The Utkal University's National Service Scheme (NSS) monitoring is in a shambles with the staff being deployed for spot visit and inspection of the activities of camps, especially in rural and far-flung areas, themselves encouraging the field level functionaries to bungle funds.
The modus operandi is like this. The Programme Officers (POs) are told to submit proposals for organising camps. While approving it, the matter is settled as to how the camp would be organised and per cents of the sanctioned funds to be distributed among various functionaries.
For not organising the camp or organising it with less than the minimum number of volunteers, the PO has to settle the matter with the Principal and the staff in the NSS Department of the university. In case no camp is organized but records are prepared as it having been held with full strength of volunteers and an elaborate budgeting and expenditure, the university staff takes a lion's share, while the rest part of the money is distributed among the principal, PO and his supporting staff. However, for organsing a camp with less than the minimum strength of volunteers, the share gets squeezed a bit. The idea is to either gulp the total fund or limit the spending to a minimum so that unspent fund is bigger to be pocketed by the officials in charge of the camp.
In the interior colleges the corruption tends to be huge. The functionaries take advantage of lack of monitoring by the higher authorities and manage to misappropriate the funds in a hush-hush way.
The camps which are held in a slipshod way, it is anybody's guess how they are managed. The students just attend the camp for feasting and sleeping. They remain totally ignorant of the high ideals of community service and the routine of the camp life. Since the NSS programme is a campus-community link service, neither the volunteers know what works they are meant to do, nor the villagers where the camp is held get any service.
The officials who are involved in siphoning of funds for noble goals like undertaking social service and developing personality of the students should be taken to task. The POs who are continuing despite expiry of their terms should be withdrawn from the job and fresh people should be manned. Most importantly, the monitoring should be strengthened in the rural areas, opined a few intellectuals and social activists here.