Oxfam was originally founded in Oxford, UK, in 1942
as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief by a group of Quakers, social
activists, and Oxford academics; this initiative is now known as Oxfam
Great Britain (GB). Its various affiliates were established over time. When it
was still Oxfam GB its involvement began in India when money was granted in
1951 to fight famine in Bihar. Oxfam India’s lineage accordingly goes back
sixty years to this Bihar famine grant of Oxfam GB.
In 1957, Community Aid Abroad (now Oxfam Australia)
started working in India; while Novib (Netherlands); Oxfam Hong Kong and Intermon
(Spain) its other affiliates did so in 1964, 1993 and 1997 respectively. In
2002 an Oxfam Trust was additionally registered in India but was riddled with
dissensions and splits. Oxfam India was established on September 1, 2008 under
section 25 of the Companies Act, 2005 as a non profitable organization with its
head office in Delhi.
According to Oxfam India's latest Annual Report, "the merger of all the Oxfam
affiliates created Oxfam India". Further, the Oxfam
India website highlights that this year marks the 60th year of Oxfam’s operation
in India besides describing itself as part of the Oxfam family! So if Oxfam India is a merger of all Oxfams working in India how could it claim to be an Indian NGO by any stretch of imagination? What's evident is that we find Oxfam
India often speaking with a fork tongue. In some fora it presents itself as an international NGO while in others it claims to be a totally Indian NGO as if suffering from schizophrenia.
Oxfam India also advertises the fact that they are
a full member of the Oxfam International Confederation. This status entitles
Oxfam India to use the Oxfam brand name and logo. Also unsaid, it prerequisites
Oxfam India to comply to the policies of Oxfam International. In turn, Oxfam
International's policies are tightly aligned with Department for International
Development (Dfid) that is the foreign aid arm of UK's government and the
European Commission (EC).
Organizationally, Oxfam India is internally structured as Administration; Fund-raising and Programs. Interestingly the current program head's profile as in their website is as follows:
Director- Programs and Advocacy has more
than 21 years work experience, more than 16 of which has been in the
development sector. She has worked with Government of United Kingdom's
Department for International Development (DFID) in India on a range of development
initiatives across different sectors, including livelihoods promotion, rural
development, financial and governance reforms and enterprise development. She
has been in the lead in developing DFID's programme in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar
and worked with federal and central government departments, civil society
organisations and the media."
The keyword is Dfid, repeated two times in this profile. Now a wide variety of profiles could easily have fitted the position. But Oxfam India eventually preferred a candidate possessing Dfid centric experience which tells its own tale. Now if Dfid funds constitute a major element of Oxfam India's revenues, we can even understand this preference. But the top donor of Oxfam India who account for more than 50% of all its funding is Oxfam NOVIB, whose donations we can presume includes large components of the Government of Netherlands funds. Oxfam GB whose funding we can similarly assume to contain a large share of Dfid funds accounts for less than 20% of Oxfam India's revenue.
While we are on the topic of funds, it would be highly interesting to also verify the factual validity of Nisha Agrawal's claim that 50% of all of Oxfam's revenue is accounted by those raised locally. So lets look at Oxfam India's latest annual report once again.
On the face of it, what we will find is that
in 2009-10, local contributions accounted for a 10.7% of all Oxfam India's
revenues while for fiscal 2010-2011 this was only 10.5%. Nowhere near the 50%
mark as Nisha Agrawal claimed.
Deepak Shenoy in his blog Capital Mind in an analysis
of Oxfam's Annual Report pointed out that Oxfam collected only Rs 7.2 crores as
local donations but spent Rs. 5.01 crores to generate this revenue. Net local
funds raised accordingly comes to less than Rs 2.2 crores for year 2009-2010
and would be possibly in the similar range for fiscal 2010-2011. So when we go
by net figures, Oxfam India's dependence on foreign funds is as high as a
whopping 97% of its total revenue. Take away foreign contributions from Oxfam India;
the organization simply collapses like a house of cards.
