AID Volunteers’ Response to slander website
JUDGE US BY
OUR WORK – Not by Slander
- One thousand
AID volunteers
February
8, 2005
Association for
In recent days, a small number of people have begun a cowardly campaign of slander against AID. Preying on people’s general concerns about use of charity funds, this smear campaign is trying to exploit the crisis of tsunami by making false allegations about AID – hoping that they will simply be forwarded by neutral, well-meaning people. These are either completely fabricated or based on distortion and misrepresentation of information from AID’s own website (publicly available because of the open nature of AID’s functioning). AID has supported more than 400 projects, and its website has more than a 1000 pages; it is easy to search out a few and engage in deliberate distortion.
AID volunteers have always
welcomed questions from its donors and well-wishers, and have gladly and
patiently explained our work. However, a deliberate slander campaign requires
to be countered directly, because such a campaign is a disservice to the donors
and the community in general, as much as it is to AID’s work for the people in
India.
Below is a factual response to specific
false allegations that have been made against AID and are being spread through a couple of websites. We
don't wish to engage in a shadow battle with anonymous websites. Our purpose is
to use our time in a way that best serves the people in India, not to keep
issuing point-by-point rebuttal to such deliberate propaganda. Based on the
points made here, the reader can draw conclusions about AID's work as well as
the falsehoods that are driving the negative propaganda campaign.
AID is grateful to the community for its generous help to the people affected by the Tsunami. AID has responded with alacrity to this disaster using your contributions, and over 50 field reports from our ongoing work are available on our website. We, AID volunteers, promise that your trust is sacred to us. We invite you to join us as volunteers or donors, and interact with us at our regular meetings.
·
Story books, Marx and cartoon books - what
is missing?
·
‘AID Flip-Flop’: Borrowing from recent political campaigns
·
'50 block plan', libraries and false
attributions
·
AID's Relief and Rehabilitation efforts
·
A Host of Seminars – Haven’t we all been to a university?
·
Sandeep Pandey and the fear of contagion
Conclusion – it is upto the readers and
well-wishers
It is up to the readers to judge
AID's work based on facts. AID is committed to sustainable development and
social justice through non-violent means, and our approach and principles are
the very opposite of the naxalites or terrorists or those who seek to divide
India by religion or caste. AID opposes the use of violence by any group.
On the other hand, AID’s
opposition to communalism, caste-based discrimination and so on, have resulted
in hate campaigns from people who would like to discredit any progressive
pluralistic groups. The lines written by one of the people carrying on this
campaign reveal their own agenda: “The liberal doctrines of pluralism,
egalitarianism, secularism and tolerance are just that -- PEST -- when you
don't have the necessary muscle to control the logical consequences that must
visit the weak society like ours.” It is clear where they are coming from.
AID welcomes and will gladly answer any additional queries or concerns from our donors or others genuinely interested in our work. Any communication can be addressed to info@aidindia.org.You are welcome to explore AID’s work further by reading these articles about AID or visiting our website.
Story books, Marx and cartoon books - what is missing?
This is a good example of misrepresentation and twisting of facts – the key is to see what the writer has missed. Firstly, many books from the “… for Beginners” series are listed in the referenced document including Einstein, Ecology, Buddha, Tolstoy, Freud. Picking out Marx and Lenin indicates the writer's paranoia more than anything else. More importantly, this is an extract from one among hundreds of emails sent by Balaji Sampath to AID volunteers – who are expected to understand them in context. Here are some important points missed out by the writer's narrow-minded agenda:
(a) Buying storybooks in the US is easy for a well-meaning person, but most of them are of little use to a village child in India. It is clearly understood by educationists that story books for young children should make sense in their cultural context. Accordingly, AID volunteers have bought several excellent children's books by Indian publishers, like Tulika Publishers, Children's Book Trust, National Book Trust. Here is a partial list of children's books bought by AID volunteers - 267 mouth-watering books bought for $100, what better vindication for Balaji's recommendation of not sending children's books from the US!
