Charities are accusing the Indian Government of trying to shield corrupt officials from scrutiny with a new set of rules.
The Government intends to stop any charity that receives money from abroad from engaging in any activity that it deems political. Aid organisations, including Oxfam and Save the Children, voiced outrage at the rules, which critics say could ban non-governmental organisations from holding even a candlelit vigil.
Regulations on NGOs receiving cash from outside the country were introduced last year amid official concern that as many as 38,000 groups were acting without surveillance. Delhi banned a handful of mostly religious groups that were either suspected of enforced conversion or linked with terrorists, and required all foreign-funded charities to register with the central Government.
Now it is going farther by forbidding registered bodies from any activity deemed to be political. A draft obtained by The Times states that the central Government can effectively proscribe any “voluntary action group with objectives of a political nature or which comments on or participates in political activities”. Nisha Agrawal, the chief executive officer of Oxfam-India, described the draft rules as “absurd and draconian”, adding: “We understand the genuine concern of the Government to ensure that the foreign aid is not diverted or used for terror purposes, but this is no way to handle the concern. You can’t just have a noose around the whole civil society, and you don’t expect this in a democracy like India.”
Rajesh Tandon, the head of the Society for Participatory Research in Asia, agreed that the rules would hand politicians and bureaucrats the power to close organisations trying to hold them to account. Mr Tandon said that the Indian Government appeared to be gripped by paranoia, “targeting the only independent voice left in the country, civil organisations”.
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The Indian Government, which portrays the country as an emerging superpower, has stopped all but a few bilateral aid programmes. The British Government, which recently announced that it would continue to fund work in India for the next five years, had to overcome hostility from some politicians.
Harsh Jaitli, of the Voluntary Network Association of India. said: “Now, even a candlelight vigil could be termed by them as potentially troublesome and the rules can come into play.”