200 crore trees by roadside: The number games we play

Not just national highways but every road in India will have to be lined with trees to achieve Nitin Gadkari’s ambitious target. But will his government then turn to claim natural forests in the name of development?

FirstPost, 22 June, 2014

Nitin Gadkari is one of the more innovative ministers in the new government. In an apparent masterstroke linking afforestation with rural employment, the minister for highways, who took charge of the rural development ministry after his colleague Gopinath Munde’s tragic death, announced last week that the government could employ 30 lakh youth in planting and nurturing trees by the roadside.

“The length of national highways in the country is one lakh kilometre. I have asked officials to come out with a plan to plant 200 crore trees along these stretches which in turn would create jobs for the unemployed… and protect the environment,” he said while inaugurating a conference on Regeneration of Rivers in New Delhi. A similar scheme could be implemented, he added, under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) along state highways and other roads.

At the root of his idea, Gadkari said, was the concept of value addition. It floored many. Even the skeptical were content to note how momentous an achievement this would be should the scheme meet even half the target. The sheer scale of the ambition made international headlines. But Gadkari’s numbers don’t stand scrutiny.

No, the real problem is not that the national highways add up to only 79,243 km. But it is possible that the new minister is confident about expanding that network by 25% in the next five years and factored in that projection in his calculation.

Trees are planted on both sides of the road and let’s assume that the minister had not one but two rows on each side in mind. Few stretches of highways have enough flank space to have even two rows of trees, let alone four, as according to a September 1998 guideline of Gadkari’s own ministry, the distance between rows of trees must be at least 6 metres. So, to accommodate 200 crore trees in four rows along one lakh kilometer, simple arithmetic says we need 5000 trees every kilometer or one tree every 20 cm.

It is common knowledge that trees can’t grow unless at least 2 meters apart. Large indigenous species like Banyan, Ashok, Bahera, Babul, Peepal, Neem, Mango or Mahua need a lot more space. It is often customary to plant saplings one or two metres apart, considering only 25-50 per cent saplings survive to grow 2-4 meters apart. But Gadkari was talking about 200 crore trees and not saplings. Even if the government manages to cram in a tree every 3 meters in four rows, one lakh kilometers of national highway cannot accommodate more than 13.5 crore trees.

COUNT THE TREES: The dense canopy cover in the dry deciduous forests of Ranthambhore in Rajasthan.
PHOTO: Dharmendra Khandal

Unless, of course, Gadkari had the entire road length of India which, at 33 lakh kilometers, can indeed absorb more than 200 crore trees in single rows on both sides. Double the rows and we will have more than 400 crore trees. That way, the potential employment of 30 lakh youth also makes sense. If it were only the one lakh kilometers of national highway, each would be assigned a ridiculous 300-odd-metre stretch to look after. But to cover 33 lakh kilometers and 200-400 crore trees, each will have custody of about 700-1400 trees in a little over one kilometer.

The wages can be paid from the MNREGA budget. But even at Rs 10 per sapling, planting 400-800 crore saplings (not more than 50% survives) will drain the exchequer of Rs 4,000-8,000 crore. That’s a lot of money and one wonders if the government will dip into the Rs 11,000-crore booty lying with the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) that collects the compensation the industry pays for destroying forests.

Not that the CAMPA funds are otherwise being properly utilized by the ministry of environment and forests. More often than not, target-oriented government policies are making forest staff clear degraded natural forests, where root stocks would rebound given protection, to plant saplings. But if the highway ministry neglects fruit-bearing, resilient indigenous trees for fast-growing exotic ones such as eucalyptus or gulmohor that have little or no ecological value, the expenditure, under whichever head it is incurred, will be a tragic waste.

Realistically, if Gadkari achieves even 10 per cent of his target and successfully grows 20 crore indigenous trees species by the roadside, it will be a grand feat. But how much will it really account for in terms of forest cover? Nothing, really. Plantations can never substitute for natural forests in biodiversity and hydrological value. But over two decades, successive governments have over reported increased forest cover by including commercial and roadside plantations and even exotic invasive species. A recent study by the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) has reported that India’s actual forest cover is what the Forest Survey of India had reported back in 1997 which has since been jacked up by including coffee, arecanut, cashew or rubber estates and even parks and gardens.

At the risk of sweeping generalization across geography and forest types, it is possible to estimate that every square kilometer of primary forest with 70% canopy density hosts at least 25,000 large trees (each with an average canopy spread of 3 meters on all sides). So, will the government claim 20 crore roadside trees as equivalent to 8,000 sq km of forests and justify diversion of a comparable stretch of forest land for development? Even the UPA in its rush for growth could destroy only 2000 sq km of forests in four years between 2007 and 2011.

