Much has been commented upon about the role of NGOs in Meghalaya. Our propensity to lump all social organisations which include unregistered pressure and interest groups into one amorphous category of NGOs is an exercise in self deception. While any group outise the ambit of government is a non-government category there are groups that are community based and have a one-point agenda of building community enterprise, engaging in development and capacity building activities. They include self help groups involved in economic activities and micro-financing. Every social organisation emerges because of a societal need. But before a group comes together it must have some aims and objectives and a mission statement about How to go about achieving those goals. That mission statement is a constsant reminder to the members that they must work to promote those stated goals. In Meghalaya we have several social organisations that seem to have a clouded vision about their mandate. There are overlaps in the activitties of several organisations. The members are hardly capaitated to understand their roles although very often they attempt to get into very specialised roles which border on the judicial domain. Also the leaders of several organisations seem to believe that resource mobilisation to sustain the organisation they head can be done through illegal means. Since many of these organisations get their funds through surreptitious means they do not need to apply for government and other instittutional funds and they can therefore get away with not getting their accounts audited. This vicious cycle continues unabated.
It is high time for a social audit on all the organisations in Meghalaya. If organisations are put to serious scrutiny many would fail the transparency test and would lose their mandate to be the social conscience that holds governments accountable. How can an organisation lacking transparency within itself demand transparency from others? For too long social organisations have masqueraded as profesionally run NGOs which they are not. Its time to take stock of such NGOs.