So let's come back again to the question Suhasini
Haidar (SH), the TV News anchor posed to Nisha Agarwal (NA)
SH: Foreign funded
NGOs are essentially driving an agenda of people who funded them. When you come
in to protest on the subject of environment, when you come in to protest on the
subject of agriculture, essentially you funded by a foreign country, you are
not funding a pro-India agenda.
When any organization is dependent on foreign funds
for 97% of its income, it is natural to ask how independent could it be or
whether its agenda is foreign driven? This is all what Suhasini Haidar wanted
to know.
We would have expected
Nisha Agrawal to be forthright in her reply. Her formulation something on these
lines - We are a part of an international confederation and yet our board of
directors and staff are fully Indian. Our dependence on foreign funds is
currently almost total but we hope to eliminate this dependence within the next
10 years. Instead, this is what Nisha Agrawal replied:
NA: Oxfam India is an Indian NGO. We get half our funds from other Oxfams who
have common goal to fight poverty and justice The other half we raise from
people in India. Why do we assume that this is a foreign agenda?
For a straightforward question, a CEO of international
NGO chose to distort truth during a prime time TV news programme. Here lies
the root to public suspicion of foreign funded NGOs. As exemplified by the Nisha Agarwal interview, foreign funded NGOs seldom
give out truth worthy information. There also often appears a big divergence of programme goals as between what's publicly stated and implemented in practice. So to this extent, they themselves are to
blame if they are seen as foreign agents or invite a backlash from the
government.
A 70% fundraising cost as Deepak Shenoy points out, reflects a highly inefficient
system.The prospect of seeing a totally self-reliant Oxfam India is a long way off, if not an impossibility, just looking at these figures. Perhaps it is this realization that prompted Oxfam India to stop outsourced fundraising work and instead create a huge fundraising capacity, in-house My consulting hunch indicates that Oxfam India may rue this decision. At least outsourcing still ensured that Oxfam India see some net money being raised locally. Once these tasks are undertaken in-house, it is most likely that Oxfam could end up spending more than the funds it raises viz. suffer losses.
Deepak Shenoy was however evaluating Oxfam India's fundraising programme looking through the lens of the efficiency
principle. We can however come to an entirely different conclusion if the lens we use is through a strategic imperative prism.This would assume that the objective of a financially self-reliant Oxfam India may not be their real primary objective though touted as one officially. Its real objective could be to support Oxfam India's objective of influencing policy in the country that are aligned with the strategic interest of their
donor countries.
If so what would be the best method to achieve the latter objective? This
would be to get under its social influence net, those who are best positioned to influence policy or can add
value to the creation of demand for policy changes that the donor country wishes to
impose on a recipient of aid like India. So accordingly the target of Oxfam's brand building exercise would be
celebrities who could be used as brand ambassadors like filmstar Rahul Bose;
media personalities who could give favorable coverage to Oxfam; corporates and politicians. The most effective way to
reach these segments would be to organize glamorous fundraising events which involves large expenditure budget. So while Oxfam's fundraising activities may look inefficient;
strategically it maybe designed to contribute to a much wider range of outcomes that justify its costs.
It's not as if
Oxfam does not target the middle class for fundraising. They apparently do. They take the
help of direct marketing companies who unleash an army of extremely aggressive,
20 something youth to campaign for donations door-to-door. I happen to live in one of areas considered affluent in Bangalore and we have these 20 something youths
fundraising for Oxfam, ringing our door bells, at least once if not more times each
year. Believe or not, they ask for donations to support Oxfam orphanages. But there
is no mention of orphanages in Oxfam's Annual Reports, I keep telling my friends, some of them who
are professional fundraisers. Their reply with a wicked smile - perhaps it is easier to raise money
for orphanages than human rights!
Is spin the exception or the rule within Oxfam's organizational culture?
Let's take look at another Oxfam CEO, Barbara Stoking. In Oxfam's report "Growing
a Better Future" Barbara Stoking claimed that “The food system
is pretty well bust”. Yet, the so called busted food systems have generated
an all time bumper harvests at both the global and India levels this year. This
is for a second year in a row. Rice productivity which Oxfam further
claimed is declining due to global warming, recorded a whopping 3.5% growth
rate. And these are all preliminary estimates; the final estimate could be much
higher. Multi-decadal agriculture production data shows absolutely no evidence
of any supply decline. But to justify Oxfam's "GROW" (Climate
Smart Agriculture by another name) programme which the organization has raised
huge funds and which need to be spent for their earmarked purpose, Barbara
Stoking appeared to have opted for spin over facts.
