CAPART up for overhaul

IT IS a government agency that was set up specially to fund non-profits working on rural development. But of late the Council for People’s Action and Advancement of Rural Technology (CAPART) has been plagued by allegations of corruption and inefficiency. After a few failed attempts to reform CAPART, the government has now decided to overhaul the agency which has close to 12,000 NGOs associated with it.

As the first step, Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh offered to step down from the post of the president of the general body of CAPART last month. He said it was to free the organisation of political interference. This was followed by a presentation before the Parliamentary standing committee on rural development on January 27. In the presentation, the ministry said CAPART was plagued by poor image and a “strong perception of ineffectiveness, inefficiency and mission dissipation”.

To make the council professional, the ministry proposed organisational changes, including changes in the way appointments are made, the governing process and funding mechanism. It has sought Rs 100 crore from the government for restructuring the agency; another Rs 1,000 crore has been sought to create a corpus fund to make the agency financially independent.

The standing committee, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sumitra Mahajan, was reportedly told that if efforts to restructure CAPART do not succeed, the ministry might consider winding it up.

What ails it

The debate on the relevance of CAPART has been on for some time. It started in 1995 when an alleged fraud to the tune of Rs 15 crore, involving CAPART funds, came to light. The agency blacklisted 564 non-profits, but it continued to function under a cloud amid allegations that it was colluding with corrupt non-profits (see ‘A Few Rotten NGOs’, Down To Earth, July 15, 1995).