shunned. The gentleman referred to earlier in the context of Sierra Leone then publicly requested the attorney general of the country to sue the politician. The relevant authorities responded by saying that there was no case against the politician.
Before I approached Sage, I felt that it would be more appropriate for a Western academic publisher to publish the book as the funds for these NGOs came from the West. I first approaches a university press in the US with whom I had already published two books that had been well received. After going through the standard peer review process, they decided to publish it. They e-mailed me and asked me to go ahead and revise the book incorporating the suggestions of the anonymous commentators. They also said that the formal contract was being posted immediately. Soon after, I received another e-mail from the publishers apologetically informing me that they would not publish the book.
I was disappointed, but then I remembered that the former editor at this university press had joined another university press in the Midwest US and before leaving had invited me to write books for her new press. Here again, something similar to what happened with the earlier publisher occurred.
The attempt to shy away from transparency, in fact, goes back to nearly 20 years, when, quite innocuously, I did a study comparing the largest foreign funded development NGO in Sri Lanka with the state sector efforts in the same field. My findings were presented at an invited seminar in an academic gathering in the Netherlands. On returning to Sri Lanka, I was forbidden from leaving the country by my state employer on the charge that I had made negative remarks against this development NGO. The negative remarks arose from a research which showed that the state sector-which was incidentally my own employer-did better than this self-styled development NGO!
Clearly, the development NGO had strongly penetrated the branches of the government itself. Not satisfied with stopping my travel, the same NGO then engineered a situation where I was accused of insulting the Buddha and suspended from my job for one year without pay. A retired Supreme Court judge, who inquired into this charge, dismissed it as frivolous and reinstated me in my job. This was only after I had already undergone tremendous stress due to not being paid for a year, this job being my only means of income. Clearly, there were very powerful forces to prevent the truth from being told. A commission of inquiry set up by the government met with a similar fate of silencing. Its public sittings were revealing many unsavoury facts about foreign funded NGOs, which were being publicised daily in the newspapers. The commission was suddenly wound up after pressure brought down by a leading foreign funded NGO. Evidently the foreign funded NGO community did not want an open inquiry, especially on issues dealing with transparency, financial rectitude, national sovereignty and security.
Some of the contents of this book continued to appear in the Sri Lankan media, both print and TV, including in some open debates. I myself was part of a discussion on TV and also published some articles in the newspapers. Several other media commentators used the primary material that I had collected and began asking for probity on foreign funded NGOs.
These discussions over the last six months, partly triggered by some of the contents of this book, have resulted in the Sri Lankan parliament itself calling for a probe. As this book goes to print, a parliamentary select committee consisting of nearly 25 parliamentarians has been appointed to look into the workings of foreign funded NGOs and their possible negative impacts, especially on the sovereignty of the country. I have been co-opted as an expert input to the select committee.
|
||
|
||
|
||