Many years ago, the late William Safire, wordsmith and op-ed writer for The New York Times, tried to coin a new acronym. Sadly it did not take off. The acronym was ‘MANGO’ for Malign Non Governmental Organisation. Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have recently come under scrutiny in Pakistan. One rather famous NGO was closed down and then reopened, or maybe not. I even saw snippets of a programme on television in between boring parts of one of the cricket matches where a heavily bearded gent was fulminating against ‘foreign’ NGOs. The gent was evidently connected to a mosque complex that ran seminaries and charitable projects. As I watched the aforementioned gent for a few minutes, I realised that he had no idea that was also running an NGO. The problem of course is that religious types, being religious types, believe that they are absolutely right in all matters. But here I will respectfully submit that the entire religious establishment and its different iterations are all essentially foreign by definition since none started in Pakistan. On top of it, almost all of them are partially funded by foreign sources, private or official. For instance, even the cancer hospital run by Imran Khan is an NGO and foreigners are a major source of its funding. As it is the Punjab government (as well as the Sindh government) is planning to give over control of large parts of the provincial public health system to NGOs. If we keep privatising Pakistan soon the entire country will be run by NGOs. At times I have this sneaky feeling that the Sharif brothers and Zardari Inc. for all practical purposes are ‘foreign’ NGOs. In Pakistan, what is common between the NGOs that run religious seminaries, private hospitals or other charitable services is that all of them have a ‘private’ agenda that does not necessarily follow a uniform national purpose. Of course, we will soon see a plethora of religious NGOs with stalls all over our cities soliciting aid for flood victims. A country like the US has many, many NGOs. Some function in the political sphere, others work for human rights and others for humanitarian purposes. There are also smaller and more specific NGOs that might be considered single-issue lobbies more than anything else. The need for all these NGOs arises because the government cannot do everything. Some would suggest that governments should only do limited things and leave all else to the private sector. However, in Pakistan, many things that the government should be doing are just not being done. Public health and education are two areas that are being ignored. As a result, the private sector and many religious NGOs are stepping in to provide assistance, the latter through their madrassas (seminaries). However, as I have said above, not all motives are totally altruistic. NGOs, religious as well as laic, push an agenda that is supported by their financial donors. I am sure that an organisation whose only purpose is to push a particular point of view will receive funds within the country, from expats and foreign sources that believe in that point of view. Personally, I would not get too frantic about NGOs that receive funding from countries whose entire population is less than ‘defence’ in Lahore, unless of course if they produce enough fossil fuels to pay for Pakistan’s entire annual budget without even a hiccup. Another point worth making here is that many major foreign donors wish to help specific areas in healthcare, education and other such things but do not want their funding to be channelled through the bureaucracy or the politicians for obvious reasons. Many of them have no choice but to use NGOs as a conduit for their funds. Not all NGOs are created equal. Some are actually devoted to their primary function, which might run the gamut from education to poverty alleviation and disease prevention. In essence, they function like ‘charities’ everywhere. The funds collected can be spent on administrative costs to a significant percentage. This of course means that some of the people who run these organisations skim money from the top to spend on themselves. The major problem arises when some of these ‘laic’ NGOs are seen as conduits of foreign funding for dubious purposes. Other than the famous case of the doctor who went around collecting ‘samples’ in the guise of immunisation, which led to identification of Osama bin Laden, no other cases are known or about by the general public. In my opinion, perhaps the most egregious NGOs that deserve MANGO designation are the religious NGOs that spread sectarian hatred and prepare their seminary students to fight against perceived enemies of Islam. That said, there are many seminaries that provide free board as well as education to all their students. This is an important source of support for many poor families that otherwise cannot afford to take care of their children. However, what needs to be done is that all seminaries, with the exception of those that prepare students for advanced degrees in Islamic studies, should also provide a regular education to their students. Those seminaries that provide advanced studies should be and probably are registered as such. Others should become residential schools. These schools should prepare their students for some career choices besides becoming prayer leaders in a village mosque or joining a jihadi outfit after graduation. It is, however, imperative that provincial education departments as well as the home department determine that all NGOs, religious or laic, are registered and that their activities are lawful. Perhaps one of the most important but rarely mentioned problems with all NGOs and charitable organisations is that their funding sources are often secret and the money actually spent on the stated purpose of the NGO is unknown. Once the religious outfits are also designated as NGOs then perhaps a proper audit and registration of all such NGOs should be done. The author is a former editor of the Journal of Association of Pakistani descent Physicians of North America (APPNA)