Bengaluru citizen groups have accused United Ways, a global NGO of hijacking their success in reviving lakes like Doddabommasandra.
Representational image of Sompura Lake in Sarjapur
For months now, local resident groups and Bengaluru-based NGOs have been working to rejuvenate the Doddabommasandra Lake in north Bengaluru with their limited means.
Sustained pressure from these citizen groups forced the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to take up restoration work in 2016 and then later Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), the public-sector unit under the Ministry of Defence set up a 10 MLD Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative in 2016.
Spread over 124 acres, the lake in its current form is important for maintaining the groundwater table of the region which includes localities of Vidyaranyapura, Govindayyanapalya, Doddabommasandra and Thindlu.
Although, the STP is not yet functional, the rejuvenation process has started to show some results.
But on Tuesday, Epsilon India, a global marketing company claimed that it will revive the same lake as part of their community outreach programme, triggering a strong reaction from local citizen groups.
By Wednesday, the posts have been changed to, “At Epsilon India, we are set to revive one such lake.”
It has been now found that the company had tied up with United Ways, an international NGO for its CSR activity.
Mahesh, who is in charge of United Way’s Lake Rejuvenation Campaign tried to downplay the issue. “We are taking up the biodiversity and upkeep of the lake. The rejuvenation work is being done by the government. There is some miscommunication which has led to these issues,” Mahesh said.
“This is a fund making scam of United Ways. They have a history of doing this. When all the hard work has been done by the local groups, they have come to show the world that they have done all the work. They are usurping all the good work done by us and now they are taking photographs to show to the world that they are doing all the work and they should be given funds,” alleged Ramprasad, convenor of Friends of Lake, a citizen group rejuvenating lakes across Bengaluru.
He further alleged that big corporates use big NGOs to spend their CSR funds as they have a FCRA (foreign contribution) license. Incidentally, United Ways have been mired in controversy outside India.
William Aramony, the founder of Uniteds Way was jailed for defrauding the organisation of more than $1 million.
He further alleged the same thing was done by the NGO in the case of Rachenahalli and Kaikondrahalli Lakes, where they entered the process in the last phase of rejuvenation and hijacked the success of citizen groups.
Ramprasad is not alone, Shilpi Sahu, a trustee at Mapsas (the Kannada acronym for Mahadevapura Environment Protection and Development Trust), which manages many of lakes of Bellandur-Sarjapur region, also alleged that United Ways has in the past take credit for other projects.
She alleged, “We are ending our association with them (United Ways) as we have had a lot of issues. They are not very proactive in involving the community and they hijack the attention even though the community and the BBMP lakes team primarily look after the issues. They are only there because of the ease of FCRA and we don’t see the benefit of having them in the loop.”
On Thursday, an employee with Epsilon India on condition on anonymity, however, told TNM that the community outreach programme has been put on hold.