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NGOs leave Clinton blank, AIF still keeps chest shut Friday, April 6, 2001

AHMEDABAD: There are NGOs and NGOs and NGOs. Bill Clinton may have sounded quite repetitive when he said over and over again over the last two days that his visit to the quake affected areas was a "learning process". And there is one thing he must have surely learnt during his hour-long interaction with select representatives of the non-government organisations: that there are as many ways of rebuilding Kutch as the number of NGOs working in the quake-hit district.

For the assortment of 'NGOs', who grappled with each other to get invited to this select gathering at Hotel Taj Residency Ummed, it must have been a learning process too. They learnt that the American India Foundation (AIF) , of which the former US president is acting as ambassador, would still not like to say how much money it is willing to deploy in the rehabilitation process, in which priority areas and through whom.

The assortment included some social activists, industrialists, grass-root organisations, religious outfits and even hard-core politicians - all of whom instilled with the sense of pride at having been invited to an event where they would have liked to be seen, much less, heard. After the session, they were all keen to be photographed with the gentleman with a cherry-red tie which went well with the flushed face.

The discussion of the AIF with the NGO representatives in the packed hotel room, drifted for about an hour. Five minutes after Clinton walked in, the press was shown the door, rather rudely, by the McKinsney CEO Rajat Gupta . McKinsey's India head Ashok Alexander was the moderator who channelised the discussion to issues like "what's an NGO" and "what are their idealogies". It took Bill a few moments to realise that the discussion was heading nowhere.

And then he changed the rules of the game. "Perhaps this question has been asked earlier and, if so, my apologies for the same, but I would like you to place yourself in our position and tell us if you had raised big sums of money in the United States for the earthquake affected, what would you be doing with it". The former US president went on to add, "remember, the amount could be anything 10 or 20 or 30 million dollars, it will all depend on how investors see we are using that money".

And then he suddenly came with a mind-boggling figure - $ 100 million. "But even that would be just a small part of what is actually needed for this massive physical and human loss, so you have lots of money which is yet not enough, how best do you use it to create a new future for the people".

The NGOs fumbled with their answers , some of them prefered to keep silent. Some said the money to be put on employment generation, social security insurance, handicrafts, micro-finance and better technology. Others said it should go for permanent disaster management systems . Worse still, the secretary general of Red Cross, Dr Vimla Ramlingam diverted the earthquake debate to AIDS.

All this while, only a handful of newsmen remained present inside the meeting hall, masquerading as NGOs themselves, just like many other politicians and industrialists. Those journalists who were left out because they were not issued passes raised quite a hue and cry but were not let in . They didn't miss much though and Clinton himself summed up the entire discussion informing the gathering about his project on HIV patients , a subject he seems to have learnt a lot, rather than earthquake where he is still in the learning mode.

 

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