The Wages Of Dissent

Veteran rss leader and founder of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (sjm) Dattopant Thengadi may have vociferously declared war on the Atal Behari Vajpayee government. But his broadside has been such that it's not rocked the government ship at all, what with Thengadi's 'comrades' currying favour with the establishment at every given opportunity. This strategy of equivocation has worked well for the various rss organisations—their prosperity graph has soared with funds from the Centre pouring in. This also explains the sjm toning down its all-or-nothing position on the government's economic policies.

The earnestness, or the lack of it, in Thengadi and Co's criticism of the bjp-led government becomes evident when one learns that a 'grassroots' organisation like the Swadeshi Jagaran Foundation (sjf), which just two years ago had a corpus fund of Rs 8.5 lakh, has metamorphosed into a high-profile event management group of sorts, and now commands a budget of Rs 8 crore. The sjf travel bills alone total a whopping Rs 30 lakh a year.

The need or the greed to corner financial resources is precisely the reason why the rss has virtually taken over crucial government funding agencies like the Council of People's Action and Rural Technology (capart), which disburses crores of rupees to ngos every year. The sjf, of which the sjm and the Centre for Bharatiya Marketing Development (cbmd) are affiliates, has been drawing funds with assistance from its activists who are now part of capart.

The sjf was founded in 1996, but its revenue-earning activities took off after the cbmd came into existence in September 1998. The Foundation had only Rs 8.87 lakh in 1997. Within a year it saw a three-fold increase in its earnings to Rs 27.5 lakh. But what really helped it hit big was the cbmd's grand swadeshi mela in January 1999 at Delhi's Pragati Maidan—the sjf's earnings shot up from Rs 27.5 lakh to almost Rs 8 crore.

The Foundation paid Rs 1.81 crore to the Trade Fair Authority of India to rent the mela space. But when the cbmd sub-let smaller enclosures to government undertakings, psus and corporations, it factored in profits for the sjf. The total earnings from renting out space were to the tune of Rs 4,43,89,600. Another huge chunk, totalling Rs 3,23,22000, came from sponsorships. With so much money pouring in, the cbmd could afford to spend Rs 42 lakh on stall construction and on the theme pavilion. As an sjf activist put it: "These melas are essentially a revenue-generating activity." But sjf member-secretary Arun Gachke says: "The cbmd does constructive work by organising swadeshi melas on a no-profit-no-loss basis."

Money earned from such melas is often used to bolster the activities of other Sangh parivar outfits. For example, savings from the Vigyan Mela organised at iit, Delhi, in February 2000 were transferred to the Bharatiya Vigyan Kendra, an outfit run by rss sympathiser Rajendra Prasad. A Bharatiya Vigyan Kendra note declares that "part of the savings from the Swadeshi Vigyan Mela would be transferred to the Bharatiya Vigyan Kendra. The kendra could approach the Union government and others for a one-time grant to augment the corpus from Swadeshi Vigyan Mela and possibly for an annual recurring grant as well".

The sjf organises swadeshi melas countrywide in which government departments like capart, the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India Ltd (Trifed), the Khadi Village Industries Commission (kvic), public sector undertakings and corporations hire stalls for a handsome fee.The entire money goes to the Foundation's coffers. No wonder, unlike other mass movement organisations, the sjf has become rich in a short span of two years.

These melas apart, the sjf also gets funds from agencies like capart which, according to a senior government officer, has granted it Rs 1.1 crore so far. "Given the rules of the executive committee, if more than Rs 1 crore is involved, it calls for a comprehensive evaluation. But in the case of sjf no evaluation was done."

Realising that accessing government funds is vital, a battery of activists, drawn from the abvp and other Sangh organisations, have been appointed to different committees of capart. All the six members, including chairperson N. Vijaya, of the newly-constituted national standing committee on marketing, communication, hrd and monitoring of capart are sjm activists—Prassana Sapre (Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram), Anil Gachke, Yogesh Shukla, Ajay Jambval and Umendra Dutta (former editor of Swadeshi Patrika).

Similarly, five of the six members of the rural technology committee are rss activists. Their presence on the capart body ensures easy allocation of funds. One of the members, Dr Rajendra Prasad, an rss sympathiser and scientific officer at iit, Delhi, was the key figure behind the first Swadeshi Vigyan Mela held there. Officials told Outlook that the organisation was forced by the then minister of rural development, Sunderlal Patwa, to hire space in the Swadeshi Vigyan Mela for Rs 32 lakh. This apart, another Rs 22 lakh was sanctioned for holding exhibitions and workshops.

Points out a capart official: "Five workshops were to be organised and Rs 2 lakh was sanctioned for each of them. It's funny that all the workshops were organised in one day at the iit. Some of us objected and finally only Rs 4 lakh was released. But since the sjf have their men in all the committees, the remaining Rs 6 lakh was also released last week. It's sheer arm-twisting, nothing else."

Sources in capart say that nobody can afford to antagonise the swadeshi brigade, what with patron-ministers lording it over at the helm. "The sjm people come here and openly threaten us. They say that they shunted out capart chief N. Ramji and anyone who dare oppose them will not be spared," says an official. Such is the fear among officials that all efforts by Outlook to speak to capart's director-general Rangan Dutta proved futile.

Ramji incurred the wrath of the swadeshi brigade when he refused to grant Rs 4 crore to the sjf, a decision which had the support of many members of the executive committee. Rajendra Prasad was the only person who had supported the sjf demand. Sources also say N.C. Saxena, then secretary, rural development, made a noting on the file that sponsorship shouldn't be offered to the sjm because it was a political organisation. When Ramji turned down the request for the grant, he was shifted to Trifed and replaced by Rangan Dutta, then Trifed managing director.

A chastened Ramji, obviously, seems to have learnt his lesson. As managing director of Trifed he sanctioned Rs 1 crore last month to the Vanvasi Kalyan Mela, jointly organised by two Sangh outfits, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and cbmd, in Delhi.

Ironically, an organisation which swears by swadeshi has no qualms in taking money from a government that has shown little respect for the swadeshi credo. Says Gachke, an old rss activist and member-secretary of cbmd: "Jise aap sarkaari paisa kah rahe hein vah janata ka paisa hai (You call it government money, we say it's public money).You can't overlook the government in the development of the nation. But we don't take any money from the government or any of its psus for agitations."

Gachke seems to have the rss sarsanghchalak K.S. Sudershan's consent. In a recent interview to Outlook, the rss chief explained the sjf receiving government funds thus: "It doesn't take money from the government. It doesn't have a fund of its own. In swadeshi melas, government departments buy their stalls. How do you think the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch is going to make its ends meet? After the whole thing is over, I don't think much money is left."

The sjf's agitating arm—the sjm—has on several occasions slammed the government for its "anti-swadeshi" economic policies. And it keeps threatening to launch a nationwide movement against the government. While sjf leaders insist that the money coming from capart, psus or government corporations isn't used for agitational purposes, there is hardly a demarcation between the manch and the cbmd. The very activists who chant anti-government slogans double up as members of decision-making bodies in capart, a government funding agency.