Invisible Strings

Anti-growth. Anti-Hindu. Movement-buster. Reactionary. Corrupt. NGOs have drawn flak for one reason or the other. While there is a clear case for cleaning up the voluntary sector, nothing justifies this attempt at muffling dissent.

Tehelka, 20 June, 2014

The Hindu nationalist. The neo-liberal. The grassroots activist. The Leftist. Everybody, it seems, has a reason to hate NGOs.

Some, like political commentator Radha Rajan who edited a collection of essays titled NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industry, have charged several NGOs with “de-Hinduising India” and sought to expose “the essentially anti-Hindu activism of some NGOs and activists… and their foreign sponsors, supporters and funders who have their own vested interests in keeping the Hindus in this state of powerlessness”.

The advocates of unfettered growth, including former prime minister Manmohan Singh, blamed foreign-funded NGOs for blocking development. “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… The atomic energy programme has got into difficulties because (of ) these NGOs, mostly I think based in the United States,” he alleged in February 2012.

Lingaraj Azad, one of the key leaders of the movement that fought off the bauxite mining plans of the Odisha government and Vedanta in Niyamgiri hills, has this to say about foreign funding, “We have understood the negative role played by NGOs in people’s movements. They try to keep the struggle under their own sphere of influence. It has been seen that they stop the funding of activists in movements at critical times. This sometimes led to a sudden end of struggles dependent on foreign funding or NGOs.”

Sociologist James Petras, among others, rued the absence of a systematic Left critique of the negative impact of NGOs due to the latter’s success in displacing and destroying organised Leftist movements by co-opting intellectual strategists and organisational leaders. NGOs mystify and deflect discontent, he wrote in an essay, “away from direct attacks on the corporate/banking power structure and profit towards local micro-projects and apolitical ‘grassroots’ self-exploitation and ‘popular education’ that avoids class analyses of imperialism and capitalist exploitation”.

So why blame the Intelligence Bureau (IB) for overstating the case in its classified report, ‘Impact of NGOs on Development’? Because the report exposes the IB’s lack of expertise in economics or ecology and its enthusiasm in spicing up the draft by lifting from a 2006 speech of Narendra Modi that was subsequently published as an essay. More importantly, the deliberate leak of the ‘secret’ report successfully put the NGOs on the back foot and a string of environmentally damaging decisions of the government went virtually uncontested last week.

The IB report offers a long list of organisations and activists under its watch, which with their anti-developmental activities shaved off 2-3 per cent of the GDP. These activities, undertaken in 2011-13 according to the report, include protests against nuclear power plants, uranium mines, coal-fired power plants, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), POSCO and Vedanta projects in Odisha, Omkareshwar and Indira Sagar projects in Madhya Pradesh and extractive industries in the Northeast.

The alarmist report on NGOs may have come just in time for the new NDA government in the saddle, but the groundwork had been done by previous Congress governments. After all, it was Indira Gandhi who overplayed the spectre of “foreign hand” to pass the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA). In 2010, Manmohan Singh added teeth to the Act with an amendment that made the witch hunt easier.

Before the amendment, the Act imposed restrictions only on NGOs’ involvement in electoral politics. The amended Act covers all “objectives of political nature” and even “common methods of political action” such as dharna, rallies and strikes. The amended law was invoked to freeze the bank accounts and suspend the licences of a number of NGOs, including the Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), for activities against national interest. The NGOs named in the IB report could face the same fate, no questions asked or answered.

In 2012, as protests raged against the nuclear plant in Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu, the then home minister P Chidambaram admitted that a few NGOs were under scrutiny for misusing foreign funds in mobilising the resistance. By February end, an uncharacteristically aggressive Manmohan Singh joined the NGO bashing. A year later, in January 2013, Singh went a step further to blame NGOs also for blocking field trials of GMOs.

“Complex issues, be they genetically modified food or nuclear energy or exploration of outer space, cannot be settled by faith, emotion and fear but by structured debate, analysis and enlightenment,” he said at the centenary session of the Indian Science Congress in Kolkata.

Even so, the government was loath to link the cancellation of the licences of three NGOs in Tamil Nadu to their involvement in the Kudankulam protests. By 2013, though, more than 4,000 NGOs had their permission to receive foreign funds revoked for “prejudicially affecting public interest” and inadequate compliance with norms.

Some attribute the UPA’s good-cop-bad-cop approach to NGOs to the presence of an “NGO” — euphemism for the Sonia Gandhi-appointed National Advisory Council (NAC) — in its midst, but there was no mistaking the trail it had set the IB on.

