That foreign alibi

Once we saw a CIA hand in everything, now our bureaucracy asserts itself by striking at NGOs

I was talking to a friend of mine who shall remain un-named. He has recently been appointed a 8216;full8217; secretary to our majestic Government of India 8212; not an under or a deputy or a joint or an additional, mind you, a real full one! After the usual congratulatory noises we get down to words of sympathy about how difficult it must be for him to survive with his principles battered, but more or less intact, in the byzantine corridors of imperial Delhi. He admitted that this was only possible because of his stints in UN agencies which assure him a generous dollar-denominated tax-free pension for life. He is not dependent on the grubby sordidness that could easily have been his lot. If there were no UN, we would have to invent it to make sure that some chosen civil servants got UN assignments however trivial in content so that they could fill up the holes in their wallets.

Be that as it may. We got talking about NGOs. There is a new law proposed to 8216;curtail and discipline NGOs8217;. This is known as the Foreign Contribution Regulation Bill of 2006. This is supposed to replace the draconian Foreign Contribution Regulation Act of 1976 which is currently viewed as not draconian enough. My friend told me that the mysterious powers that be in our country are fed up with NGOs. NGOs interfere, make noise, have the temerity to oppose government actions and in fact are proving to be un-patriotic, un-matriotic menaces. And guess what, they receive foreign funds. There8217;s the rub. There must be a foreign conspiracy to use NGOs to exploit India, cause monsoon failures, farmer suicides, caste riots, communal conflagrations, anti-government protests, public interest litigations and so on. It is obvious to any warm-blooded swadeshi that Indians could never do these to themselves. It must be a sinister foreign hand.

In former times it was fashionable for our imperial masters in Delhi to blame CIA funding for all the things in the country which they found upsetting or embarrassing. The irrepressible Piloo Mody went around Parliament wearing a placard around his neck stating that he was a CIA agent. His attempt at humour was not appreciated by self-appointed desh-bhakts. Today, we know from Mitrokhin8217;s diaries that in the interests of bipolar symmetry the KGB was pretty active in funding and manipulating the Indian scene.

The attack against NGOs foreign funding being a mere red herring comes from three sources. Firstly, the bureaucracy, which believes that the Indian Sarkar is supreme and not responsible to anyone, has found the non-governmental voluntary sector a menace. Have you ever asked a functionary in a government office why you need to fill out four forms in triplicate, attach three challans and stand in interminable queues at six different counters where you are always directed elsewhere when you get to the top of the queue? The functionary invariably yells at you for having the intolerable temerity to question him and the awe-inspiring state he represents. NGOs ask difficult questions and make loud noise regarding matters that the grand Officer/Commissioner would rather not have publicly aired.

At a time when FDI is being opened up for corporates in every sector, when FII funds flood the stock market, when our defence ministry is purchasing arms from umpteen foreigners US, UK, France, Sweden, Israel, Russia, to name a few, why should the funding of NGOs by foreigners be an issue? But don8217;t you know that funding from the Middle East for sinister Islamist activities and fanatical NRI funding for sinister Hindutvic activities are a menace to India and the ever-so-fragile Indian state? So here we have the second and third sources of opposition to NGOs 8212; the political right or what passes for it and the political left as we have it. Neither side will admit that the new law will have little or no impact on extremist funding mechanisms.

The Centre for Policy Research an NGO, mind you, in the interests of full disclosure assures me that there are plenty of laws in force Unlawful Activities Prevention Act 1967, Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002, Foreign Exchange Management Act 1999, etc that are perfectly capable of protecting India from assaults by foreign money. Look into the proposed bill. It is in the discretionary items that the sting lies. The government will determine who goes on the list and there is a new creature 8212; 8220;an authorised officer8221; 8212; who can pretty authoritatively ruin any NGO which he or she wishes to. And no prizes for guessing, funding from the UN, the World Bank and the IMF is exempt from all restrictions!

Arguing against this silly anti-democratic bill does not mean that we should not recognise that there is greater need for transparency and accountability in the way NGOs are funded and run. What we need for NGOs, especially those who receive foreign funding, is a transparent regulatory body like SEBI, which insists on the nature of the funding being made public similar to capital market disclosure, which sets standards for NGO governance for example, independent directors like Clause 49 does for companies, accounting and auditing requirements and so on. That way, if a Dutch-funded environmentalist NGO urges us to not build dams, it would be easy for the ministry of dams do we have one? to point out that Holland8217;s very existence depends on dykes which are an assault on the environment. Or if it turns out that the NGO opposing the Tata factory at Singur has Japanese or Korean funding and has not published audited accounts for the last few quarters, the citizens of Bengal can come to their

own conclusions.

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NGOs serve an important civic function in a democracy, and in an open world they have as much right to partner with foreigners as anyone else without interference from an 8216;authorised8217; officer. Let us insist on transparency rather than control. Control will drive away legitimate players. The sinister ones will anyway opt for hawala and continue with their mischief.

The writer is chairman, Mphasis. Views are his own