Tightening screws on NGO sector to push development
TEAM TOI
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Modi government's relationship with NGOs, par ticularly those funded by foreign donors, has been troubled from the word go. But home ministry officials say the action against NGOs in the past year is an extension of UPA's policy of tightening the screws on organizations against development projects, negatively impacting GDP growth. Work on the IB report that prepared the ground for action against Greenpeace, for example, was undertaken during UPA's tenure. The report's damning revelations left the Modi government little choice but to invoke FCRA to put Greenpeace International funding under prior permission category .One is bound to look at the action against NGOs through the prism of the troubled relationship that Modi had with them during his days as Gujarat CM. That was when NGOs targeted him for his alleged “complicity in the 2002 riots“.
Although a large number of NGOs are associated with the Sangh Parivar, it's always eyed foreign-funded organizations with suspicion, see ing them as a nuisance for India's sovereignty . VHP has issues with NGOs that get funds from abroad working in environment, which insist on implementing norms that aren't seen as feasible.This, it points out, impedes growth. Some of these organizations, the Parivar objects, are allegedly involved in proselytasation.
While UPA may have felt that NGOs were too big -22,702 of them together received Rs 11,546 crore in 2011-12 -to be left unpoliced, one gets the impression that under Modi, there's a new-found keenness to enforce the rules, winked at by earlier governments.
Ford Foundation has been in the NGO funding business for long. But it's only now that it's being asked to comply with FCRA.It had defaulted on these provisions, funding non-FCRA registered NGOs in Gujarat, some of which had associated with campaigns against Modi when he was CM.
The offloading of Greenpeace India activist Priya Pillai from a London-bound flight in January was part of the government insistence on making NGOs play by the rules. Though Delhi HC directed the government to expunge the `offload' remark in her passport, home ministry says they were right in restraining her from indulging in an anti-national campaign on foreign soil, briefing British MPs on the “negative“ impact of the Mahan coal project at Singrauli.
Add to this the cancellation of licences of 10,117 NGOs, inspection of accounts of 165 and freezing of accounts of 34, civil society's mistrust of the Modi government has only grown deeper.
Although a large number of NGOs are associated with the Sangh Parivar, it's always eyed foreign-funded organizations with suspicion, see ing them as a nuisance for India's sovereignty . VHP has issues with NGOs that get funds from abroad working in environment, which insist on implementing norms that aren't seen as feasible.This, it points out, impedes growth. Some of these organizations, the Parivar objects, are allegedly involved in proselytasation.
While UPA may have felt that NGOs were too big -22,702 of them together received Rs 11,546 crore in 2011-12 -to be left unpoliced, one gets the impression that under Modi, there's a new-found keenness to enforce the rules, winked at by earlier governments.
Ford Foundation has been in the NGO funding business for long. But it's only now that it's being asked to comply with FCRA.It had defaulted on these provisions, funding non-FCRA registered NGOs in Gujarat, some of which had associated with campaigns against Modi when he was CM.
The offloading of Greenpeace India activist Priya Pillai from a London-bound flight in January was part of the government insistence on making NGOs play by the rules. Though Delhi HC directed the government to expunge the `offload' remark in her passport, home ministry says they were right in restraining her from indulging in an anti-national campaign on foreign soil, briefing British MPs on the “negative“ impact of the Mahan coal project at Singrauli.
Add to this the cancellation of licences of 10,117 NGOs, inspection of accounts of 165 and freezing of accounts of 34, civil society's mistrust of the Modi government has only grown deeper.