The NDA has no NAC to oblige. Modi’s impatience with NGOs — from rights activists he has failed to shake off since the 2002 riots to the Narmada displacement brigade — is well known. Having promised growth at all costs, he has no time to engage with naysayers as he rolls out his big-ticket projects. The IB report might have saved him much talking.

If the government of the day has been overzealous in targeting NGOs, the voluntary sector has not been above board either. Seeking tougher licensing norms and legislation for the sector, a Delhi High Court bench observed in a ruling in March, “Most private-run so-called philanthropic organisations do not understand their social responsibilities. 99 percent of the existing NGOs are fraud (sic) and simply moneymaking devices. Only one out of every hundred NGOs serve the purpose they are set up for.”

According to the IB report, more than 21,000 of 43,527 NGOs registered under the FCRA did not file their annual returns for 2011-12. NGOs have little by way of a mechanism to evaluate the success or failure of a campaign or to fix accountability or even a timeframe. Hundreds of projects are kept alive on balance sheets merely to justify fresh funding. Besides, Modi’s tirade against “limousine liberals” is not entirely unfounded. Most NGOs are top-heavy, with little connect to the cause or individuals they work with, resulting in very little of the budget actually finding its way to field work. Any NGO veteran will mournfully relate the tale of unending reports and presentations and seminars year after year that result in nothing.

A 2013 report by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) — India’s funds to NGOs squandered — alleged that over Rs 1,000 crore of government funding to the voluntary sector was largely decided by bribes and political influence. Much like a sarkari posting, the NGOs interviewed for the report alleged that bribes amounting to 15 percent to 30 percent of the grant were mandatory to get their application approved.

“If a conservative estimate of 15 percent is used as a ‘bribe to process the applications’, during the Fiscal Years 2002- 2003 to 2008-2009 at least Rs 998,15,38,153 or Rs 142,59,34,022 per year were spent on ‘bribes’ to different layers of officials approving the projects,” the report said. “This is literally stealing the money of the India’s poorest. It will not be an understatement that funding to voluntary sector is largely decided by bribes and political influence. There is little accountability beyond blacklisting.”

Citing the example of projects under the rural development ministry, it said, “The (Council for Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technology) under the Ministry of Rural Development sanctioned 24,760 projects during 1 September 1986 to 28 February 2007 involving a total sanctioned grant of Rs 25,20,24,412.56. Out of these, 511 NGOs were placed under the blacklist category due to irregularities committed. However, out of 511 blacklisted agencies/NGOs, only 10 cases were referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for investigation, while the First Information Reports (FIRs) were lodged against only 101 NGOs.”

By August 2009, the number of NGOs blacklisted by the CAPART increased to 830 and FIRs were lodged against 129 blacklisted NGOs. CAPART, however, released Rs 46,83,142 to five blacklisted NGOs. Unsurprisingly, around 4,000 files related to unaccounted funds disbursed to voluntary organisations were feared missing from CAPART.

The rural development ministry was not alone though. “The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) is a classic case of corruption related to grants made to NGOs,” the report went on to note. “The CAG in its report tabled in the Parliament on 26 November 2010 indicated the presence of an organised scam in the giving of grants by the MoEF… and stated that no accounts had been maintained by the ministry for more than 20 years against grants worth Rs 597 crore released to NGOs and expenditures incurred thereon.”

The ACHR filed an RTI application with the Planning Commission seeking information about grants given to NGOs for 2002-03 to 2009-10 and the procedure for allocation of grants. The Planning Commission in its reply dated 4 August 2009 said, “Voluntary Action Cell, Planning Commission is not financially assisting any VO/NGO under any scheme. Therefore, information on the subject is not available with the Cell. The procedure for allocation and disbursement of grants is not uniform and would depend upon the scheme under which grants are made available. The concerned Departments/ Ministries may be contacted for the required information.”

It is evident that nobody in the government has been watching the NGOs. And the government does not seem to be keen to fix financial accountability or evaluate performance in projects that should be target-oriented. Instead, the IB’s scrutiny is limited to those who dare question or disagree with the government’s policies.

While Rajnath Singh expressed ignorance of the IB report in the days following its leak, the home ministry has already sent questionnaires to some NGOs seeking details of their funding and activities. Meanwhile, the growth juggernaut has been rolling.

So, the height of the Narmada dam will be raised. Reversing the decision of UPA-2, the new MoEF has allowed the Navy to build a radar station in an Andaman island which is the only home of the endangered Narcondam hornbill. The government has decided to soften some rules in the Forest Rights Act and Forest Conservation Act to boost economic activities in Naxal-affected states, also home to some of the country’s best forests and the majority of our tribal population. The highly sensitive higher-Himalayan eco zones and their biodiversity in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh will suffer irreversible damage as defence projects get blanket clearance in border areas up to 100 km from the Actual Line of Control.

