The Enforcement Directorate has sent a show-cause notice to Amnesty International India Pvt Ltd, for Rs 52 crore remittances it had received from its parent body in the UK in violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act(FEMA). One of the major blunders committed by the successive UPA governments was the free reign given the to the lakhs of NGOs in India with no accountability. The NGOs, then, were indulging in anti-India activities through their foreign funding and since they weren’t covered under the Right to Information Act, the finances of the NGOs continued to remain a mystery.
However, the Modi government has successfully turned the tables and cancelled close to 14,000 NGO licenses in the past 5 years as they failed to comply with the regulations and didn’t disclose their sources of funding, despite multiple requests.
The Indian arm of Amnesty International has always been under the lens for quite some time which resulted in the Enforcement Directorate raiding its office in Bangalore last year for alleged violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) and subsequently freezing their accounts. Consequently, the Enforcement Directorate has issued a show-cause notice to Amnesty International
Amnesty India is known to indulge in anti-India activities. In 2016, the group held an event against the ‘human rights abuses’ carried out by the Indian Armed Forces in Kashmir, thereby, peddling Pakistan’s agenda on Indian soil. Amnesty received a lot of flak for the event and also admitted that slogans calling for Kashmir’s Independence were indeed raised during the event. Unsurprisingly, the group was found to maintain a stoic silence when Pakistan backed terrorists carried out the dastardly Pulwama attack. The firm regularly indulges in caste bias as Mariya Salim, its former employee, claimed that the management discriminates against Dalits and Muslims and claims to have documented proof for the same.
The Modi government’s crackdown on NGOs has been seen as a move to muzzle the democratic voices by its detractors, turning a complete blind eye to its dark underbelly. Out of the 31 Lakh NGOs in India, less than 10% i.e. only 2.9 lakhs NGOs were found to submit their financial statements- Balance Sheets and Expenditure Statements. If the NGOs were indeed holier than thou, why don’t they disclose their sources of funding to the government?
Skill development programmes continue to remain one of the major areas of focus of the present government and in 2015, the Women and Child Development Ministry granted Rs 30 crores to about 1400 NGOs to impart skill development training to women in rural areas. The Ministry found out that over 90% of applications from about 1400 NGOs were fake and had furnished false details.
Not just Amnesty, but multiple NGOs are working overnight to spread their nefarious agenda in India by hindering the country’s developmental work be it protesting the construction of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant or the POSCO agitation in Odisha. NGO’s like Greenpeace India in 2015 were found to prejudicially affecting the public interest and economic interest of the state” which resulted in the cancellation of its license. Another such NGO ‘Compassion International’ received the same penalty under FCRA norms.
Numerous NGOs work overdrive to hurt India’s brand image globally by peddling narratives which showcase India as the ‘Rape Capital’ or ‘Minorities are not safe in Modi’s India’ and have also indulged in religious conversions. Its a step in the right direction by the Government which has already delivered results as there has been a massive 40% decline in fund flows from external sources for social upliftment and the government should continue the relentless crackdown on NGOs who want to destabilize India and prevent India from being self-reliant through dubious sources of foreign funding.
