Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Valery Kulikov — India Fighting Against Foreign NGOs


Not just Russia.
The development of public diplomacy in world politics, the activities of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are actively being discussed in public and political circles of various countries. According to some estimates, there are over 60 thousand international NGOs alone in the world today. Many NGOs are indeed non-political civil society institutions, structures of self-organisation of citizens in various spheres of life. 
At the same time, a certain number of NGOs claim the role of umpire in matters of ideology in all of society and public policies, affecting the development of the political situation in a number of countries, interfering in the internal affairs of states, participating, as ordered by the West and especially US intelligence, in changing political powers in governments that are opponents of Washington. In the US intelligence community there are even special inter-agency groups responsible for coordinating the activities of a wide variety of non-governmental actors, particularly focused on Russia. For example, there is a National Intelligence for Russia and Eurasia in the National Intelligence Council (NIC). 
These circumstances are objectively forcing many states, especially those seeking to pursue a policy independent from the US, to closely monitor the activities of NGOs, by opportunely identify their misuse of funds coming from abroad to support political parties and movements and affect the economic policy of the state, all the way to limiting NGOs activities.
And so, the Indian government, as part of the clean-up work in foreign financing of non-governmental organisations recently revoked the licenses of 8975 non-governmental organizations and charities for accounting violations (see ). In the future, organisations deprived of licenses will not be able to receive funds from foreign or domestic sources until a special order of the Indian authorities. The well-known environmental organization Greenpeace (operated in India since 1971) is on this “black list”, in regards to which the government has suspended their license for six months and has frozen the accounts of its Indian branch. In addition, India’s Ministry of Internal Affairs has launched an investigation into the activities of the American charitable Ford Foundation and several other foreign NGOs in the country.
The main complaint of the Indian authorities against the NGOs is their systematic violation of the law on foreign donations, NGO registration rules, failure to submit reports on their activities and revenues, misappropriation of funds, as well as providing charitable support without proper notification of the authorities of the country of India as required by current law. As appears from further clarification published by national authorities concerning the charges brought against the NGOs, for Indian NGOs to receive foreign financing they have to draw up a resolution in accordance with the Law on foreign donations and open special bank accounts. Incidentally the financing of activity of political parties, election campaigns, mass media, state machinery as well as the transfer of funds received by unregistered organisations is strictly forbidden.....
the hasty reaction of the United States and other Western countries in the efforts to strengthen controls concerning NGOs in India and some other countries, particularly in Russia, only reinforces the suspicion that Western “charity” is not selfless....
New Eastern Outlook
India Fighting Against Foreign NGOs
Valery Kulikov

No comments: