Aspectos y trámites legales.

Chandra and Anne Karen Trollope, 2016, Jaipur: Rawat Publication, pp-218, Rs. 750/-.

Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) as a Voluntary Organisations have a long history of human welfare and human development across world. NGOs originated from voluntarism and made a long journey through various phases and influenced by various ideologies and various social movement. Today in India we have around 33 lakhs of NGOs working a diverse arena of social development. As strong stakeholders of civil society, NGOs is a curious field of research and development.

The first impression of the book is that it apprehends a wide range of chapters related to NGO lexicon. It consists of 20 chapters along with three appendices on National Policy on Voluntary Sector 2007, Societies Registration Act 1860, and FCRA legislation. Present book tries to give an overview of NGOs and various domain- origins of NGOs, development approaches, critical role along with certain examples of role model, NGOs in India and Canada, and the recent debate on the changing role of NGOs, NGO and state relationship, Corporate Social Responsibility and Foreign aid. It seems that the chapters are repetitive and does not follow a sequence. Though both the authors have expertise in other fields, their long associations with NGOs working in social development as well as being founder of NGOS motivated them to write this book. In last few decades, NGOs were an important arena of research and development. While some researches covers the origin, history and philosophical dimension, some on the activities of NGOs in rural and urban development, some on NGO management, leadership development or accountability and transparency. The authors claim that this book includes the different spheres of NGOs and its recent development. As both the authors are practitioners, they wanted to cover recent debate along with the managerial issues on NGO.

The book starts with the first chapter on voluntary work in India. It covers the brief history of voluntarism during ancient and medieval period, during British rule. The contribution of social reform and freedom movement also spread the voluntarism in Indian history. After independence the voluntary organisations were also influenced by Gandhian philosophy which again changes as per the open economy, state control and global factors. The next chapter covers definition, characteristics and classification of NGOs.

A number of definitions has been incorporated which lacks proper citation. Having mentioned the characteristics of NGOs, name of one scholar i.e. Dr Paul Chowdhury was mentioned which was missing in the referencing list. Similarly the classifications of NGOs were discussed in three approaches, in compliance structure, in nature of work done and as per law. The next chapter deals with the NGO merits and demerits. The authors narrated an overview of NGOs and its advantages that it plays an important role in organising local groups, helping in effective implementation, its flexibility and experimentation, encouraging participation and a supplementary role with government. The author has raised certain issue that NGOs are recently suffering from fund constraints, or lack of dedicated leadership, inadequate trained personnel but again raise the concern for poor linkages with the beneficiaries, non involvement of the community or lack of technology or lack of effective collaboration of NGOs. In last few decades NGO collaboration through consortium or network in the local, state and national level has gained momentum question the validity of the issues raised. Use of technology, computers and websites has also developed among the NGOs where they are implementing foreign donor project and have to produce qualitative and quantitative reports in a periodic basis.

The next chapter deals with the corruption in NGOs where authors mentioned that a number of foreign donors are ideologically biased or have self interest or religious propaganda and often engage local NGOs in such practices. The author gave the example that Global warming is such an issue where western donors are engaging NGOs in the third world to cut their emission. In the Indian scenario, NGO corruption has different colour like the misutiliasation of money. The author also cited CAPART under Ministry of Rural Development where 1000 crore money was distributed to 12000 NGOs many of whom misutilised government money. The next chapter was on Foreign Aid and its uses and misuses. Around 68000 NGOs are registered with Ministry of Home Affairs to receive Foreign Aid and in last one decade around 80000 crore money has been channelled through foreign aid. Foreign aid is becoming a concern because many organisations are involved in anti government activities or promoting religious ideologies like religious conversion of Christian Missionaries. The next two chapters were on Leadership in NGOs and Management of NGOs. Leader provide a vision to the organisation in order to develop certain skills like delegation, partnership, team work, integrity, decision making capacity, etc. for management of NGOs. NGOs needs to be professional in terms of organisational structure, financial component and operational guideline having a Human Resource Policy. The authors also mentioned that many of the NGOs lack professionalism. In order to make it professional overall situation can hamper the flow of work but it is

an important area that NGOs should address.

