Saraswati was a successful IT professional in USA. Moved by the patriotic sense of doing something for the country she returned to India. Together with some other like-minded friends, she formed an NGO to build a school for a poor rural community. The objective of the school was to provide the best quality modern education at a nominal cost. She soon discovered that she has to seek permission from a number of Government agencies. The rules and procedures were quite confusing and cumbersome. What frustrated her most was the delays, callous attitude of officials and constant demand for bribes. Her experience and the experience of many others like her has deterred people from taking up social service projects. A measure of Government control over voluntary social work is necessary. But it should not be exercised in a coercive or corrupt manner. What measures can you suggest to ensure that due control is exercised but well meaning, honest NGO efforts are not thwarted?

Saraswati's ordeal exposes a genuine governance dilemma: the state must retain oversight of the voluntary sector to prevent fraud and misuse, yet the oversight here has degenerated into red tape, delay and extortion that deters honest social service. The task is to design control that facilitates rather than throttles well-meaning effort.

Stakeholders

• Saraswati and other honest NGO founders — seeking to serve without harassment.
• The rural children and community — the ultimate intended beneficiaries.
• Regulators and government — duty to ensure accountability and prevent misuse of funds.
• Corrupt officials exploiting discretion; and society, which loses when philanthropy is deterred.

Ethical issues

• Corruption and rent-seeking abusing the licensing power of the state.
• Balancing legitimate accountability with the autonomy and initiative of civil society.
• Administrative apathy and delay defeating a socially valuable objective.

Suggested measures

• A single-window, online clearance system with time-bound, deemed approvals so applicants are not shuttled between agencies — the logic of Right to Public Services Acts and the NITI Aayog NGO-Darpan portal.
• Self-certification and risk-based, light-touch scrutiny for small, transparent NGOs, with fuller audit reserved for high-value or foreign-funded bodies under a fair FCRA regime.
• Statutory citizens' charters fixing service timelines, with penalties on officials for unexplained delay or demand of bribes.
• End-to-end e-governance to remove face-to-face discretion, the seed-bed of bribery, and provide online tracking of applications.
• Robust grievance-redress and whistle-blower channels, and strict action under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 against extortion.
• Mandatory public disclosure of NGO accounts and outcomes, shifting control from entry-barriers to transparent accountability of results.
• Capacity-building and hand-holding support for genuine social entrepreneurs — model bye-laws, help-desks and awareness of procedures — so that ignorance of process is not exploited for extortion.

The guiding principle is trust-based, facilitative regulation: the honest are enabled and the dishonest are caught after the fact, rather than everyone being obstructed at the gate. Corruption thrives on monopoly plus discretion minus accountability, so the reforms above attack exactly those conditions — reducing discretionary touchpoints, ending the monopoly of a single gatekeeper, and hard-wiring accountability. As the Second Administrative Reforms Commission urged, the citizen — here the social entrepreneur — must be treated as a partner in development, not a suspect. Due control and an enabling ecosystem are complements, not opposites; the state can be both a regulator and a facilitator of the good.