While many laud these moves as firm steps that will unshackle growth and help India’s strategic interests, others have been opposed to such undermining of the country’s livelihood and ecological security. But the very NGOs and activists who would have spurred debate and discussion on each of these decisions are busy defending themselves to the spooks.

“What the IB and its masters in government fail to realise is that there can be no economy without an intact ecology. A sound environment is a must for a sound economy. You don’t have to take it from one of us ‘environmentalists’ — the World Bank, which ironically has probably done more than any other agency to destroy India’s environment, recently said that environmental degradation costs India 5.7 percent of the GDP. The same report also said that strategies to reduce environmental degradation would cost less than 0.04 percent of the average annual GDP growth rate,” wrote conservationist Bittu Sehgal, defending the NGOs in a recent article in response to the IB report.

In another time, Sehgal and his likes would have written demanding a rethink or even a rollback of last week’s contentious decisions instead. As Prime Minister Modi returns from his highly successful Bhutan trip, there is no debate in the media on the merit of his decision to fast-track 12 hydel projects that will have serious downstream impact in Assam. The IB report has delivered. Suddenly, barring a few pleas in self-defence, it’s all rather quiet on the activism front.

What the ‘leaked’ IB report on NGOs has really achieved, so far

With media busy debating an opinionated Intelligence report and the NGOs pushed on the back foot, a slew of contentious government decisions is escaping public scrutiny.

FirstPost, 15 June, 2014

The first thing first. All NGOs should be made accountable. They must make full and public disclosure of their funding and expenditure. They must also be made answerable under the RTI Act. The voluntary sector is a den of corruption and needs to be set straight.

But the leaked IB report on NGOs does not make any such attempt. If it were serious, it could have taken cue from, instead of Narendra Modi’s 2006 speech, a meticulous 2013 report by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) – India’s funds to NGOs squandered – that details how over Rs 1,000 crore of government funding to the voluntary sector is largely decided by bribes and political influence. But that was not in IB’s terms of reference for what turned out to be a witch hunt.

Instead of going after NGOs that are criminally liable under India’s various financial laws, the government decided to target dissent. Now, IB is presumably a fantastic bunch of our better cops. But are they qualified to quantify economic losses or assess the fitness of growth policies or the legitimacy of ecological or health concerns? Should we have a crack team of the Planning Commission members identifying terrorist cells next?

Since IB is an authority on neither economy nor environment, its report is a laundry list of organisations and individuals who do not agree with its master the government’s policies. That disagreement, ostensibly, is against national interest. But who decides national interest? Do the promoters of our mainstream policy framework, including the BJP, the Congress and most major political parties, have any monopoly over India’s future? Does questioning their prescriptions for economic growth make one a criminal, even a traitor?

If we are still not a nation of bigots that wants to criminalise dissent, is our problem then with foreign-funded dissent? But then, the IB report names many small NGOs, mostly in Gujarat, that never received foreign grants. Others, such as the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace and People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy, have categorically denied any external funding.

Many NGOs do accept foreign funds. But how can accepting foreign grants alone incriminate an organisation as anti-national? Is there any evidence that NGOs use foreign funds to target Indian companies alone? What about foreign-funded groups opposing an American Monsanto, a Korean Posco and a Russian Rosatom (Kudankulam) in India? And if FDI is welcome to revive the economy, why resent foreign funds to NGOs that scrutinise that revival or offer alternative roadmaps for growth? One can always debate and debunk their claims with facts but what with demanding punitive action on that ground?

Objectivity demands that the state agencies that promote and facilitate development projects not be the solo scrutiniser of the same. Only NGOs not funded by government or corporate money, even if they have agendas and their studies throw up sensational findings, can provide the necessary checks and balances in a system heavily geared towards corporate and political interests.

Of course, the NGOs working on environment, health and human rights are a threat to corporate interests in mining, industries or GMO. By declaring that they are also a threat to India’s economic security, is the government accepting that the national interest is basically corporate interest or, by extension, the mainstream political interest, given that Vedanta (Sterlite) has funded both the BJP and Congress?

Beyond the trial going on in TV studios and social media, the Home ministry has sent detailed questionnaires to some NGOs seeking details of their funding and activities. So why are the NGOs alarmed if they have nothing criminal to hide? They are because even those NGOs that have not done anything wrong can be taken to task under Rule 3 of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Rules (2011).

Before it was "strengthened" by the UPA II, the act imposed restrictions only on involvement in electoral politics. The new sweeping and vague definition covers practically everything, including “objectives of political nature” and even “common methods of political action” such as dharna, rally or strikes. A number of NGOs, such as INSAF, have already had their accounts frozen and licenses suspended in, what else, perceived national interest. The NGOs named in the IB report have reasons to fear because the government does not need specific charges to nail them.

