In Search Of Transparency & Accountability Or An Attempt To Shoot The Messenger 

The department visited the premises of these organizations around noon and inspected the book of accounts and financial transactions as part of the probe related to alleged contravention of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), official sources said. The office staff and main directors and office bearers were questioned too. Allegation also being examined on these organization and premiere policy research institution of receiving funding from political parties that are registered but unrecognized under the election commission. Many political observers and commentators have often seen FCRA as a precarious tool in the hands of the government to straighten the critics.

 Public policy that is well formulated and rooted to ground reality of a society is a goal that every welfare state aims to attain.  Success of a public policy depends a lot on the in-depth research and analysis that goes  into the formulation and implementation of the policy. It is thus suggested that policy analysis plays a very crucial role in implementation, monitoring and evaluation of a policy. There is a very old saying in global politics ‘Those nations which spends extravagantly on policy research, education and health are bound to sail swiftly towards the port of development by all the right means’. India has been very systematically building upon boosting policy research and analysis based institutes from 1960s onward. The larger intent of this nature of encouragement from the state side was to facilitate the working of the planning commission and Ministry of Defence & Security  to some extent.

We get to see a lot of think tanks being established from 1960s onwards with the objective of social, economic, defence and security development. Think tank institutions like IDSA, CPR & ORF were established as an independent, not for profit and autonomous institution from 1960s onwards. These institutions have contributed imensly towards the socio- economic and and defence strategic enrichment of Indian state.

Think tanks and research institution like CPR, Oxfam and ORF have been working effortlessly towards strengthening the impact of social and economic policies and critically evaluating the work done by different governments in past several decades. Many academicians, renowned intellectuals and policy analysts have been closely associated with these premier institutions for a long time and also led the institution with a mark of credibility. These institution are known for they long drawn contribution in the field of policy research and insights into strategy orientation for security related concerns (think tanks like IDSA have been closely involved in this process).

Accountability and transparency are two important cornerstone of a constitutionally governed democratic state. It is needless to also say that maintaining transparency and accountability is the key responsibility of law enforcement agencies by doing there duty without getting under the pressure of partisan power. Political parties have a poor track record of tactfully using law enforcement agencies for twisting the arm of any form of opposition. India’s political history is filled with such instances right from the era of 1980s. One must also put it clearly that FCRA is an important regulation required for ensuring transparency in all form of foreign funding transactions but not to be used as a ploy to settle all those seen as opposition.

One has also no doubt that our law enforcement agencies do they job with at most honesty under all forms of pressure. In order to keep the records straight the agencies should also clearly put out in public domain as to what was recovered in these kind of conducted raids. Unless this nature of practice is implemented as a routine procedure post the conduct of raids, till then glass will always look tainted for both the law enforcement agencies and organizations upon whom the raids are being conducted.