Foreign funding of Indian NGOs - a hidden pathway of foreign interference

The action of the Government of India in cancelling licenses of 9000 NGOs that have been violating FCRA is an act of judicious law enforcement.  And suspending FCRA permission of Green Peace and putting Ford Foundation on the watch list is an act of safeguarding the political and socio-economic sovereignty of the nation.  It is disappointing that world powers like USA and Germany are voicing concern on this matter, thereby interfering in the internal matters of our Republic.  It should not be conceivable by any stretch of imagination that India would allow foreign influences to ride on the back of NGOs to enter our sovereign space and begin eroding us from within, colluding with internal betrayer individuals and organizations. Our nation has to march ahead and not fall behind.

The very countries that have voiced against India's action on NGOs have very stringent view on NGO activities in their own country.  For example, it is not possible in the USA for either a local NGO or a multi-national NGO to engage itself in political activism or polarized political support.  And any violation of financial rule would be heavily dealt with and people sent to jail for inordinately long years.  For example Gulam Nambi Fai, founder of “Kashmir American Council” (KAC) , an NGO, was arrested by the FBI from Virginia, Washington DC and later sentenced for 4 years Jail by a US Court in 2012 on the charges of receiving money from Pakistan and its spy agency ISI to influence American policy on Kashmir. Political activism by foreign NGOs is perceived in the USA and Germany as acts of war against the nation, while financial irregularities would be dealt as money laundering for dubious purposes. 

But when it comes to India, thanks to the inaction and spineless silence portrayed for years by the previous Govt, foreign NGOs such as Ford Foundation were accorded respect similar to what the diplomatic missions command.  And it has been proven over and over again that these NGOs had their political masters in the countries of their origin, who had strong interest in influencing the political process and impeding the national development of India.  Colluding with them, their Indian partners have worked as termites, wrecking India from within. We all know that foreign funds are always attached with hidden condition.

It is time that this anomaly is set right once and for all.  It is time that a self respecting India stands tall against these medieval machinations.  It is time that we as Indians feel proud that at last, we have a leader and a Government that is immensely patriotic and is dedicated to the integrity and development of the nation.

V K Saxena

President

National Council for Civil Liberties

Ahmedabad.

Cancer from within: the NGO betrayal

An innocent and poor nation has been attacked from within.  The NGOs have misused their opportunities, played conduit to mala fide foreign intentions and betrayed a free nation that has aspired sincerely to grow and serve its people.

An IB report that was submitted in January 2013 to the UPA Govt, detailing the anti development activities of many NGOs in India that have carefully created a positive image for themselves using foreign experts.  They have in all, collected over Rs. 85,000 crores and successfully opposed infrastructure projects, such as hydro electric dams, nuclear power plants, extractive industry, vital food imports and agriculture.  Only if these opposed projects had been allowed to complete in a timely manner and if the previous Govt had acted with any patriotism, India would not have been in the economic and social quandary it now is in.  

The anti national activities by majority of NGOs  is the biggest story of national betrayal in our history after Mir Jafar in 1757 betrayed our motherland to Robert Clive, making way to a foreign force to occupy the country for two centuries.  These NGOs picked up on the very projects that would change the fate of India and pulverized them with the help of foreign agents and foreign funds.  They operated a parallel economy and a parallel economic policy.   

The foreign benefactors of the dubious NGOs of India brought money for these traitors, in spite of their countries reeling under economic recession.  The foreign nations from where these collaborators came, did nothing to prevent them from trying to stall the growth of India.  They converged on one purpose - the degradation of our national development, which in other terms would suit them in their long run.  Their policy was - if you cannot grow yourself under difficult times, stall the growth of those resilient nations that have a potential to grow even under trying circumstances.  And the wagging tails within India fell prey to these machinations and wrote the story of great betrayal from within.

The growth of anti national NGOs in India is akin to malignant cancer, which would destroy us from within, if not diagnosed at the right time and removed with a sharp surgical knife.  Because of the irresponsible silence of UPA, the cancer has already begun spreading across the nation and has affected us tremendously.  Now that it has been recognized and understood, it is time to act decisively and bring discipline and order within the country.

We cannot afford another betrayal of the type of Mir Jafar, that would sell off the nation to the vested interests in the foreign lands.  We cannot stop growing and stoop painfully to the cancer within.  We need a countrywide effort to clean up the body of the nation.

VK Saxena

NCCL

Ahmedabad

Anti- Kudankulam agitation -The lynch mob democracy‏

After committing over Rs 14,000 crores in investment to contribute over 9 Gigawatts of power to the national grid, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant is in the limbo because a small minority of people perceive it to be unsafe against immense arrangements made for its safety.  Science, technology, polity, social justice and distribution of resources to rightful populace is all a package that does not now weigh up to even half of the weight of an odd number of people's perception.   The media, NGOs and social activists have directly or implicitly supported the 'perception' lobby through their activities or expressed views.  Reason has been slaughtered by surmises.  National plans are being massacred by irrational conspiracies.  It is an understatement to say that our future is at stake.

Let us widen this debate a little farther.

If we are to build a dam to distribute water to arid lands, irrigate drought-prone regions, provide drinking water to parched throats - the 'perception' lobby springs up a line of impediments.  Sardar Sarovar Project is a glaring example where thousands of crores of rupees of project escalation was one impact while the fear psychosis created by the anti-development mafia was a higher impact.  If we are to build some excellent road infrastructure, the 'perception' lobby raises the bogey of land acquisition and diverts national attention.  We can find examples for this in every state in the country.  If we are to put up nuclear power station, thermal power station, an assembly line to produce cars or any large project that could take forward the nation, it is certain that some lobby raises its cobra head and lunges forward to sting.  Media picks up the thread as negativism is always sensational.  The NGOs pick up the matter as most of them have assumed the position of 'principal opposition' to governance.  Both the proposition of law and opposition to policies have now become street activities and the Parliament or mechanisms of governance have become redundant, toothless and irrelevant.  Added to this is the senility of Government - both in age, actions and inactions.

It is a paradox that India has begun to use democracy to destroy itself.  Right to Information is misused, right to protest is misused, right to report is misused, right to govern is misused and the power invested in different institutions of democratic governance, whether they are governmental or non-governmental - are all misused, subverted and ridiculously applied.  As a result, the country has come to standstill.  Progress has been pared.  Future has been compromised.

We cannot continue like this forever.  It is a paradox that we are the third largest economy in the world but our infrastructure quality has been rated to be lower to that of Ivory Coast.  We need some sense of purpose in national life to build a common future.  And the lynching mob needs to be rightly guided and governed.  Otherwise, the status of 'most favoured nation' bestowed on us by Pakistan will come to mean that they like us because we are on the same slope of collapse like them and holding hands with them makes sense.  

V K Saxena 

President

 National Council for Civil Liberties