Akshay Patra Foundation Must Resolve Governance Issues Fast
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-11-24 08:47:54
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
What is cooking at Akshaya Patra Foundation (APF), the worldâs largest NGO in the hunger alleviation segment, apart from the mid-day meals its kitchens provide to millions of school children across India?
APF has been in the eye of a storm after allegations of mismanagement and worse were leveled against the present management by several high profile trustees including former Infosys CFOs Mohandas Pai and V Balakrishnan, co-founder of Chrys Capital Raj Kondur and Abhay Jain, advisor to Manipal group. These trustees have resigned as they said that they tried their best to improve governance at the NGO but the management did not listen to them. The erstwhile trustees were mainly concerned about the lack of transparency in the relations between APF and certain other trusts, including Iskcon, Bengaluru among several other issues.
It is good that these erstwhile trustees of APF have raised corporate governance issues in APF. Indian companies and big NGOs are often run as personal fiefdoms of those in power, despite the many laws that seek to prevent that. Shareholders and stakeholders are often taken for a ride and nepotism and favoritism rule the roost. Most decisions are shrouded in mystery and transparency is non-existent. The management lets people within the organization see what they want them to see. While managements take precautions not to fall foul of the law, they often use the legal loopholes to the hilt.
To prevent matters from escalating further, the APF management has reconstituted the Board and constituted a new audit committee. It has also appointed a two-member committee to look into all the issues raised by the trustees who have resigned and the previous audit committee. The committee will be headed by former Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) K V Choudhary and will have M S Unni Krishnan, former MD of Thermax as the other member. According to APF, the committee will review all matters and submit a comprehensive report within four weeks. It will be assisted by the NGOs internal auditors in this matter.
While it is good that the APF management has decided to look into the matter, the committee it has formed suffers from lack of credibility. Without casting aspersions on the impeccable credentials of the two members of the committee, it still needs to be stated that since they are both non-executive trustees of the APF Board of Trustees, their inquiry into the allegations and the report they submit will carry lesser weight than if the same was conducted by independent, qualified and outside persons. APF would have done well to resolve governance issues by appointing an independent committee without involving the non-executive trustees.
