Introduction

There has been a dynamic evolution of both the nongovernmental organizations (NGO) sector and foreign aid since aid first started in the 1960s. Recently, the Vaidyanath Aiyar Committee, reviewing the training of the Indian Administrative Service officers, recommended that they serve a period of internship with an NGO as part of their training. While public donations sustained Indian NGOs in the pre-Independence period and for some years thereafter, since the 1960s, the two major sources of funds for NGOs in development have come to be government grants and foreign aid. International NGOs who played an important part in funding NGOs in the early years are themselves facing an identity and resource crisis, and reorganizing themselves to meet the new situation. Most NGOs themselves love foreign aid. Business, government and political parties look at the source of NGO funding when they want to discredit it.