THE fortunes of the RGF as compared to its poorer cousins, the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust (IGMT), the Nehru Memorial Trust, the Kamla Nehru Trust and the Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Trust, are a study in contrast. All the other trusts of the Nehru-Gandhi family have been given stepmotherly treatment by the Government and the private sector alike. Surprisingly enough, Sonia Gandhi is chairperson of all the Nehru-Gandhi family trusts.
Consider the IGMT. It was formed in 1985 as a memorial to Indira Gandhi. The board of trustees include Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, Natwar Singh, Vasant Sathe, Murli Deora and industrialist R.P. Goenka. A holding corpus of Rs 2.71 crore is all the IGMT has for running the memorial, which attracts around 10,000 tourists.
This year the largest donation was a Rs 50 note from an unknown villager in Tamil Nadu. Last year, the IGMT sacked its administrative officer citing "economic measures" as the reason for its decision. The situation is so desperate that the Trust has to make periodical appeals to organisations like FICCI for donations. But funds are not easily forthcoming.
"Once out of power, it is difficult to mobilise funds," admits IGMT vice chairman Natwar Singh. Had Rajiv Gandhi been alive, things may have been different. to dip into the Jawahar corpus of Rs 15 crore. "We cannot even pay employees their salaries," he points out. "Even the payment of electricity dues is a problem."
In addition, royalties from Jawaharlal Nehru’s books—Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History—go directly to Sonia, rather than the Jawahar Trust. "The royalties have declined, but they still run into several lakhs," says an offi-cial connected to the trusts.
The financial situation at the Sanjay Gandhi Memorial is probably worse. A staff of 10 manage a practically non-functional hospital that the memorial runs at Amethi. No one, not even Maneka Gandhi, ever visits the memorial at 16 Willingdon Crescent. "If we had more money, things would have been better," says S.K. Jain, an official of the Trust who handles accounts. The residents at the Memorial live in the outhouses and for them the prospects are dim. Singh who manages the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund and the Kamla Nehru Memorial, which runs a hospital at Allahabad, says that for the maintenance of the Kamla Nehru Memorial, they have
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