The Indian Express editorial (‘The long arm’, October 4) contradicts itself. It accuses the Income Tax department of “straying far beyond [its] remit.” But aren’t the NGOs it seeks to defend, guilty of the same? Haven’t many of them diverted funds from abroad for causes without any connection to their declared objectives?
The editorial says the IT department is guilty of constricting spaces “for free expression and civil society action in a democracy”. The boot is on the other foot. Many NGOs, fuelled by foreign funds, hijack an elected government’s mandate and ruin various projects, some of which may have been a part of their manifesto. Isn’t this a subversion of the democratic process?
The charge of weaponising “the rule book’s fine print against the targeted NGOs” reeks of entitlement. Rules, mandated by law, have to be followed. The suggestion that “NGOs must be allowed to do their work without constantly looking over their shoulders” implies that foreign-funded NGOs are beyond scrutiny. Why? Is it IE’s case that the government should have different yardsticks while dealing with foreign-funded NGOs and the rest?
Various leaders have raised red flags against this impending danger across the political spectrum. At the 18th Congress of his party in 2005, CPM leader Prakash Karat said, “While foreign funding to governments is one category, another category is foreign funding to voluntary organisations or what is known as Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). Our party has consistently warned that a large amount of foreign funds are coming in to finance a host of activities of NGOs. Such funds from Western agencies are meant to de-politicise the people and to keep them away from the organised Left.”
In 1984, in an article, Karat stated, “All organisations receiving foreign funds are automatically suspect and must be screened to verify their bona fides.”
Are the IT Department charges against such organisations baseless and a part of “free-style spectre-painting and broad-brush conspiracy-mongering?” The debilitating impact of such deep-rooted conspiracies on India’s development was brought out by Forbes (2019) in a study titled ‘Why the Chinese Economy Flew and India’s Just Grew’. It pointed out that the GDP per capita for China and India in 1985 was almost the same, $293. China’s GDP per capita is now above $13,000, while India’s is just over $2,700. The Chinese economy in 2024 is valued at $18.5 trillion, nearly five times India’s GDP at current prices of almost $4 trillion.
Why such a yawning gap between the two neighbours? Here is a case study of constructing two dams — one in China and another in India — possibly explaining how China leapfrogged India. China built the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric work, in 15 years. A much smaller Sardar Sarovar dam in India took 56 years to complete. However, the half-century-long completion period helped many enterprising individuals.
In February 2012, speaking to a science magazine, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “You know, for example, what is happening in Kudankulam. The atomic energy programme has got into difficulties because these NGOs, mostly I think based in the United States, don’t appreciate the need for our country to increase the energy supply”. Why should America-based NGOs take interest and fund protests against a project based in faraway India?
Recently, when the Modi government sought the Supreme Court’s (SC) approval to widen the roads up to 10 metres along the China border (as a part of the Char Dham Highway project), NGO Citizens for Green Doon approached the National Green Tribunal in 2018 and then the SC, against the project. When the central government presented a sealed envelope to the Supreme Court detailing the extensive construction activities being carried out by China across the border, the court approved the road widening in the Char Dham project and observed, “This Court, in its exercise of judicial review, cannot second-guess the infrastructural needs of the Armed Forces…”
While the Vizhinjam International Seaport in Thiruvananthapuram was coming up, there were massive protests by the local fishermen. On August 23, 2022, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the state Assembly, “The protest that is happening now cannot be seen as a protest by local fisherfolk. The protest in some regions looks like it is orchestrated”.
Agitations against Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat, opposition to setting up nuclear reactors in Kudankulam, the stir that brought copper-producing Sterlite plant in Tamil Nadu to a halt, the efforts to stop the construction of a deep-water seaport in Kerala, or of the Char-Dham Road project in Uttarakhand, have one thing in common — the protests are not spontaneous but, as Pinarayi Vijayan said, “orchestrated”. This list of projects targeted by the foreign-funded NGOs isn’t exhaustive.
The Central Statistical Institute of India reports that the country has over 30 lakh NGOs — twice the number of schools! The Indian school education system, one of the largest in the world, has 14.89 lakh schools. As of October 14, 2023, there were 16,686 NGOs with active Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration in India. NGOs nationwide received foreign contributions worth Rs 88,882 crore between 2017-18 and 2021-22.
Why are foreigners pumping so much money into the Indian political and social life? Never forget the adage: There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Modern wars are not confined to borders. Neo-colonialism operates through proxies. While watching for enemies, don’t miss the ones within.
The writer is a former Chairman of the Indian Institute of Mass Communications (IIMC)
