GOVT BANS DIRECT FOREIGN FUNDING OF NGOS
Friday, 20 June 2014 | PNS | New Delhi
Voluntary organisations will now have to fulfil stringent regulatory norms and show compliance reportsThe Centre has banned direct foreign funding to NGOs operating in India unless they fulfil stringent regulatory norms and show compliance reports. This is seen as the beginning of a process to block flow of foreign aid to NGOs, which, it perceives, are engaged in stalling developmental activities in the country. As per this exercise, the Centre has cracked down on NGO Greenpeace and placed on its radars thousands of other voluntary organisations receiving foreign aid.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has directed the Reserve Bank of India to take prior permission of the Home Ministry’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) Department before clearing any foreign aid to Greenpeace from Greenpeace International and Climate Works. This directive issued on June 13, will put on hold direct funding of this controversial NGO from abroad since each transaction has to be cleared on a case-to-case basis by the RBI.
Greenpeace International and Climate Works Foundation are the two principal international contributors to Greenpeace India Society. The RBI has been asked to direct all banks on this order. Foreign donations to the Greenpeace have been put on “prior category” list so that permission is taken before any money flows in for funding its activities.
In an attempt to tighten the noose around other similar NGOs, the MHA has directed that in addition to FCRA clearance, they will also have to inform the RBI in detail about the nature of foreign funds and its usage. “This has been done to streamline the foreign funding process of NGOs after some deficiencies were discovered during course of scrutiny,” said an MHA official.
This instruction has come after the Intelligence Bureau filed a report to the Government putting a question mark on the role of certain NGOs, especially Greenpeace International. Though there are over two lakh NGOs working in India, this directive will affect roughly 40,000 groups.
This is not the first time a Government is making an attempt to choke foreign funding of NGOs. The UPA Government repealed the old Foreign Contribution Regulation Act in 2010 with more stringent provisions. In fact former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his tenure in 2012 too had blamed US-backed NGOs for blocking development work in India.
“There are NGOs, often funded from the United States and the Scandinavian countries, which are not fully appreciative of the development challenges that our country faces,” Singh had said when he faced stiff opposition by NGOs for genetically modified crops in India and civil Nuclear plant at Koodankulam.
The IB report had also recommended cancellation of permission given to Greenpeace for collecting funds abroad besides reassessment of its tax compliance.
The report has also listed another 12 foreign nationals who have been associated with some NGOs in their campaign against coal mines, power projects and Nuclear power plants.
The Greenpeace has rubbished the IB report and claimed that the organisation has committed no irregularities. The IB report has prompted anti-Nuclear activist SP Udayakumar to send a legal notice to the Union Home Ministry seeking action against a Joint Director of IB for allegedly defaming him by leaking the secret IB report.
Till May 2013, Council for Advancement of People`s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART) - which works in close coordination with rural NGOs - had blacklisted 886 such entities on various counts including submission of forged documents, misappropriation of funds and improper execution of work orders.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/todays-newspaper/govt-bans-direct-foreign-funding-of-ngos.html
NGOs: They are everywhere but govt doesn't know them BS
The "leaked" Intelligence Bureau report talks of a few foreign-funded non-government organisations (NGOs) in India but it forgets the Indian society is one of the most "NGOised" in the world. And, successive governments take much of the credit for having done so since the 1990s and for keeping the sector unregulated, too.
By the government's own assessment, there were about 3,200,000 registered NGOs in India in 2008. This is when the government only counted the ones registered under the Societies Registration Act of 1860, the Bombay (now Mumbai) Public Trusts Act of 1950 and its other state variants.
But when the Central Statistics Office (CSO) sent people searching for these NGOs in the states it could not trace lakhs of them. Of roughly 2,200,000 NGOs it went to verify, it could only trace only 695,000.
These figures did not include non-profit organisations registered underThe Charitable and Religious Trust Act, 1920, which many experts estimate, if counted, would add a few more hundred of thousands to the number. Then there are non-profit companies under the Indian Companies Act, 1956, and other laws that also help set up trusts.