(b) The Beginners series are not for young children. It is clear to anyone who has read Balaji's note that the whole set of books being listed there - of Paul Friere, Ivan Illich, John Holt, Maria Montessori, software and hardware books - are for adults! They are for college students, AID volunteers or others interested in the field of education.
(c) What you really shouldn't miss is reading the Beginners series books! They are delightful cartoon books written on complex topics - easily understood and still with profound insights. Marx for Beginners features Marx as a caricature named Charlie and conveys his profound insights as well as failures - what better way to avoid both the dogmatization and deification on one hand, and the paranoia and demonization on the other!
Here's their catalogue: http://www.writersandreaders.com/wrcatalogue.html
We’ll be glad if this page leads you to read some of these books.
‘AID Flip-Flop’: Borrowing from recent political campaigns
The writer relies on familiar tactics from vicious political campaigns with little regard for truth. It is not true that AID has removed all references to DYFI. Many reports from the field talk about the role of DYFI volunteers, and they have all been on the AID website, both before and after the slander campaign. Everyone is encouraged to read the reports at http://survivors.aidindia.org - there are about 40 detailed reports from Tamil Nadu. The only request is to read them in full, to overcome the selective misrepresentation by the slander campaign
About the Chennai Update III: In the first week after the tsunami, the website was being dynamically maintained by several volunteers working frantically on a large number of updates and reports. It is possible that a volunteer made a judgment error in putting an edited version of the report. When this was realized by the website administrators, they replaced it with the original version, which has been there on the website ever since. You can read it here.
It is clear that the slander campaign is clutching at any straws to wrongly portray AID's work. The fact is that AID clearly explained its working with DYFI in the tsunami relief from the beginning. (See our Statement against the smear campaign). The Tamil Nadu government, members of Confederation of Indian Industry, 800 city volunteers from various companies and colleges in Chennai have all worked and interacted with DYFI volunteers in the relief work.
This is a short-term association that was necessitated by the tsunami, and AID has no plans of working with DYFI beyond immediate relief. We are glad that AID volunteers in India did their best to help the survivors, working 20 hours a day, without getting caught in the vicious game that is being played by arm-chair critics here.
'50 block plan', libraries and false attributions
This page is being FALSELY
attributed to
Balaji Sampath. In fact, it is not an AID document at all! It is simply a
concept note written by Sundar of Tamil Nadu Science Forum (TNSF) sent to
others in TNSF for discussion - and never presented to AID. Some files were
temporarily placed on an AID server a few years ago, on a request from TNSF
when they were trying to set up a website. When our server was moved, several
old irrelevant files were removed.
As for TNSF: An organization based in Tamil Nadu, TNSF is well-respected for its pioneering literacy work, which was adopted as a model by the Tamil Nadu government. Also, UNICEF identified TNSF’s community health program Arivoli Iyyakkam as one of their Top 10 programs around the world. Here is a UNICEF reference to the TNSF health program: http://www.unicef.org/health/index_imcd.html
The DYFI obsession
AID's position is made very clear in our FAQ. Neither AID nor AID-India have given any funds to DYFI or SFI. AID-India maintains full control of the funds it receives from AID, and uses them for purchase of relief material, transporting and distribution, and to organize relief activities and camps. All bills are carefully maintained, and AID-India is a registered charity in India whose accounts are audited. Those interested can verify.
The statement in the medico-international website is a loosely edited version sent to them by PHA secretariat. The paragraph quoted is ambiguous because one sentence talks about both TNSF and DYFI and the next sentence says that 'funds were sent to them'. It is the kind of ambiguity to be expected in a report from a person spending 18 hours a day in the field. In any case, after noting this, AID asked Balaji Sampath to clarify. He has clearly stated that no funds were transferred to DYFI at any point of time, and that he was referring to some money given to TNSF women's groups in affected villages.
Amit Varma's report had a similar
ambiguity, and he has issued a
clarification on his blog which is there for all to read.
