Bhuvan Bhaskar
The new year brought a message of thunder to thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) of the country. On Friday, December 31, it was told by the Ministry of Home Affairs that the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration period of 5,933 NGOs expired on the last day of 2021 and although these NGOs were given a long time to correct their records. , but ultimately they failed to do so, hence their FCRA registration got cancelled.
After this latest decision of the Modi government, the number of NGOs with FCRA registration in the country has come down to 16,829. On the other hand, the number of NGOs already existing in the ‘Deemed to cease or expired’ category has increased to 12,850 from 6,587. Technically, the registration of these NGOs has just been canceled, not canceled. The number of NGOs having ‘cancelled’ registration is 20,675 as on 1 January 2022. The NGOs which are in the ‘Cancelled’ category will no longer be able to receive any funds from abroad. However, NGOs in the ‘deemed to cease or expired’ category have 6 months to correct their records.
This latest decision of the Modi government on NGOs is not a surprise to the social sector watchers. In fact, this is just a new part of a process that has been going on for the last several years. Narendra Modi’s relationship of thirty-six with NGOs is well known. When Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, the years of national and international hate and boycott campaigns against him for his alleged role in the horrific riots following the Godhra carnage were led by some NGOs. Had it. The directors of these NGOs were extreme leftists and there were reports from time to time that most of them had funding of lakhs and crores of rupees from abroad.
But it would be a misunderstanding to see this clash of NGOs with Modi as an isolated incident. In fact, the network of NGOs creates such a complex web, in which it is not an easy task to see the roots of which event happening in the country. A small example is the well-known billionaire George Soros’s NGO Open Society Foundation (OSF). Soros openly announced at the World Economic Forum (WEF) that he would fund $100 million to fight nationalism and nationalists. Referring to India in particular, he said that Narendra Modi is trying to establish a “Hindu nationalist state” and it is the “biggest and scary blow” for India.
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This ‘concern’ of Soros was not just on paper. The two NGOs that have received funding from OSF are the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) and the French NGO Sherpa. HRLN is the same NGO that has campaigned against ISKCON’s Akshaya Patra and Indian sedition laws and has given free legal aid to Rohingya infiltrators. Apart from these, there are other NGOs that are funded by HRLN, who keep on raising such issues from legal to other fronts, which undermine the Indian judiciary and national integrity. Sherpa, on the other hand, is the NGO that has filed a complaint against the Rafale deal in France.
The Human Rights Initiative advisory board of OFS is chaired by Harsh Mander, whose organization ‘Caravan-e-Mohabbat’ openly supported the students of Aligarh Muslim University in the violent protests against the CAA. Harsh Mander’s NGO Center for Equity Studies has also received funding from Christian conversion organizations and Mander has also been an open advocate of conversion. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and senior Supreme Court advocate Indira Jaising are also associated with Soros and his OFS. Sen and Jaising’s stand for the Modi government and its nationalist agenda is well known. It is against this background that the role of NGOs in India and especially their activities after 2014 can be assessed.
Hundreds of such NGOs flourished during the decades of Congress rule, which by becoming a participant in the corruption of the system, being close to power, misused government and foreign funding fiercely. There are many such NGOs, which have left no stone unturned to defame India in world forums in the name of human rights and religious intolerance, while these same NGOs turn a blind eye to the more serious incidents happening in China and America. . There are also many such NGOs, which are accused of getting conversions in India from foreign funding.
However, it is not the case that all the NGOs and organizations that have been canceled are on the target of the government due to anti-national activities. Many of these have failed to comply with the norms required under the FCRA law for other reasons and hence their registration has been cancelled. Such institutions range from India Habitat Center (IBH), Indian Medical Association (IMA), Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Jamia Millia Islamia, IIT-Delhi, Delhi College of Engineering and Delhi Public School Society (DPS). ) are included.
In fact, NGOs have to fulfill many regulations for FCRA registration. Even before the Modi government, action was taken against NGOs under these regulation, but this number was very less. Usually, the executives of big NGOs had deep penetration from the government to the administration, and rarely any questions were asked about their strict adherence to the set rules.
Due to this, hundreds of NGOs, despite not following the rules, kept on receiving funds without any restriction and kept using them on their own free will. In the Supreme Court case against a well-known left-wing activist from Gujarat, it was revealed how she and her husband spent lakhs of rupees on expensive clothes, shoes and other personal means out of the funds received from abroad in the account of their NGO. did.
With the Narendra Modi government coming to power in May 2014, the Home Ministry had put its own microscope on the activities of the NGO. In an industry report released in the first week of March 2018, it was told that in the first 4 years of the Modi government i.e. till 2017-18, there was a 40% reduction in foreign funding to NGOs. The Home Ministry, headed by the then Home Minister Rajnath Singh, had canceled the registration of 13,000 NGOs.
In 2017 alone, registrations of about 4,800 NGOs were canceled. After 2019, this trend continues unabated in Modi Sarkar-2 as well. The command of the Home Ministry passed from the hands of Rajnath Singh to Amit Shah, but there has been no significant change in the attitude of the Modi government towards NGOs. As of today, out of some 50,000 registered NGOs, only 16,000 are active. The road ahead for these active NGOs will not be easy, because whether it is a matter of intention or rules, they have to be fit on every front to work in India.
(The author is an expert in agriculture and economic matters)
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