Up the wrong tree

Recent govt steps on foreign-funded NGOs deserve a review

The Union government continues to expand its action against non-governmental organisations, or NGOs. This has given rise to some disquiet. The government says its concern is straightforward: it is worried that some NGOs are using foreign funds in order to finance an agenda that is not in the national interest. To this end it has taken several steps. Funding to NGOs such as Greenpeace has been cut off, and all its seven bank accounts frozen, making it difficult for the NGO to operate under such circumstances. The registration of about 9,000 NGOs has been cancelled because, according to the home ministry, they had not submitted to the ministry details of the foreign contributions they had received, and what the money was used for. There are about 43,000 NGOs registered under the Foreign Contribution Registration Act in all; 22,700 have received foreign contributions; and 9,000 have not submitted their details for the years 2009-12. Of course, given the turnover in the NGO sector, many of these 9,000 may be effectively defunct. Most visibly, perhaps, the government has instructed all banks not to allow the Ford Foundation to finance any person or organisation in India without the government's express permission.

This last is perhaps the most puzzling, taking India back to the distant past when the hand of the Central Intelligence Agency was discerned everywhere. The Ford Foundation is remembered mainly for helping finance the Green Revolution. Even today, its largest single grant - $1.2 million of the total $5.6 million in 2014 - is to the National Foundation for India, a body set up by the heroes of that revolution, Chidambaram Subramanian and M S Swaminathan. However, as this newspaper has reported, the Foundation had also at some point given money to the Sabrang Trust, "to address communalism and caste-based discrimination in India". The Trust has been an active participant in the conversation about - and criticism of - the Gujarat government post the 2002 riots. It is reported that the Gujarat government complained about the Trust and the Ford Foundation to the Centre; the Centre has now taken action to control the Ford Foundation's grant-making.

Even if the government's claim is taken at face value - that organisations like the Ford Foundation use foreign money to argue for positions that are not in the national interest - it is not clear whether any action is warranted or not. After all, there is a clear difference between interference and intervention. India's policy dialogue is hardly so robust that it can afford entire strands of the debate to be silenced. In a democracy, the government should make its case for its view of the national interest better, instead of trying to silence other voices, however well-funded. And, even were the worst-case scenario true, that foreign-funded NGOs do little but advance other countries' agenda through persuasion, the government should still rethink. After all, driving lobbying underground, even by foreign governments, has its perils. Like the US, the government should consider permitting open and registered lobbying. Then it could perhaps stop worrying that NGOs are how that lobbying is happening, and allow the many apolitical NGOs that depend on foreign financing to get on with their jobs.