AID's Relief and Rehabilitation efforts
AID's response to disasters is planned to be long-term by conscious decision. Disaster response work is needed in multiple time frames - immediately after disaster (0-3 months), medium-term (3-12 months) and long-term (over the next 2-5 years depending on scale of a specific disaster). Medium and long-term efforts focus on restoration of livelihoods, and sustained development projects which are the strength of AID. Media attention as well as efforts of many NGO's often fade once immediate relief operations wrap up. AID carefully avoids this approach to disaster relief which does not help the people we serve - we make this clear in the section “Why Work With AID” on our website.
When Orissa cyclone happened at the end of 1999, AID raised about $139,000. Of this, about $100,000 was spent within a year. Another $25,000 was spent in the next year. The remaining amount has been spent in subsequent years for sustaining the work. A partner group like Abhiyan which worked in 8 villages before the cyclone, started working in 50 villages through the tremendous energy of people like Madhubhai, who became a full-time coordinator. The real credit lies in sustaining community development work in these 50 villages, and not abandoning them after 3 months. This approach was vindicated when the same areas were devastated by a series of floods during 2001 monsoon, and our partners provided immediate relief.
AID-Orissa volunteers Prof.
Dhanada Mishra and Peter Bakos have designed innovative ferro-cement boats
as well as interlocking mudblocks for house-construction - both of
which help the local people during floods. AID is proud of such long-term
sustained work. Here is a
report from Engineers Without Borders on an electricity generation project
with AID-Orissa team.
Also, note that during this period, AID supported many other development projects in Orissa, which did not use the funds collected for relief and rehabilitation - like Aloka, Gana Chetana, Adhikar, Srusti, Ruchika, and so on.
Similarly, after the massive Gujarat earthquake, AID took up immediate relief, medium-term and long-term rehabilitation projects, with many partners working with the most marginalized sections - - like Disha, Anandi, Marag, Jan Vikas, Gujarat Lok Samiti, etc. It was clear that this Reconstruction process would take a few years; however in the meantime, Gujarat faced another tragedy in the form of communal riots which left more than 100,000 homeless and destitute. The same partners mentioned above formed a Citizen's Initiative to work with the riot-affected. They believed that the humanitarian need of the riot-affected is the same as that of the earthquake-affected, and further, that healing the communal divide is integral to the long-term Reconstruction of Gujarat.
When AID committed to the reconstruction of Gujarat, it was not just about physical structures like houses and schools, but reconstruction of human lives and the social fabric. After careful discussion, AID decided that it is not conscionable to offer relief to people only when an earthquake hits them but to stand back and deny help when the same partners are working in the same places for people affected by riots. We decided to support both aspects of our partners' efforts without prejudice and in keeping with AID’s holistic vision of development, and made a conscientious decision to make them part of a single Gujarat Reconstruction process. Subsequently, in the next 3 years, AID supported several successful livelihood generation and education projects for the earthquake-affected as well as the riot-affected. Of the $540,000 was raised for Gujarat, more than 90% has already been spent.
AID established its Relief and Rehabilitation Fund which is dedicated to fund only AID's short-term and long-term disaster response efforts triggered by events like the tsunami, droughts, submergence, earthquake, etc. – and not regular running expenses of AID or unrelated projects. AID has a strong network of partners in Tamil Nadu and other tsunami-affected areas. Their funding proposals for tsunami rehabilitation are more than double the amount that AID has raised – so we have very clear plans of how to spend the funds to serve the tsunami survivors in the best possible manner.
AID’s running expenses
AID is run completely by unpaid
volunteers in the US, and has very low administrative costs. In 2003, AID
raised $560,000 out of which $20,000 were spent on management and fundraising,
which makes it less than 4%. Note that there are many unavoidable management
expenses for functioning effectively in the US – legal registration fees,
credit card fees on donations made to AID and bank fees alone account for more
than half of our management expenses.
Volunteers spend a large amount
of personal funds to cover incidental expenses for AID activities. About 100
volunteers make site-visits to projects every year on India trips which are
completely funded by their personal resources. Reports from such visits are
regular features in our newsletters and website.
AID has been consistently rated
as a top charity by Charity Navigator, the largest independent evaluator of
non-profit organizations.
A Host of Seminars – Haven’t we all been to a university?