In the nineties, an OECD report (1994), The
Joint Evaluation of Emergency Operations in Rwanda, stated that its team
came across examples of agencies including Oxfam telling, if not falsehoods,
then certainly half-truths. The publication of these findings
caused a huge hue and cry back then both within and outside Oxfam circles.
Apparently, the organizational culture of Oxfam has little changed since then
though they often love to portray themselves as a "learning"
organization. If this be the case, we can then well imagine what they do with a
science like climate change to generate hysteria.
Individuals give to
social causes mostly for altruistic reasons. This holds true in the West as
well as developing countries like India. Agendas come to play only when government, political or corporate funding is involved. This is why higher the private citizen
contribution share in the overall revenue mix of any charity; the more likely that it
maintains an altruistic outlook in its aid behaviour.
Oxfam origins were a
testimony to this truism. During the height of the World War II, the altruistic
spirit of early Oxfam was clearly displayed when they opposed their government policy
to blockade Greece. Due to the blockade, Greece began to suffer famine. At its
height, people died at the rate of over 1,500 a day. If early Oxfam was able to
uphold the principle of humanitarian neutrality and Quaker values of pacificism it was
because it was then constituted by members and supported by people who subscribed to these ideals.
Maggie Black who wrote the history of Oxfam noted:
“An organization which only exists
because people vote for it with bits of their time or the contents of their
purse is an institutional expression of ideas current in the wider society. In
this case the ideas are those of people in the richer parts of the world about
human distress in the poorer, though over time these ideas have been influenced
by thinking fed back the other way”
Over time, Oxfam
diversified its revenue sources and the above table had been compiled from their latest annual report. As seen from this table, on the face of it, individual contribution is still
the major revenue earner but only just about at around 37% closely followed by
funding from various governmental sources including the EC and multi-lateral
agencies like the UN. Oxfam’s trading income comes third with 22% contribution.
As seen earlier in the Oxfam India example, fundraising costs could eat up almost 70% of the funds raised or more. Assuming, Oxfam International's fundraising efficiency is much higher - say at 50%, the net revenue contributed by regular support and appeal could be half that shown in the above table.
Further € 159 million revenue by Oxfam's trading activities might look very impressive. But in terms of net profit, it contributes less than 25% of this amount or even suffer losses in certain years. A blog post explains:
The
annual report 2010-11 shows that the Oxfam shops in the UK generated £85.9
million in sales, which compares well to the donations and other voluntary
income of £138.4 million. However, the Oxfam shops cost £65 million to
run, leaving only £20.9 million for the year. Which is around 24% profit?
Which sounds like a lot, except that the labour is largely voluntary, the goods
are mostly donated and the shops pay no business tax to local authorities? In fact, if you have ever bought anything new
from an Oxfam shop, the accounts indicate that whilst there was an income of
£9.6 million generated from sales of new goods, it actually cost £11.1 million
to sell them.
So if you’re ever tempted to complain about the amount
profit-making companies donate from ‘charity’ Christmas cards, remember that
Oxfam actually lost money selling theirs."
What happens if the
same data presented by Oxfam in their annual report is re-presented on the
basis of net revenue contribution? It would show Oxfam International's
dependence on government funding as over 50%. So what does it make Oxfam look
like? A GONGO? (Government-Organized Non-Governmental Organization).This
is an anti-thesis to what Oxfam was in its inception. Now it is
interesting how Oxfam started diluting its own founding principles
viz-a-viz the government over time as it dependence on the latter as a
source of funding progressively increased. For examples we can take their
reaction to the Iraq invasion in 2003, where its dependence on government funds
was relatively lower and their reaction to the Libyan aggression in 2011 where
its dependence on government funds crossed 50%:
At
the start of 2003, Oxfam took a clear stand against the war in Iraq. On 28
January, Oxfam GB’s director, Barbara Stocking, said that military action
against Iraq could ‘devastate the lives of millions of people … Oxfam believes
war now to be unjustifiable’.