It is anybody’s guess what course the Home ministry will take once they hear from the NGOs which have already made their positions clear in public. But does the timing of what is certainly a deliberate leak of the ‘classified’ IB report tell us something? Since the leak, the government has taken a slew of decisions that grossly undermine environmental, livelihood and human rights concerns.

The height of the Narmada dam will be raised. The sensitive eco zones of the higher Himalayas will be ruined as defence projects get priority along China borders up to 100 km from the Line of Actual Control. The MoEF reversed the decision of UPA II that barred the Navy from constructing a radar station in an Andaman island which is the only home of an endangered hornbill species. The government has decided to soften some rules in the Forest Rights Act and Forest Conservation Act to step up economic activities in Naxal-affected states which account for some of the country’s best forests and the majority of our tribal population.

To many Indians, these steps are to cheer for. But there are others, the NGOs and activists, who have fought against such moves long and hard. These usual suspects who would have criticised and opposed each of these decisions in every public forum possible were put on the back foot by a timely leak and are now busy defending themselves against a bunch of specious charges. That we have not seen any debate in the media on these recent mega clearances is the real marvel of the leaked IB report.

IB’s NGO Report: Not A Time For Intelligence or Dissent

It is not about foreign funding. IB's alarm call on NGOs is about lining up growth dissenters before the new government.

Yahoo News, 13 June, 2014

In its by-now-most-read 21-page “classified” report titled ‘Impact of NGOs on Development’ that was sent to a host of government offices including the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Power, Ministry of Coal, National Security Council Secretariat and the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) on June 3, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) named a long list of organizations and activists under its watch, from well-known environmental and anti-nuclear groups to little-known localized outfits.

Significant anti-development activities were undertaken in 2011-13, the report claims ominously, against nuclear power plants, uranium mines, coal-fired power plants, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the POSCO and Vedanta projects in Odisha, the Omkareshwar and Indira Sagar projects in Madhya Pradesh and hydel projects and extractive industries in northeast India. The cumulative negative impact of these activities on GDP growth is assessed to be 2-3 percent.

Surprisingly, in its first attempt at cleaning up NGOs, the government has not looked into the rampant corruption and glaring malpractices plaguing the voluntary sector. The focus is solely on their perceived damaging effect on development or on the government’s growth-oriented policies. The simple message seems to be that as long as NGOs don’t raise a dissenting voice, there’s much they can get away with. But more on that later.

How Modi and the UPA feel about NGOs

Even in its stated mission, the IB report gives way to stupefying paranoia and outlandish assumptions. But it has been long coming. More than five years before the second UPA government singled out foreign-funded NGOs for blocking nuclear power plants and GMOs in 2012, it was then-Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi who slammed the “wealthy” and “influential” class of NGOs that “hire PR firms to continually build their image” with “money coming from abroad”.

Modi’s speech in Delhi in September 2006 at the release of the first edition of NGOs, Activists & Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industry edited by Radha Rajan and Krishen Kak – a collection of articles on the anti-Hindu agenda and corrupt practices of NGOs and certain activists – came to be included in the second edition of the book.

“Funds are obtained from abroad; an NGO is set up; a few articles are commissioned; a PR firm is recruited and, slowly, with the help of the media, an image is created. And then awards are procured from foreign countries to enhance this image. Such a vicious cycle, a network of finance-activity-award is set up and, once they have secured an award, no one in Hindustan dares raise a finger, no matter how many the failings of the awardee,” Modi said, slamming the “five-star activists” and their NGOs.

There is nothing to suggest that Modi changed his opinion in all these years. And if nothing else, intelligence agencies, like the rest of the bureaucracy, are efficient weather cocks. So the IB found it fit to lift and dress up the part of Modi’s 2006 speech quoted above in their June 3 report to explain how certain foreign-funded NGOs gain prominence in India.

But to be fair to Modi, it was not his influence alone that made the IB go into overdrive. By the then-Home Minister P Chidambaram’s admission, a few NGOs were under scrutiny for misusing foreign funds in mobilizing resistance to the Kudankulam nuclear plant in early 2012. By the end of February, even Manmohan Singh was vocal in his criticism of NGOs. A year later, in January 2013, Singh went a step further to blame NGOs for stalling GMO trials.

“Complex issues, be they genetically modified food or nuclear energy or exploration of outer space, cannot be settled by faith, emotion and fear but by structured debate, analysis and enlightenment,” he said at the centenary session of the Indian Science Congress in Kolkata.