The vicious nature of the propaganda can be understood by looking at the facts of the Univ. of Minnesota seminar, which is being used to allege links with violent groups. A seminar titled "Violence and Religious Extremism: Reflections on the Human Conditions in 21st century" by an UCLA professor was hosted by the Institute of Global Studies at the University of Minnesota. Peace and communal harmony are of interest to AID, so the local AID chapter co-sponsored the talk. As is common in universities, many other organizations co-sponsored the talk too - Sikh Society, Agora Multi-Cultural Centre, CAIR and MN Advocates for Human Rights. It is obvious that this doesn’t imply any association between any of these organizations – it is upto the actual host of the event, Institute for Global Studies, to allow or disallow any particular organization.
AID hosts many seminars and
speakers, including on one occasion, an executive member of the VHP at a panel
discussion on communal harmony in Boston. The fact that AID Boston volunteers
wanted to bring about an interaction between academics, opponents of
communalism (including Hindu and Muslim community leaders) and members of VHP
doesn't mean that we support communalism and violence. Inviting a speaker
doesn't mean endorsing his or her views, and this is a well understood fact
when any organization invites outside speakers.
AID has hosted hundreds of talks and seminars by a wide variety of people, because development work should be rooted in understanding and knowledge and not in ignorance. Creating awareness about social and developmental problems and their solutions is part of AID's mission. A small sampling of speakers includes journalists like P.Sainath, Sanjoy Hazarika and Kalpana Sharma; survivors of Bhopal tragedy Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla; NGO founders like S.Vidyakar, M.B Nirmal, Dr.Parameswara Rao; activists like Medha Patkar, Leo Saldanha, Swati Desai; doctors and health workers like Dr.Abhijit Das, Drs. Ravi and Thelma Narayan; those working on right to information and electoral reform like Aruna Roy, Shankar Singh, Prof. Jagdeep Chhokar and Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan, IAS officers, the Deputy Ambassador, so on.
Dr.M.P.Parameswaran is a key figure in the Kerala Sastra
Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) - a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (dubbed the
alternate Nobel Prize) in 1996, the UNESCO Literacy Award in 1990, the UNEP's
Global 500, and the Vriksha Mitra award. KSSP was responsible for the Total
Literacy campaigns in Kerala that made it the first fully literate state in
India, and inspired India's National Literacy Mission. AID is proud to engage
and learn from such an accomplished group. As regards Dr.Parameswaran's
membership in the CPI(M), firstly, that is his privilege as an Indian citizen;
secondly, the reason that he is no longer a member of the party is precisely
because he is not a dogmatic person. His personal philosophy, as expressed in
his talks, is influenced by environmentalism and Gandhi as much as the left.
Sandeep Pandey and the fear of contagion
The fact that Sandeep Pandey is sometimes seen with AID volunteers, and that he has also once shared the dais with a political party doesn't amount to much, unless one is concerned with a contagion that spreads by air or email. Here are some facts that are more relevant:
Sandeep Pandey is a very well respected social activist in India working in the field of education, social justice campaigns, peace and communal harmony, Indo-Pak people-to-people friendship. He is a cofounder of Asha for Education, a US-based secular non-profit organization. In recognition of his work Sandeep Pandey won the Ramon Magsaysay Award which is widely considered as Asia's Nobel Peace Prize.
Sandeep Pandey has no organizational affiliation with AID. However, many AID volunteers think of Sandeep Pandey as someone who is personally inspired by Gandhian values, is a staunch believer and practitioner of non-violence and satyagraha, and is worthy of respect for his work with the poor. It is recommended that those who wish to understand his work and thoughts should visit and share an evening with him, or read his writings.
As a sidenote, if one is keen on proof by association, here is a more credible association: Ramon Magsaysay spent his life combating communism, and it is understood that the award instituted in his honor is never given to a communist.
More slander?
The India Herald article makes
allegations based on the same misinformation, falsehoods and pure speculation.
This paper did not bother to cross verify any of the claims and allegations
made with AID. Further, AID has sent refutations which India Herald has not
published. We therefore caution that India Herald is serving to misinform and
mislead the public.