If
military action is taken by the international community on the basis of the
UNSC resolution, it is essential that this is designed and implemented in a way
that maximizes the protection of civilians. Such operations are complex and
unpredictable, and must be undertaken with great care. We therefore call on the
international community to ensure there is monitoring of the conduct of all
parties to the conflict in Libya, and regular reporting to the UN Security
Council.
The latest consolidated
accounts suggest that Oxfam last year has slipped into the red with a deficit
of € 17 million. With economic recession expected to continue, Oxfam's leverage to increase their revenue from sources such as individuals; corporates and trading can be expected to contract even further. To maintain growth or even ward off negative growth, it is possible that Oxfam would seek to increase their dependence on government funds even higher, at least in the short term. Any official aid cuts accordingly could therefore expected to have a deleterious effect on Oxfam International's financial solvency. So paranoid of this prospect, Oxfam attacked the recent wave of "dangerous" criticism of overseas aid, warning that financially stretched governments could use it as an excuse to cut their overseas commitments. Read here.
This is simply not an Oxfam specific scenario but likely to apply to other agencies like Christian Aid; ActionAid etc as well. Even if these INGOs have second thoughts on issues like global warming and climate smart agriculture, they will find it increasingly difficult to jump off the bandwagon as these are the priorities of the European Union. For these INGOs the insurance is a Global Climate Fund which is perhaps why NGOs like Oxfam desperately campaigns for as they will be the primary beneficiaries of such a fund.
Oxfam can be also expected to put increase pressure
on affiliates with revenue deficits like Oxfam India to reduce their revenue
deficit. This is possibly why Oxfam India in part has created a huge
fundraising machinery.
Even the staunchest critic of Oxfam may not deny
the excellent work the organization has done over the years all across the
world. But these marked changes in Oxfam's revenue mix appear to have also
brought about subtle organizational and policy changes that have led critics to
increasingly charge Oxfam of forgetting its roots. Some of the controversies
which Oxfam found itself embroiled with are summarized below.
1. Oxfam has been
often accused by other UK NGOs as having an extraordinarily close relationship with Tony Blair-Gordon Administration. If Tony Blair was described as George Bush's poodle, many in the UK NGO sector describe Oxfam as a poodle of Tony Blair. So nervous was Oxfam of New Labour losing power last year that Duncan Green, Oxfam GB’s Head of Research wrote in Oxfam’s official blog:
It’s a
mistake to think ‘the government is changing but we will remain the same’.
Pressures on service delivery, access and lots of other areas will (and
arguably should) change us as well. Not the principles, I hasten to add, but
the language and alliances we make as we go about our work’
Even before the votes were counted and when it was clear that the Tories would form the next
government, Barbara Stoking, Oxfam’s CEO penned a welcoming post on Tory-supporting
Telegraph website. Many consider this an unthinkable till then; an act which was said to have ruffled
some high-up New Labour feathers. I asked why this step to someone working with
another UK based NGO who appears a New Labour supporter. He said “They would even happily sleep with the enemy as long as
it ensures their personal and organizational survival”. This maybe too
harsh a comment but it does suggest that perhaps ideology and loyalty do not move Oxfam to the extent funding does!
2. Despite all Oxfam’s pretensions
in furthering the cause of democracy in developing countries; within their own organization, dissent is often
crushed with a heavy hand. Barry Nowlan, a worker in one of Oxfam shops found
this out the hard way. Nowlan after he criticized an Oxfam poster campaigning
for the introduction of a Robin Hood Tax on banks and financial institutions
found himself slapped with a £10,000 legal suit and an injunction against entry
into Oxfam shops. Finally Oxfam arrived at an out-of-court settlement with
Norman, just to ward off bad press and public opinion the incident stirred up.
3. In the September 5,
2005 issue of Newsweek was a report entitled “Where The Money Is” with subhead
“The $1.6 trillion non-profit sector behaves (or misbehaves) more and more like
big business.” The report started with: “If it wasn’t for the raffia coasters
and folk art in her office, it would be tough to tell Oxfam GB director Barbara
Stocking from the CEO of a multinational corporation… Stocking says it’s her
mission to ‘save the world.’ But unlike many do-gooders of the past, she’s
doing it in a suit rather than sandals – and so are many others.”