Yet, for all its chagrin, the UPA government was not too comfortable being seen as cracking down on civil society resistance. So even after both Chidambaram and Singh publicly identified NGOs as roadblocks to growth, the PMO and the Home ministry were not in agreement on whether to link the cancellation of licences of three NGOs to anti-nuclear protests. Nevertheless, by 2013, more than4,000 NGOs had had their permission to receive foreign funds revoked for “prejudicially affecting [unspecified] public interest” and inadequate compliance with norms.

Some attribute this approach to the compulsion that the government itself was “guided by an NGO”, a euphemism for the National Advisory Council appointed by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. But pulled back from a hot trail, the hounds were straining at the leash.

As chief minister, Modi primarily grudged rights activists who never let up on his alleged complicity in the Gujarat riots. After cruising into South Block on an expensive campaign and promises of instant economic growth, he now has reasons to resent civil society resistance to speedy clearance of big-ticket development projects and replication of his Gujarat model of growth. The IB simply made perfect timing.

Why was it leaked?

Different sources in the new government, however, vary on what led to the “deliberate leak” of the IB report. While those in the PMO indicate that the leak was to gauge the public mood and the scope of a potential crackdown on organized dissent, Home ministry sources say that there was no instruction from the top and certain officials might have been on auto pilot mode.

Either way, the leak happened in bits and pieces. Long before The Indian Express quoted the June 3 IB report on June 7 and Rediff.com reported the IB alert on mischievous NGOs on June 9, The New Indian Express wrote about ‘mysterious’ NGOs on the Home ministry’s radar on 25 May. Interestingly, the intelligence brass failed to protect a classified report that was being reported by the media while it was still in the making.

Subsequently, The Indian Express published two reports specifically naming Greenpeace as a threat to national economic security on June 11 and a bunch of Gujarat NGOs critical of the Gujarat model on June 12. Meanwhile, Times Now also claimed to have scooped the report on June 11 and read out a few charges, without naming names, ostensibly because Home Minister Rajnath Singh had already denied knowledge of any such report earlier in the day.

For those with an appetite for laundry lists, here’s IB’s spectrum of suspicion.

NGOs on the government’s radar include Greenpeace, Catholic Organization for Relief and Development Aid (Cordaid), Action Aid, Amnesty International, Survival International, National Alliance of Anti-Nuclear Movements, People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy, Coalition For Nuclear Disarmament And Peace (CNDP), International South Asia Forum (INSAF), National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), Popular Education & Action Centre (PEACE), Urban Emissions and Conservation Action Trust, Navdanya, Gene Campaign, Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), India for Safe Food (IFSF), Jan Sangharsh Samanvaya Samiti (JSSS),Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), Centre for the Sustainable use of Social and Natural Resources (CSNR), Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA), Manipur Coalition on Extractives, Chindu, Swadhikar, Parthi Purna Adivasi Sanghathan, Sarvodaya Parivar Trust, Gujarat Vidyapith, Deevalaya Fulwadi, Rajpipla Social Service Society, Lok Samiti, Adivasi Ekta Parishad, Jai Adivasi Mahasangh, PTNRIP, Parthi Purna Adivasi Sangathan (PPAS), Maldhari Rural Action Group(MARAG), Movement For Secular Democracy, Gujarat Sarvodaya Mandal, Gujarat Vikas Manch Lokadhikar Andolan, Aazad Vikas Sangthan, Bhal Khedut Sangathan, Jamin Adhikar Andolan Gujarat (JAAG), Khedut Hit Rakshak Samiti (KHRS), Corridor Virodhi Shetkari Sangharsh Samiti and Ekta Gramin Praja Vichar Manch Samiti.

“Eminent people” and activists under the scanner include Praful Bidwai, Achin Vinaik, Admiral Ramdass, Lalitha Ramdass, Medha Patkar, Neeraj Jain, Banwarilal Sharma, Karuna Raina, Father Thomas Kochery, Arti Choksey, MG Devasahayam, SP Udayakumar, Father Ambroise, Pushparayan, Y David, Mari Rajan, Gilbert Rodrigo, Father Jayakumar, Surendra Gadekar, Vandana Shiva, Suman Sahai, Aruna Rodrigues, Kavitha Kuruganti, Prashant Paikray, Justice (Retd) PK Mishra, Bichitra Senapati, KP Sasi, Babloo Loitongbam, Prof Appa Rao, Swami Agnivesh, Sujata P Shah, Father Vincent Mukan and Lalji Desai.

