Professionally speaking, if you spend less than what you get/ allocate for welfare, it is a big sign of ineffectiveness.

It is a weird that expenditure on welfare of India’s defence forces and their families have been  less than private voluntary donations received each year for the purpose and the NDF is sitting on an unspent balance of Rs 1447.60 crores, while our defence forces have been embroiled in wars and conflicts at the border and within country everyday, 24×7. Please see table below highlighting the broad financials of NDF for the last 5 years.

    The executive committee to run this fund comprises Prime  Minister, as Chairperson, Home Minister, Defence Minister, and Finance Minister as the Secretary. It is an utterly bad structure, keeping in view the busy schedule of our Senior Ministers. Do they have time or should they have time to run this kind of fund. (This structure has been a legacy of Congress Raj, proven Colonial and Corrupt Raj

    Modi ji wants to get rid of the colonial mentality in India, that actually continued till 2014. He must change this structure.

    The Chairman of this fund should be the largest private doner and members comprising number 2-5 largest private doners of this fund. As a matter of fact, there has been  zero budget allocation for this fund since inception, so why these ex- officio? There is no dearth of men and women of integrity in India.

    The prime focus of this fund should be welfare of defence soldiers and their families.

      For the benefit of those who didn’t know, https://ndf.gov.in/en/ states as follows;

      • The National Defence Fund was set up in 1962 to take charge of voluntary donations in cash and kind received for promotion of the national defence effort, and to decide on their utilisation.
      • The Fund is used for the welfare of the members of the Armed Forces (including Para Military Forces) and their dependents
      • All contributions towards NDF are exempt from Income Tax under section 80(G).
      • The fund is entirely dependent on voluntary contributions from the public and does not get any budgetary support
      • The fund accepts online contributions. Such contributions can be made through the website i.e. ndf.gov.in, pmindia.gov.in and www.onlinesbi.com website of State Bank of India.
      • Collection account number is 11084239799 with State Bank of India, Institutional Division, 4th Floor, Parliament Street, New Delhi. IFSC Code of the Branch is SBIN0000691.
      • The fund has also been allotted a Permanent Account Number (PAN) XXXXXX009F.

      I do hope if the structure of the executive committee is changed as suggested above, the fund would get more donations and the fund will be used more effectively and efficiently. As a privately run fund, the fund may run awareness and appreciation campaigns.

      DISCLAIMER: The author is solely responsible for the views expressed in this article. The author carries the responsibility for citing and/or licensing of images utilized within the text.