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Aple Ghar
Poor Rural School Children as Agents of Change
FERRY
Economic Rehabilitation
of Rural Youth
MARAG
A Path Towards a
Better Life
Pragati Abhiyan
Agricultural Diversification
in Dry-Land Areas
Rashtra Seva Dal
Empowerment of
Dalit Women
Seva Mandir
A More Socially Just Society
Swanirvar
Abatement of Arsenic
in Drinking Water
Tamil Nadu
Help to Tsunami-Affected Children
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Fostering Self-Help Aid
in India
What is CIVA?
Canada India Village Aid, or CIVA, is an independent non-profit charitable society based in Vancouver, BC. CIVA has operated since 1981 raising funds to support projects benefitting the peoples of rural India.
Battling for Livelihoods for the Poor and Against Corruption (excerpt)
... A civil society organization called the Right to Employment and Information Campaign, through the work of its volunteers, conducted an audit in 2009 of the implementation of the Employment Guarantee Scheme in Rajasthan—which, as we have seen, is the state which has had perhaps the best record, certainly in North India, in making the Scheme work. The volunteers, making use of the Right to Information Act, inspected the records —and showed that roughly a third of the funds intended for material purchases for the Scheme, amounting to millions of dollars, were being used to line the pockets of a long chain of people, stretching from elected local council officials, through local civil servants, right up to the top bureaucrats of one or two of the districts of Rajasthan.
So telling were the findings of the volunteers’ audit that they prompted the local officials to form an organization themselves, in order to prevent the civil society audit going any further. The officials even blocked roads to press their case against those they labeled “interfering busybodies.” Regrettably, the state government eventually gave into them. The incident goes to show both how serious is the leakage of funds intended for the benefit of poor people, and how difficult the struggle against corruption is when so many politicians and local officials are implicated.
Now that the Indian economy is doing so well, and that India’s government is intervening so extensively to bring greater welfare to the people, it might be thought that there is no longer a role for an organization such as CIVA, which has for many years raised money in Canada to support Indian NGOs that work with and for poor people.
We believe, however, that there remains a very important role for us relatively privileged people here: supporting Indian civil society groups directly involved in bringing pressures to bear on government, attempting to ensure that it fulfills its obligations to deliver on citizens’ economic and social rights (such as the rights to food and to employment); and in supporting brave groups battling the corruption that diverts so much of the resources intended for the poor into other pockets. This is the work that CIVA has now taken up.
-- John Harriss is Director of the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University.
Full article here
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