The same year, the
magazine New Internationalist similarly described Oxfam as a "Big International Non-Government
Organisation (BINGO)". The criticism was equally severe. Among the
accusations were that Oxfam had a corporate-style, undemocratic internal
structure, the NGO addressed the
symptoms rather than the causes of international poverty – especially by
acquiescing to neo-liberal economics and even taking over roles conventionally
filled by national governments. Why this criticism caused undue embarrassment to
Oxfam was that the New Internationalist was in a way a baby of Oxfam (and Christian Aid) who wanted to promote
a publication to increase public awareness of development issues. The first
editorial team comprised of 3 Oxfam and 3 Christian Aid executives. The New Internationalist, gradually became fully financially self-reliant, was also renowned for
its fiercely independent editorial policy that won it many prestigious media awards. The New Internationalist probably
knew Oxfam and Christian Aid inside out as nobody could and this is probably why this article punctured a huge hole in Oxfam's credibility. Read the article by
clicking HERE.
Similar concerns were raised by Katharine Quarmby, writing in well known left
wing media, The New Statesman. She accused Oxfam of sabotaging the Make
Poverty History movement by facilitating the latter to be appropriated by
the Blair-Brown administration. This
action Quarmby attributed to Oxfam’s proximity with the New Labour Party.“One senior NGO official familiar with the negotiations
of the past few months describes the relationship as "far too cosy".
He says: "They have incredible access, and what that has meant is that
Oxfam are the ones who are always asked to speak for the whole development
movement. And they differ on policy from other groups.” Read the whole article by clicking HERE.
4. Oxfam has been also accused of having an anti-Zionist philosophy. In
2003, Oxfam Belgium produced a poster with a picture of an orange drenched in
blood. The poster read, "Israel's fruits have a bitter taste...reject
the occupation of Palestine, don't buy Israeli fruits and vegetables” In
October 2009, Oxfam was accused by Israeli NGO Regavim of aiding Palestinians
in illegal activities in Kiryat Arba, including water theft. Oxfam has denied
these allegations. The Oxfam brand was built around the principle of
humanitarian neutrality and Quaker values of pacificism demonstrated during its
early days. In one stroke, the Oxfam brand took a massive hit through these
indiscretions.
5. The website http://www.eco-imperialism.com/
observes: “The core of Oxfam's political platform is human rights. It
aims to "empower" people in poor countries. This sounds good, but it
is high risk. It requires Oxfam to take sides and can lead it into unacceptable
company. When does today's union activist in Peru become tomorrow's Shining
Path Maoist revolutionary? Or today's social worker in Palestine,
tomorrow's supporter of terrorism? Careful aid agencies shirk these risks. Not
Oxfam. It has been enmeshed and doesn't seem to mind. The Institute of Public
Affairs in Australia has revealed that Oxfam has supported radical groups in
both Palestine and Indonesia.”
6. Oxfam has been accused by several quarters of pursuing unfair trade practices:
- Oxfam’s Fair Trade
Coffee programme was accused of exploitation and oppression in several quarters
including large sections of NGO activists in India. The Australian reported on two Melbourne
academics who have lodged formal complaints against Oxfam Australia, which
oversees Australian Fair Trade certification, challenging that Fair Trade
doesn’t achieve what it claims: Oxfam coffee ‘harms’ poor farmers. Read the full article by clicking HERE.
- Oxfam has been criticized for aggressively expanding its specialist bookshops, using tactics more often associated with multi-national corporations. The charity has been criticized as some claim this expansion has come at the expense of independent secondhand book sellers and other charity shops in many areas of the UK. These expansions are funded by capital grants with no interest obligations; volunteer staff eliminating HR costs; donations of books that greatly reduces cash flow requirements and tax exemptions as a charity - all of which gives Oxfam's bookshops an unfair advantage over existing competition.
