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Sunday, August 11, 2013

Narayanasamy’s definition of Substantial funding – One more threat for RTI ahead

If accepted,union minister of state for personnel public grievances and pensions V. Narayanasamy’s definition " Substantial funding means above 51 per cent’ "private sharks will grab the entire country in no time. All the Build Operate Transfer (BOT), Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects, Non Government Organisations (NGO) getting crores of rupees as a fund or aid in kind Co Operative societies, will automatically come out of the preview of RTI act.

There are 33.50 lakh NGO’s and around 6.5 lakh cooperative societies working since last decades for welfare of society in India. That means there are around 40 lakh organisation working for 120 crore population, i.e. there is one such organisation per 300 people. If we assume there are only 10 members in such organisations i.e. there is one person per 30 people working for welfare of society since last many decades. Major Job of these organisations is to take government policies, schemes to common person. However what we see the ground reality is, status of the common person is same as was several decades back. Each year government spends crores and crores rupees for welfare of common person , then where did all this money go?. Interesting part of this is , most of all these are directly or indirectly owned or controlled by political entities.  

There are projects like BOT, PPP where government’s major stake is involved in form of direct or indirect funding. In addition as the government has already allowed Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). We have to see the implications of definition of substantial funding keeping in the mind above mentioned factors .


I wonder how anybody can say that “I have taken your rupee but as my stakes are high, I don’t owe any responsibility towards your rupee because it is not substantial funding”.?. Definition of substantial funding can not be and should not be in terms percentage.