The numbers also did not include many groups and associations - which in common parlance are referred to as mass-based groups, usually operating at block and village levels, at times federating into larger organisations for specific purposes or campaigns. In some states, a study by PRIA and Johns Hopkins University suggested nearly 50 per cent of the total voluntary organisations in India were not registered under any law.
The antiquated society registration law is also truly blind when it comes to classifying these registered groups. It treats all registered societies the same way. These numbers include societies that run hugely profitable schools, colleges, hospitals and sports in the country. Remember the Board of Control for Cricket in India is also an NGO, registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act. The Confederation of Indian Industries is an NGO, too, under the law.
The leaked IB report brought focus on a select set of advocacy groups or individuals, who are engaged with state or national level policy changes in the country but most of the NGOs are actually into delivery of services that once the government used to be involved in - social sector, education, health and religious/cultural activities.
By the government's own assessment, there were about 3,200,000 registered NGOs in India in 2008. This is when the government only counted the ones registered under the Societies Registration Act of 1860, the Bombay (now Mumbai) Public Trusts Act of 1950 and its other state variants.
But when the Central Statistics Office (CSO) sent people searching for these NGOs in the states it could not trace lakhs of them. Of roughly 2,200,000 NGOs it went to verify, it could only trace only 695,000.
These figures did not include non-profit organisations registered underThe Charitable and Religious Trust Act, 1920, which many experts estimate, if counted, would add a few more hundred of thousands to the number. Then there are non-profit companies under the Indian Companies Act, 1956, and other laws that also help set up trusts.
The numbers also did not include many groups and associations - which in common parlance are referred to as mass-based groups, usually operating at block and village levels, at times federating into larger organisations for specific purposes or campaigns. In some states, a study by PRIA and Johns Hopkins University suggested nearly 50 per cent of the total voluntary organisations in India were not registered under any law.
The antiquated society registration law is also truly blind when it comes to classifying these registered groups. It treats all registered societies the same way. These numbers include societies that run hugely profitable schools, colleges, hospitals and sports in the country. Remember the Board of Control for Cricket in India is also an NGO, registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act. The Confederation of Indian Industries is an NGO, too, under the law.
The leaked IB report brought focus on a select set of advocacy groups or individuals, who are engaged with state or national level policy changes in the country but most of the NGOs are actually into delivery of services that once the government used to be involved in - social sector, education, health and religious/cultural activities.
The classification system followed by the government for the survey might be a bit woozy, though considering many NGOs work on multiple fronts and it's not easy to draw deep dividing lines over their work, especially in the rural Indian landscape.
The data on the NGO boom clearly shows the sector took off in the 90s. About 552,000 NGOs registered in various states between 1981 and 1990. In comparison, 1,123,000 NGOs were registered during 1991-2000 and 1,135,000 registered in the decade after. This roughly correlates with the period when the demand for government's social sector intervention increased along with the structural changes in the economy, which made the state draw itself out of actually delivery of public services.
The government could only verify 224,000 NGOs registered in the 1991-2000 period and 327,000 NGOs registered after 2001.
The survey also found 2,713,000 people were employed by these working NGOs, with a ratio of 2:1 between people employed in rural India and those working in urban non-profit groups.
The CSO used the sum of their operational expenditures to come to a value of their economic output - a whopping Rs 41,292 crore. But doubts have been raised about the figures by groups like the Voluntary Action Network of India for possibly including figures of the societies that run schools colleges and hospitals as well - by far not part of the "voluntary sector".
While there might be questions about these figures, the government accepted the accounts showing a fast growing (rather mushrooming) sector employing hundreds of thousands. But it did not do much to regulate it. The UPA government did try to but then the move fell down the priority list. In 2012, it brought out a Multi-State Societies Registration Bill for those non-profit organisations, which operated in more than one state but the Bill never turned in to a legislation, as the ministry of corporate affairs leading the charge on the Bill lost interest.
This is the first of a four-part series looking at the various aspects of NGOs and their functioning
Sanjeev Nayyar 20 June 2014