Leftist propaganda outlet The News Minute’s “Let Me Explain” ran an episode on PM CARES this past week. By the time it reached its final line, the video had stopped being an explainer and turned into an accusation without a source.
“PM CARES has ended up gobbling up money that smaller NGOs could have got,” the host, Pooja Prasanna said, citing “a study by this Washington-based NGO” that found the fund “deprives civil society organisations of a major chunk of CSR funding.” Pure meltdown. No name. No link. No number.
TNM which is having a meltdown now did not seem to open its mouth or even report how alleged journalist Rana Ayyub collected money from Indians during COVID-19 and placed the money under Fixed Deposits for ‘own use’.
What TNM Got Right, and What It Swallowed
PM CARES did put 93% of its corpus in fixed deposits by the end of FY25 – Rs 7,846.65 crore of a Rs 8,452 crore balance, per the fund’s own audited statement. That much of TNM’s episode is accurate.
What Pooja left out is the fund’s life cycle. PM CARES has taken in over Rs 14,000 crore since its 2020 launch and has disbursed more than Rs 8,133 crore of it – on ventilators, oxygen infrastructure, migrant welfare, vaccines, and the PM CARES for Children scheme.
The Rs 87.85 lakh spent in FY25 was not the fund’s total output. It was one year’s release under one scheme, for children already enrolled. A disaster-contingency fund holding reserves between emergencies is not evidence of hoarding, it is how it must function.
Meltdown Because PM CARES ‘Gobbles’ Funds
As mentioned above, the most revealing part of the TNM episode comes towards the end.
“PM Cares has ended up gobbling up money that smaller NGOs could have got,” they said.
Pooja argues that corporate contributions to PM CARES could have instead gone to smaller civil society organisations working directly on the ground.
Research and civil society reports have previously argued that the decision to make contributions to PM CARES eligible as CSR expenditure redirected corporate funding towards the government-backed fund and away from NGOs.
But Pooja presents this as another reason to question the fund.
But how can corporate CSR money going into a national emergency fund automatically be treated as money that was “taken away” from NGOs?
PM CARES was created in 2020 as an emergency relief fund. Its corpus is not meant to function like a conventional NGO that must spend its entire annual income. Keeping money in fixed deposits also generates interest. In 2024-25, PM CARES earned about ₹469.37 crore from fixed deposits and another ₹5.77 crore from savings-bank accounts.
In fact, the fund’s corpus increased despite receiving about ₹479 crore in domestic donations during the year, largely because of interest income and other receipts.
So the ₹8,452-crore figure cannot simply be presented as money sitting idle in a vault.
The NGO Argument Cuts Both Ways
TNM’s argument is essentially that companies had a choice between contributing to PM CARES and supporting civil society organisations.
But corporate CSR contributions are not private donations to NGOs. They are part of a statutory CSR framework. The government amended the CSR rules in 2020 to allow contributions to PM CARES to qualify as CSR expenditure.
Corporates redirecting CSR money toward a government-backed trust with 100% tax deduction is a predictable response to the incentive structure, not proof of any “gobbling up.”
Chinese Companies Donations
TikTok, Xiaomi, Huawei – all donated to PM CARES. The fund’s audited sheets report aggregate donations, not a line-by-line donor directory, which is standard for a charitable trust and not unique to PM CARES. What is wrong is taking money from Chinese companies when they want to donate?
But, if the PM CARES fund is functioning as a large emergency reserve, with its corpus generating hundreds of crores in interest each year, it is going to help the nation on a heavily rainy day. Why is Pooja and TNM crying over this? Are they so selfish? The fact that 93% of the corpus is in fixed deposits does not, by itself, establish financial wrongdoing.
TNM’s Full Meltdown In Public View
It feels like Pooja and TNM want to really ask why PM CARES is not passing on this money to NGOs.
Portals like TNM themselves take money from anti-India forces to peddle a propaganda.
PM CARES money is sitting in Indian fixed deposits, earning the exchequer Rs 469 crore in interest last year. It is money for India, when we need it. But anti-nationals will not understand this.
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