- Oxfam estimates nearly 35,000 individuals volunteer for their second hand shops. But when Oxfam trading director David McCullough objected to volunteers running libraries in Oxfordshire County, Oxfam exposed itself to charges of following double standards. Oxfordshire
County Council leader Keith Mitchell hit back at Oxfam: “Surely he
understands the country is broke? We have no choice other than to cut public
spending and, by doing it quickly, we have earned the confidence of those who
fund our debt and kept interest rates low and affordable”. The result of the Oxfam intervention however was that the County Council closed 20 out of 43 library branches!
- On 26 October 2006, Oxfam accused Starbucks of asking the National
Coffee Association (NCA) to block a U.S. trademark application from Ethiopia
for three of the country's coffee beans, Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe. They
claimed this could result in denying Ethiopian coffee farmers potential annual
earnings of up to £47m. While most NGOs would agree this is the right thing
which Oxfam did, the corporate lobbies accused Oxfam of stooping to unfair
trade practice, Oxfam being Starbucks competitor through its Fair Trade
programme.
7. The global mining industry is a special target for Oxfam's advocacy
program. It self appointed itself as a Global Mining Ombudsman. Oxfam hounded
out US Company, Magma which was running the Tintaya copper mine, the third
largest in Peru. Eventually, BHP
Billiton, one of the world’s biggest mining companies, based in Australia, took
over the mine when it purchased Magma. But this put Oxfam in a spot. The lead
for these Oxfam programmes is Oxfam Australia and BHP Billiton (also an Australian company) take over opened
up criticism of Oxfam behaving as an eco-imperialist. These criticism gained more ground as
Oxfam reacted positively to BHP Billiton's take over and Oxfam Australia
even offered itself to the company as the party able to manage and broker the
complaints by local groups about the mine.
An expensive (to the company) process of consultation was established.
Commissions of enquiry into complaints about environmental damage, social
impacts, sustainability and abuse of human rights were established. By Oxfam's
own accounts, the complaints against the company (fostered by its US
counterpart) were found baseless or insignificant. But Oxfam was unable to
deliver peace. Other local groups, (not within Oxfam's range of influence),
raised fresh complaints about the mine and sought unreasonable payments from
the company (such a increasing the US$1.5 million dollar contribution to the
local community to US$20 million). Oxfam peevishly grumbled in its reports that
these groups were undermining the process of consultation it had established.
Oxfam was not in a strong position to complain. They tried to combine the
impossible - be an ombudsman and activist at the same time.
Oxfam India's
operational area covers the state of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand,
Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Area selection is justified on the
grounds that these are most backward states in the country. And they are. But
most of them are also highly mineral rich. This is
why the Home Ministry reportedly keeps a close eye on Oxfam India’s work in
these areas; whether this agency is trying to foment agitations to cripple
mining in this country. There may be no visible evidence of Oxfam India doing
so, yet but this is a legacy Oxfam India inherited through membership to Oxfam
International Confederation.
The Evolution of Oxfam India
By a quirk of fate,
I happened to know the man who sowed the seed for today’s Oxfam India. He was
my ex-boss Murray Culshaw who I worked with during the early eighties. In the
90s, Murray was the India Country Director of Oxfam GB. We didn’t have much
contact then as he was based in New Delhi and I in Bangalore and our paths
rarely met. But whenever we did or in our irregular letter exchanges, Murray
always spoke of his dream - having an Indian Oxfam. He wanted Indians to take
responsibility for their destiny instead of White Men ruling the roost. What
made his sincerity come through was Murray was a White Man himself though those
of us who know him always consider him no different from ourselves. In 2002,
Oxfam Trust was registered. It was soon besieged by internecine wars. splits
and scandals. I happen to know one or two of the board members and the stories
they told me made me quickly rule it out as a viable NGO entity. A few years ago, I
learnt that all legal cases have been settled out of court and Oxfam Trust along
with other Oxfam affiliates merged to form a new entity called Oxfam India.
In researching this post, I came across an old
New International article accidentally that suggests that within Oxfam perhaps there was a
deep divide on the question of supporting an Indian Oxfam, at least initially. The analysis helps us better understand Oxfam India as a concept as they are valid even today:
