Critics sarcastically called it a ‘Christmas gift’. It was on December 25 that the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) rejected an application from the Mother Theresa-founded Missionaries of Charity (MoC) to renew its licence to collect foreign donations, citing “adverse reports” against the NGO. Neither the MHA nor MoC, which issued separate statements, spelt out what the “adverse reports” were.
A week later, the number of organisations that lost their licences under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) rose to over 6,000. Among those who lost their licence effective January 1 were Oxfam India, Jamia Milia Islamia, IIM Bengaluru and Kolkata, IIT-Delhi, Biocon Foundation, Azim Premji Foundation, the government’s labour think-tank VV Giri National Labour Institute, and Satyajit Ray Film and TV Institute. By January 5, there were 12,422 NGOs whose FCRA licences had expired. Some 179 of them lost their permission to collect foreign funds after the MHA claimed to have found violations in their application and activities. They have an option to appeal the rejection and some of them are moving in that direction.
The renewal exercise was necessitated by a 2015 amendment that mandated that the licence to collect foreign funding would have a validity of five years only. A large number of NGOs were granted licences in November 2016, and their validity ended on October 31. The MHA first extended the validity of the licence till December 31, and then to March 31, 2022. It said, however, that the extension was only for those NGOs whose renewal applications were still pending before it. The likes of MoC don’t have that luxury.
The issue became public when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted on Dec 27 that a freeze had been ordered on the bank accounts of MoC. Following public outrage, the MHA issued a statement within hours that MoC’s application for FCRA renewal had been rejected but it had not ordered a freeze on the NGO’s bank accounts. The quick damage control came perhaps as the government – already facing criticism over the Haridwar ‘Dharma Sansad’ -- did not want adverse international publicity on account of action against a reputed international humanitarian organisation.
The MHA confirmed that it had rejected the MoC’s application for renewal over “adverse inputs” against the NGO, which it did not specify, and went on to claim that the State Bank of India had informed it that it was MoC itself that had asked its accounts to be frozen. The NGO corroborated that the MHA had not ordered any freeze, but it also clarified that it had not approached the SBI to freeze its accounts, rather that it had only asked its own centres not to operate any accounts dealing with foreign funds until the FCRA matter was resolved.
As suspicion arose that the government may have arm-twisted MoC to issue its statement, Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien tweeted: “First, the Government of India intimidates. For weeks, right through to December 25. And then, they pile on the pressure to extract this (MoC statement). Shame on the MHA and its shameless damage control tactics.”
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Oxfam, on its part, issued a long statement explaining how the government action would puncture its work in 16 states during the third wave of Covid-19 as it would hit the NGO’s plans to set up oxygen plants and deliver life-saving equipment to hospitals, among others. While the MHA remained mum on where the NGOs had erred, neither MoC and Oxfam India nor other NGOs impacted by the decision have said what reasons the authorities have cited to reject their renewal applications.
Governments trying to put a squeeze on NGOs is nothing new. It was not long ago that then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had raged against those protesting against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, citing national interest. The UPA government amended the FCRA to make it stringent, the Modi government has taken it much further. Soon after it came to power in 2014, the Modi government opened a broad front against NGOs like Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Ford Foundation, and several others. A large number of NGOs lost their licences in the purge. It further amended the FCRA to make it more difficult for NGOs to obtain funds from abroad – including mandating all NGOs seeking foreign donations to open a dedicated account with the SBI in Delhi.
Civil society is curiously silent over the latest episode, even as opacity rules the government’s actions against the NGOs. Were the renewal applications of MoC and Oxfam India hastily and summarily rejected? Whose reports are these “adverse reports” that the government is relying on and citing? The MoC has long been a target of Hindutva outfits; Oxfam, meanwhile, has been critical of the Modi government on occasion.
Why have some 150 NGOs been taken off the list of organisations with expired licences in the past few days? One explanation is that they filled in their applications after the MHA updated the list (at 7 PM) but before the deadline of midnight on December 31-January 1. It is not easy to find out which these NGOs are since there is no consolidated list of NGOs that applied at the last minute. Is it a question of “our” NGOs versus “your” NGOs?
Every government would love to have a pool of NGOs that support it. The UPA regime had institutionalised its interaction with NGOs through the National Advisory Council (NAC) but the relationship went awry as civil society turned against it. The Modi government has amplified the UPA government’s argument that many NGOs were acting against the country’s economic interests, but it may have added an ideological bias to what’s already a messy problem.
At a time when the government is fast withdrawing from the social sector and India’s ability to achieve many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals come into question, the role of NGOs is rising and critical. To tar a certain section of them with a selective brush and to squeeze them out of existence may do the country no good.
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