While those working on human rights and the environment have particularly drawn the IB’s suspicion, there is nothing wrong in putting all NGOs, including Khap panchayats, if one goes by Haryana Chief Minister BS Hooda, under the scanner. There is no clarity on the legal nature of many of these organizations. Most of them do not disclose income and expenditure in adequate detail. And there is no reason why the beneficiaries of income tax exemption should not be answerable to people under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

The Delhi high court put it bluntly this March, seeking tougher licensing norms and legislation for the sector. “Most private-run so-called philanthropic organizations do not understand their social responsibilities. Ninety-nine percent of the existing NGOs are fraud and simply moneymaking devices. Only one out of every hundred NGOs serve the purpose they are set up for [sic],” a bench headed by Justice Pradeep Nandrajog said.

“Earlier, the joke was that whenever seven jobless Bengalis come together, they form a puja committee. Now, across the country, such people register NGOs to fish for funds,” concedes the head of a Kolkata-based NGO that operates in seven districts in two states. “No one is looking unless you get into certain sensitive fields of work.”

According to the IB report, nearly 50 percent of the 43,527 NGOs registered under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) flouted its norms and did not file their annual returns for 2011-12. If politicians were made to declare assets to clean up politics, wondered Modi in his 2006 speech, why should the government “not make accountable NGOs that in the name of social service are increasingly…spreading as thriving businesses?”

Many NGOs are inexplicably top-heavy — packed with experts who have little or no connect to the grassroots — and as a result channel only a fraction of their budget to actual ground work. Modi targeted these “limousine liberals” of the “NGO industry”, challenging them to spend “at least three days and nights in a year in a village where there was no electricity and where they would have to go to the jungle to relieve themselves.”

If this sounds harsh, several NGOs are guilty of sensationalizing their campaigns. Much like sarkari schemes, many NGO projects are designed so that there is no way to evaluate success or fix accountability. Nearly a decade ago, I reported from Ranthambhore in 2005 how they could show you the money, if not a tiger. Funds worth Rs 1 crore per tiger released by the government, international donors and the World Bank could not save India’s showcase tiger reserve from going steadily downhill.

Worse, most big NGOs spread their resources thin in too many projects that go on for years and stay alive as overheads in their accounts merely to justify fresh funding. “Ideally, NGOs should offer models of targeted solutions in quick time so that others, including government agencies, can replicate those models. But most play it safe and justify their existence and funding by the quantity rather than quality of their work,” says a Bangalore-based activist, with a rider that policy campaigns are “meant to be protracted affairs and must be sustained” till the goals are achieved.

Mutual back-scratching

Ironically, as mentioned earlier, the government does not seem to be keen to fix financial accountability or evaluate performance in projects that should be target-oriented. Instead, its scrutiny is limited to advocacies and campaigns that question its policies. That is why scores of dubious NGOs, small and big, funded by the government get away with squandering funds.

A 2013 report by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) – India’s funds to NGOs squandered – found that over Rs 1,000 crore of government funding to the voluntary sector is largely decided by bribes and political influence. The NGOs interviewed alleged that bribes worth 15 percent to 30 percent of the grant were mandatory to get their application approved.

“If a conservative estimate of 15 percent is used as a ‘bribe to process the applications’, during the Fiscal Years 2002-2003 to 2008-2009 at least Rs 998,15,38,153 or Rs 142,59,34,022 per year were spent on ‘bribes’ to different layers of officials approving the projects. This is literally stealing the money of the India’s poorest,” said the report.

For example, the Council for Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART) under the Ministry of Rural Development sanctioned 24,760 projects worth over Rs 25 crore from September 1, 1986 to February 28, 2007. Subsequently, out of 511 of these NGOs blacklisted for irregularities, only 10 were subject to CBI investigation. By August 3, 2009, the number of blacklisted NGOs increased to 830 but FIRs were lodged against only 129. Around 4,000 files related to unaccounted funds disbursed to NGOs were feared missing from CAPART, which even released Rs 46,83,142 to five NGOs after they were blacklisted.

The ACHR report singles out the Ministry of Environment & Forests as one of the prime offenders in this regard. The federal auditor (CAG) in its report tabled in Parliament on November 26, 2010 indicated an organized scam in allotting grants by the green ministry to NGOs and said that no accounts had been maintained for more than 20 years against grants worth Rs 597 crores.

So what made the government wake up?

* * *

Evidently, the urgency since 2011 has been to muffle dissent. What became necessary under UPA-2 to facilitate statutory environmental and forest rights clearances for mega projects gained additional momentum under the new government that has also the Gujarat model of growth to defend. Add to this the third flashpoint of human rights violations (in riots, displacement in development projects and under oppressive laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act) and the IB report does not seem so inexplicable.

And what better way to justify a crackdown than by raising the specter of a “foreign hand”? Again, Modi is only a successor to a totalitarian legacy here — Indira Gandhi got the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act legislated in 1976 while the UPA-2 amended it in 2010, making it more difficult for the NGOs.