The eighth chapter describes the role of NGOs in development. Though specific role of NGOs were not clearly described, the authors tried to portray NGOs as small scale initiative, local level development promoter, and organisation having integrated approach, participatory model and outreach activities to the most disadvantaged and needy persons in connection with rural development. The authors also gave a detailed example of a network AVARD (Association of Voluntary Agencies in Rural Development) which is a network of 700 NGOS formed in 1956. The context of the example of the network seems complete unnecessary and can confuse the readers about the role of NGOs in development.

The ninth chapter illustrates NGOs and spiritual culture of India and explains that Indian NGOs follow cultures which were available in Christianity and Hinduism. Spirituality played an important role in forming these NGOs. Many of such NGOs are spiritual but non religious. India also has a long history of Ashrams in various religions where NGOs are formed same ideology. This section tried to link religious and spiritual link of NGOs but it lack insight and clarity.

The tenth chapter deals with two roles of NGOs in Service Delivery and Advocacy. One of the major drawbacks of NGOs is to involve in only service delivery but the NGOs need to get the space for advocacy. The next chapter depicts the corporate social responsibility which is becoming an important oral and social commitment. NGOs desiring CSR fund need to identify the nexus to link up with CSR project. Next two chapters describe NGOS relation with Government and Indian Government with NGOs. It is difficult to understand why authors have put into two chapters. The issues covered were NGO state relationship through partnership. It is also added that NGOs any of who receive foreign aid, involved with political wing, have barrier to those desired relationship. The section Indian Government with NGOs described the national policy on voluntary sector and government’s role to promote NGO- state relationship. In the chapter funding with NGOs grants can be received from Foreign Contribution, CSR, Government grants, public donation, etc. Government grants and public donation have potential for grants to NGOs as donation can be exempted from tax. The next chapter illustrates the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. The recent FCRA amendment which was done in 2010 and came into effect from, 2011 was discussed. The next two chapters describe the criticism of NGOs and NGOs not as a magic bullet. These issues were already discussed in the NGOs merit and demerit in chapter 3 of the book. In this section author once again boosted that NGOs play an important role in mass movement and in the next paragraph it stated that NGOs hamper mass movement. In magic bullet section, NGOs are again criticized for their

lack of ability to change the structural factors, over lapping of NGO work with one another or favourite location where NGO invervenes, sticking to service delivery mode, etc. The chapter Challenges before NGOs in 21st Century describes NGOs need to develop ethical consideration and dedicated and honest person and maintain transparency. There is also a need to develop a system to evaluate NGO performance and NGO Grant-in-Aid system and developing its accountability towards the people. The last two chapters deal with model NGOs in India and Canada. Though the NGOs objectives, strategies were described but the parameter of coming to the conclusion of model is not understood. Rather it could be stated as examples of NGOs in India and Canada.

The book is a recent edition of work in the field of NGOs and tried to give an overview of all the thematic area related to NGOs to the readers. The present book lacks in the following areas-

• Putting too many chapters with similar heading confuse the reader and make it monotonous and unexciting.

• Sequence of the chapters is haphazard. Jumping from one topic to another topic without proper conclusion may dissatisfy the reader. • It is based on secondary work but proper citation and referencing

is not done. This book cannot be referred for further research or empirical research due to lack of scientific referencing.

• Repetitive paragraphs, lack of depth, lack of simplicity and clarity make the book non enjoyable.

• Though both the authors are practionners, if their enrich experience and empirical work, practical dilemmas were added, it could be a masterpiece work.

Overall, this book can cater the needs of those readers who want a basic understanding about the NGOs and its recent development. The under graduate and post graduate students of social work, sociology, public administration, political science and economics students who want an overview of NGOs, it is suitable for them.

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