Is it time to audit Non-Government Organisations, the NGOs, as they are popularly known? They claim more credibility than elected governments. More importance than nations. More durability than families. More relevance than communities. The word NGO, coined in the West, is deceptive. At least here, it includes Gandhi Peace Foundation to Sankara Mutt to professional social outfits seeking foreign funds. For most NGOs, being so is as much, if not more, a profession as a mission. Most of them have a global agenda. Are driven by it. Are also funded globally. Many nations even fear them as the latest weapons of the West against the Rest. They can even bring down governments. Such is their power. What can ordinary mortals do if such NGOs target them?

Here is a story of a hard working community in the small town of Sivakasi struggling for survival against globally funded NGO agenda. They suffered for long. Business down. Reputation gone. All pleas fell on deaf ears. Governments turned mute. Politicians shied away. The media eulogised the NGOs. Desperate, they did what no businessman does except as the last resort _ approach the court. The court did respond, and issued a warrant of arrest against a culprit, a minority religious head. But with Andipatti poll only days away, the police would not arrest him obviously. Dead-ended everywhere, they took to streets. Last Tuesday, February 19, the entire town of Sivakasi and surrounding areas observed a total bandh. Thousands were on the roads. Then woke up a section of the media, to little-known facts.

Sivakasi's case is this: a motivated campaign by NGOs is on against them. Sivakasi's main business is fireworks, match units and printing press. Its annual business is over Rs 1000 crores. Half of it is from sale of fireworks. This is where the NGOs hit them. They allege child labour in Sivakasi fireworks and match units. The basic facts about Sivakasi clearly contradict the charges. This small town has as many as 42 educational institutions. This includes three arts colleges, a women's college, an engineering college, two polytechnics and one pharmaceutical college. About 39,000 students, almost equal number of boys and girls, are on their rolls. Who built this huge educational infrastructure? Not the government. The fireworks owners. If children were their human resource why would they build schools for them? Also colleges. They have enough money to send their children to any place in India or abroad for studies. Not just that. The government has declared Virudhunagar district in which Sivakasi falls as 100% literate. How can that go with child labour?

    It is not all. `Child labour in Sivakasi is a myth, a 15-year-old story'. Not the fireworks owners, the District Collector says so. Just three months back. He discloses that in Virudhunagar district in which Sivakasi falls, from four lakh households 2.24 lakh children attend schools. Some of course do not. But lack of awareness, not child labour, is the reason for that, he asserts. The number of those bunking schools, he says, is less than 9%, even though the people below poverty line is between 36% and 40%. He said so in public. The very media, of course only the Tamil media, reported him. More evidence exists, if needed. Why then the charge of child labour? See how the facts unfold. Unfailingly, every year a month before Deepavali the campaign against Sivakasi starts. Not in Sivakasi or thereabouts.

Many NGOs, most of them funded from abroad, begin massive campaigns to boycott fireworks during Deepavali. Cite child labour as the justification. Use emotive slogans like ``Is it the glitter of the fireworks or the shrieks of the dying children?'' to drive home the message. Assemble school children in thousands and make them take oath against use of firecrackers. Advocate celebrating Deepavali with, interestingly, candles, not traditional lamps. The campaigners are highly articulate. Media savvy. Know the media and how to use it. The charmed media takes them at their face value. Covers their rallies extensively. Blindly repeats the campaigner's charges. The victims, the Sivakasi people, who work more and talk less, are not media savvy. Their inarticulate voice is just silenced by the high voltage campaign of the NGOs. The result, Sivakasi is defamed and condemned unheard as an economy built on the blood of children. The lay to the expert, including the courts, are led by the campaign.

The NGOs' campaign has virtually settled that Sivakasi means child labour. Some of them have even called for the prosecution of government officials who have contradicted them. See their capacity to terrorise. What is their motive? Why do they suppress the facts? Why such shrill campaign? Even on the child labour issue, why only target Sivakasi? The answers are indeed uncomfortable. Here is where the identity behind the campaigning NGOs becomes relevant. The campaigning NGOs, say the Sivakasi people, are mostly Christians. The Missionary schools deploy their captive children to campaign against fire crackers. This is what shuts the mouth of the otherwise wide-mouthed media. This is what blinds the politicians who otherwise sniff around for issues. This is why the state authority disappears.
 

It is unfair to blame Christians as a whole or Christianity as such. But definitely some enthusiastic evangelists are responsible. They see a chance to spread their faith through the child labour issue. So call for boycotting fire crackers and promoting candles, instead of lamps, during Deepavali. In the process, they have made Sivakasi synonymous with child labour. Also financial stakes are high. An instance. The International Programme for Elimination of Child Labour has made available Rs 4 crores for studying an integrated approach to child labour in Sivakasi and Tirupur. But for claims of child labour, such funds would dry up. So the need to insist that it exists. Asserting it exists is a potential revenue stream. What is the answer? Unless an NGO declares from where it gets its funds, it should not be heard. The source of its funds will decide its credibility. Then, the real issue is NGOs' role in Indian economy. Whether it is the carpet Industry in Rajasthan or UP, or the knitwear units of Tirupur, or the fireworks of Sivakasi, the NGOs are around. In the world of business seen as war, NGOs, many unknowingly, become instruments in the hands of foreign economic forces. They use their clout as a moral force to weaken national economies. To benefit foreign forces invariably funding them. In most cases they do end up as lobbyists, though some may really not be.

Nevertheless NGOs do have the right to say what they want to. But they should admit they get money for their work. They are an interested party. But the status the NGOs seek and in fact, enjoy is high. As an arbiter, a judge, a disinterested witness. The distortion in public discourse is that the NGOs are taken as disinterested parties. Once they are taken for what they are, their view will be taken to be what it is worth. The apprehensions about NGOs are global. Many believe that some of them are used by the West even to split societies and break up nations. It is unfortunate that all NGOs, the genuine and the spurious, the service-minded and the lobbyist claim to be the same. Are treated alike, respected alike, in India. All for lack of information. Only the patriotic and vigilant public can scan and separate the genuine from the spurious. Otherwise we will allow professional NGOs to defame with respect and destroy with impunity businesses and peoples in this country. They have very nearly done down Sivakasi. Will such a thing happen in China whether they use child labour or prison labour? It will not. Let us think why it happens here.