But can a liberal economy really question foreign funding in a globalized world? While inviting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in almost all sectors from defence to retail, how does the government justify singling out the voluntary sector? There are laws to tackle financial crime or unlawful activities such as spying. But forcing policy consensus cannot be a reason or excuse for choking funds that fuel anti-establishment points of view. By that logic, India should also be wary of FDI in education or even films because these shape how our young and not-so-young ones think.

One argument repeated thoughtlessly in this recent debate is that foreign investment in development is legitimate, while external funding to NGOs for auditing those models of growth or advocating alternatives is not. “We cannot leave it solely to the official agencies that promote projects and policies to scrutinize the same. NGOs, particularly those not funded by the government, bring the much-needed independence in project evaluation and policy inputs,” asserts a Mumbai-based environmentalist who runs an NGO.

Besides, it is not that foreign-funded NGOs are trying to undermine Indian companies to make room for multinational corporations (MNCs). “In specific cases, there can be conflicting MNC interests and we are aware of such traps. A POSCO or a Vedanta is not Indian. How can fighting their dangerous plans in the interest of India’s tribal population be anti-national?” asks a rights activist in Odisha.

The other argument is that charity begins at home. Many feel that the West should put its house in order before helping the developing world save its nature or cut emissions. “Unfortunately, it is not an ideal world. But it is a connected world. Forests, ocean or carbon are not local issues. Everybody has stakes everywhere. Besides, all western donors are not necessarily the actual offenders in their homeland,” counters a Delhi-based climate activist.

Ultimately, it is impossible to create a perception of absolute neutrality. Each has her own agenda and all interest groups have the right to lobby and campaign. This is also necessary because government agencies and officials are often riddled with conflict of interest. In 2009, for example, allaying Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss’s apprehensions about the potential health impact of GM food, Minister of State in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan wrote to him quoting verbatim from promotional material by the GM industry, including the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, a quasi-scientific body funded by Monsanto.

So it is barely scandalous if NGOs such as Greenpeace should also fund studies that, more often than not, throw up alarming results. In this biased world, what really matters is the merit of one’s contention and a balance in public debate and policies. If merely accepting foreign funds compromises national economic security, India’s two principal political parties indebted to Vedanta should be flagged as the biggest threats to the country.

IB’s NGO-scare report to Modi plagiarises from old Modi speech

The Indian Express, 13 June, 2014

In its 21-page classified report, Impact of NGOs on Development,  first reported by The Indian Express, that identifies certain foreign-funded NGOs as threat to India’s national economic security and the Gujarat model of development, the Intelligence Bureau has cut and pasted from a published speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to describe the modus operandi of certain organizations.

On September 9, 2006, then Gujarat chief minister Modi had lashed out in a speech at a “wealthy” and “influential” class of NGOs that “hire PR firms to continually build their image” with “money coming from abroad.” The occasion was the release of the first edition of NGOs, Activists & Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industry  edited by Radha Rajan and Krishen Kak — a collection of articles on what they called the anti-Hindu agenda and corrupt practices of certain NGOs and activists — at New Delhi.

Modi’s speech at that function was included in the second edition of the collection.

The second paragraph on the fourth page (page number 417 in the book) of Modi’s article, NGOs as Non-Accountable Businesses, reads as follows:

“Another conspiracy — a vicious cycle is set up. Funds are obtained from abroad; an NGO is set up; a few articles are commissioned; a PR firm is recruited and, slowly, with the help of the media, an image is created. And then awards are procured from foreign countries to enhance this image. Such a vicious cycle, a network of finance-activity-award is set up and, once they have secured an award, no one in Hindustan dares raise a finger, no matter how many the failings of the awardee."

The second paragraph on the third page (Part A) of the IB report on NGOs reads:

“A small group of activists and NGOs at times have succeeded in shaping policy debates in India. Apart from that, in some cases it is observed that in a cyclical process, an NGO is set up, funds are obtained from abroad, a few articles are commissioned, a PR firm is recruited and, slowly, with the help of the media an image is created. And then awards are procured from foreign countries to enhance the image, after which Government machinery finds it more difficult to act against the awardee.”

When asked of the IB had asked for permission to use the paragraph from the book she edited, Radha Rajan of Vigilonline said she stood vindicated. “No, the IB did not contact me. But probably they were present at the high-profile book release next to the BJP office on Delhi’s Ashoka Road in 2006,” she told The Indian Express.

Contacted by The Indian Express, a senior IB official closely associated with the report declined to comment.

(Mazoomdaar is a former staffer of The Indian Express)