The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday (September 23) passed the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2020, that is set to bring about significant changes in foreign funding rules to ensure transparency and prevent misuse of the funds. The bill that was passed by the Lok Sabha on Monday was called by the CEO of Oxfam India as a ”devastating blow”. Many others from the NGO sector, academia and media have called the amendment ‘draconian’, ‘cumbersome’ and an attempt to ‘kill’ the sector.
Of course, the amendment has been brought to serve as a death blow – not for those who are involved in rendering true service but for those who foment trouble in the name of ‘activism’. These NGOs under the guise of social work indulge in inciting people against development projects or engage in religious conversion.
Currently, Tamil Nadu has the highest number of NGOs – 3251 – that are registered with the FCRA and incidentally, all the protests against development projects are also concentrated in this region. There is a protest for anything and everything under the garb of saving Tamil culture, farmers, environment and social justice.
Starting with the Jallikattu protests in the recent years, which was initially a student led protest against PETA, ended up as a protest against the Modi government and the state government both of which had no role whatsoever in banning the sport. Since then, the state had witnessed a multitude of protests – the Thoothukudi Sterlite protests, protests against development projects like Indian Neutrino Observatory, Salem 8 lane highway project and Sagarmala project, protests against policies like the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 and currently the New Education Policy.
It is not that these protests are happening only against the present regime. The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant too faced similar hurdles. In 2012, when Dr. Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister, he openly said that foreign funded NGOs were behind the anti-Kudankulam stir in Tamil Nadu led by R. Udhayakumar. The present Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanaswamy who was then a Minister of State for the Prime Minister’s Office even gave the details of all the NGOs connected with which Udhayakumar was linked with, when the latter had served a legal notice to both Naranaswamy and Dr. Manmohan Singh. The Home Ministry had freezed the accounts of four NGOs – Tuticorin Diocese Association (TDA), Tuticorin Multipurpose Social Service Society (TMSSS), People’s Education for Action and Liberation and Good Vision Trust.
Most of the money is church money
According to the 2011-12 Annual Report on Receipt and Utilization of Foreign Contribution by Voluntary Associations, the highest receipt of foreign contribution was reported by Delhi (₹2285.75 crore), followed by Tamil Nadu (₹1704.76 crore) and Andhra Pradesh (₹1258.52 crore) and among the districts, the highest receipt of foreign contribution was reported by Chennai (₹889.99 crore), followed by Mumbai (₹825.40 crore) and Bangalore (₹812.48 crore).
Amitabh Behar, CEO of Oxfam India in an article published in the Scroll says that foreign funds linked to the church is a ‘myth’ and that most of these funds are from ‘philanthropic bodies or governmental agencies that have no association with the church’ and focused towards ‘developmental questions like poverty eradication, creating livelihood options for the poorest of the poor or work for gender justice’. However, contrary to his claims, the FCRA 2011-12 Annual Report (the latest that seems to be available) notes that the top donors for the year were Compassion International, USA (₹183.83 crore) followed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, USA (₹130.77 crore) and the Kinder Not Hilfe e. V (KNH), Germany (₹51.76 crore). Compassion International, a Christian aid organization which was made to shut shop in 2017 had openly acknowledged that it funded local evangelical Christian churches.
Wolves in sheep’s clothing
A lot of the other organizations may appear on the outside to be working for social causes. But they are nothing but wolves in sheep’s clothes.
The Commune had earlier exposed the funding and working of two such NGOs – The Other Media, one of the FCRA NGOs that was instrumental in closing down Vedanta’s Sterlite Copper Plant at Thoothukudi and Centre for Promotion of Social Concerns aka People’s Watch, an NGO based out of Madurai working in the area of ‘human rights’.
It is NGOs such as these that the government and people should be wary of as they are heavily funded by the church. In 2012, The Other Media got ₹71550 as donations from World Association For Christian Communication, Canada – an organization that claims to promote ‘social justice’ to people of all faiths, ethnicities, and cultures worldwide. The same organization contributed ₹5,76,990 in 2011. Two other organizations named Catholic Organization for Relief and Development Aid (CORDAID) of Netherlands and Trócaire, the official overseas development agency of Catholic Church in Ireland, have contributed millions of rupees during the period from 2007 to 2011. These two organizations have contributed the most to TOM during this period. (Click here to read more about The Other Media)
CPSC on the other hand had received funds worth several crores from MISEREOR, a German Catholic Bishops’ Organization and Bread for the World, another Christian advocacy organization based in the United States with ties to many NGOs linked to the church in India. (Click here to read more about CPSC).
The much needed death blow
The new amendments, as rightly pointed out by Amitabh Behar and the NGO group VANI rightly serves as a death blow to these NGOs. From now, not more than 20% of the foreign contributions can be used by the FCRA registered NGOs to meet their administrative expenses like paying salaries. It also prohibits individuals or NGOs from transferring their foreign contribution to a third party. For example, The Other Media cannot transfer its foreign funds to other smaller NGOs (mostly church-linked) working in India.
In case the NGO is suspected of any violation of FCRA norms, the government (pending further inquiry) can direct the NGO to not spend the un-utilised funds or receive the remainder of the foreign funds.
Aadhar card has been made mandatory for all office bearers and directors for any new registration for an FCRA certificate or a renewal. In case of foreign office bearers, they would need to furnish a passport or OCI card.
None of these provisions would affect the NGOs that are working towards people welfare by tapping into domestic funding like CSR.
Who are whining?
It is the NGOs that indulge in preying on vulnerable souls and incite people in the name of ‘activism’ which will be facing the heat. They with their comrades in the academia and media (NAM troika) who scratch each other’s back to promote themselves will be severely hit with livelihood becoming a question for them. Not the ones that supplement the government’s efforts in reaching out to the poor and need by providing welfare services.