NGOs are an essential feature of democracy, but they need not all be seen as do-gooders who can't be questioned. They are driven by vested interests and moral certitudes, need and greed, just as corporations are.

The brouhaha over the Intelligence Bureau (IB) report on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) may be overdone, but we must thank the IB for at least one thing: the debate on the role of NGOs has been opened up, and it needs to continue.

While the IB report needlessly paints them as villains - a point savaged by Surjit Bhalla in The Indian Express last week - we need this debate precisely because NGOs get by without detailed public scrutiny merely because they claim to represent people's interests. For anyone to claim legitimacy, they need this figleaf of representing civil society - though there is no way of verifying this.

In a democracy, the only people who can claim some degree of public legitimacy are the politicians, for they at least go to the people once in five years asking for their votes and get themselves elected. Even the losers can claim some public support for their stand. The rest of the people claiming to represent the people are merely private pressure groups or narrow interests - which includes you, me, the corporate sector and NGOs of various stripes.

In this article, I would like to make three points.

One, NGOs are no different from corporations. Merely because they are non-profits does not mean they are different. They have their own “profit motives” and vested interests.

Two, they deserve closer scrutiny just as corporations do. They should welcome it.

Three, their claims to moral certainty in matters of environment and renewable energy need to be challenged. Whether it is Greepeace, or various organisations committed to rolling back coal and nuclear power, they cannot claim a right to the truth that is not self-evident. They claim to be "prophets" of people-based development, and this "prophet motive" may not stand on a higher pedestal than the corporate sector's "profit motive."

This is not to demonise them. NGOs are vital to a democracy, for they bring new ideas and challenge the status quo by organising the people and bringing their own “facts” to the table. But there is no need to put them on a pedestal and think they are beyond scrutiny. Today's Indian Express (16 June), for example, reports that even though NGOs received Rs 12,500 crore from abroad in 2013, barely two percent of them reported it. The money was often not used for the purposes for which it was meant. As Jay Mazoomdar wrote in Firstpost, this is what needs investigation. We certainly don’t need witch-hunts.

However, even without a witch-hunt, I believe it would be a good thing to look closely at what the NGOs are saying and doing, and challenge them on their positions. Democracy, after all, is not only about NGOs challenging government and those in power; it also means citizens, and even government, challenging the claims of NGOs. The challenge clearly must be on facts, issues and claims.

In India, we tend to privilege non-profits over profit-seeking enterprises, possibly because the former are "social workers", or selfless entities who do good without seeking anything in return. However, this is a myth.

In terms of basic intents and purposes, there is almost no moral difference between a corporation seeking profits for promoters and shareholders and a non-profit seeking to fight for a cause (environment, tribals) or doing charity.

A corporation seeks customers. It seeks to sell products to them above cost so that it can make a profit and share it with stakeholders - including government. In the process it creates jobs, a socially valuable service. While doing its job, it may also do damage - empty wastes into rivers, pollute the atmosphere, or exploit natural resources without regard to the environment.

An NGO is a corporation without a financial profit motive or promoters. But it has donors - the people who provide the resources for its work. It has customers, the people it claims to serve. Its workers may not receive much pay or may even work for free, but they get psychic incomes (the feel-good from contributing). We must not assume that if a work is done for free, it somehow is beyond scrutiny. Even work done in the name of god or the poor needs to be tested in broad sunlight – free from biases.

If we accept that NGOs and corporations are two similar types of organisations driven partly by self-interest, we need yardsticks to measure whether they are doing net good or harm.

When it comes to companies, we can put jobs, incomes, tax payments and community spends on the positive side of the ledger. Environmental damage, flouting of the law and ill-treatment of workers can appear on the negative side. Put both the positives and negatives together, and we have some idea about whether a corporation is doing more good than harm. Broadly speaking, the negative side – environmental damage, etc – is tougher to measure, unless one merely adds up the cost of cleaning up a polluted river, or the time and effort involved in planting the 10,000 trees cut to set up a factory or coal mine.

When it comes to NGOs, the positive side is tougher to measure. Here, one is not talking of NGOs that offer specific services like education, or healthcare, or distributing food packets after a flood. These simply need auditing and measurement, and the scrutiny must focus on whether the effort and money put in are worth it in terms of outcomes.

But the NGOs that the IB report talks about are basically into “causes” relating to environment and social issues, some bordering on the political. Here, the positive side is tougher to measure.

What, for example, is the damage to the environment from a new dam beyond the people displaced (who need to be rehoused and rehabilitated) and trees cut? What is the damage caused by a new coal mine?

Many NGOs oppose these kinds of development projects even though these projects have both beneficiaries and losers. The things we need to measure are whether there are more winners than losers, whether the losers are adequately compensated, and weigh the short-term gains against unknown long-term costs.

For example, stopping a coal-based power plant on the plea that it causes pollution and global warming is not an unchallengeable proposition. The coal mine provides jobs and incomes. It provides power to drive industry and even to villages. How do we measure these benefits against the future cost of environmental damage? Can the latter be mitigated by compensatory work?

Also, the moral certainties of NGOs trying to stop coal or nuclear projects and replacing them with renewable sources of energy need to be challenged, too.

While it is easy to point a finger at grimy coal, the downsides of renewable energy, including solar and wind power, are being seriously underestimated.

Take solar energy. It needs lots of land. Is land a cheap or abundantly available commodity in India, especially in the context of the UPA’s ill-thought-out Land Acquisition Bill? Matt Ridley, in his book The Rational Optimist, says that to replace conventional power in a country like America with solar power would require land equivalent to the size of Spain. As for wind power, Ridley writes: “Wind turbines require five to ten times as much concrete and steel per watt as nuclear plants, not to mention miles of paved roads and overhead cables.” Needless to point out, cement, steel and cables are all products of extractive industries that NGOs love to rant about.

As for global warming, even if we assume it is a certainty, it will bring an increase in sea levels and threaten coast-based habitations. But warming, if it happens, may reduce the global water shortage for it will increase evaporation from the oceans and bring in more rain, notes Ridley.

And solar power brings its own pollution. The photovoltaic cells have silicon, and toxic metals like mercury in them. No human activity is free from side-effects.

Germany, which had announced ambitious plans for generating 40 percent of its power through renewable sources by 2025, is now scaling back given the huge costs. The point for India is this: if rich Germany, with its negative population demographics, thinks it cannot over-subsidise renewable energy, what is the chance that India, with its exploding demographics, can quickly replace fossil fuels with renewable energy?

There is no way India can meet the needs of its growth without coal or nuclear or hydel energy. We have to emphasise renewable sources, but what we need is a rational debate and a balanced approach.

For those who things the greens have all the right answers, they should read The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, a former greenie who got disillusioned with the untruths and exaggerations being peddled by the environmental lobby.

The NGOs have to redo their sums and not oppose every coal-based power plant or nuclear project blindly. It is upto them to prove that they are not anti-development. Right now, that’s not clear.