The crackdown on NGOs to make them toe the line

The Modi government has stooped to a new low by suspending the registration of the environmental NGO Greenpeace-India under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) and freezing its bank accounts for (what else?!) its “anti-development” activities. The allegation sounds ludicrous and will no doubt be torn to pieces by the judiciary. 

The Delhi High Court recently ruled twice against the government in matters involving Greenpeace. It said that its campaigner Priya Pillai was prevented from going to London in January in an “arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional manner”. (She was scheduled to make a presentation to British MPs on human-rights violations at a coal-mining project at Mahan in Madhya Pradesh operated by Essar, a London-based company.) The court also overturned a government order blocking Greenpeace-India from accessing funds sent by Greenpeace-International.  

So it wasn’t out of mere pique that Narendra Modi advised the higher judiciary not to be guided by “five-star” NGO activists. By saying this at a conference of High Court chief justices convened by the Chief Justice of India, Modi was unmistakably, if crudely, conveying his government’s view. But such maligning of NGOs, who have a legitimate place in democracy and some of whom have done work of great integrity on life-and-death environmental issues, does little credit to the office Modi holds; condemning them as “five-star” does not lie in the mouth of someone who presides over India’s worst-ever plutocratic regime which favours the super-rich.

However, intimidating and harassing environmentalists is a hallmark of the Modi government, as is the dismantling of environmental and forest-protection regulations and ruthless “fast-tracking” of destructive projects. It sees these measures as key to boosting “investor confidence”, and grass roots protests against them as “anti-development” and “anti-national”.
 
Last June, the government accused over 100 foreign-funded NGOs of “anti-national activities”, calculated to set the Indian economy back. In December, it clamped down on four North American-origin NGOs: Bank Information Centre (which monitors the World Bank group’s lending programmes for their ecological consequences), Sierra Club (a mainstream green organisation), 350.org (active on climate change), and Avaaz (a human rights and environmental campaign group), all concerned with climate issues.

In January, the government put 10 international organisations/foundations on a list of agencies that need “prior permission” for donating money to Indian NGOs. They include Catholic Organisation for Relief and Development Aid, the Dutch HIVOS and IKV-Pax Christi, the Danish International Development Agency and the US-based Climate Works—many of them concerned with climate change and “development’s” victims. 

This fits a certain pattern. The repeated targeting of Greenpeace, one of our largest environmental NGOs, is meant to bully smaller groups with poorer resources into falling in line. Mahan is part of Singrauli, India’s coal and power heartland, where huge private corporations like Reliance, Hindalco and Lanco, besides Essar, are entrenched. Singrauli is quintessentially about coal-mining and –burning. 

Cracking down on NGOs that oppose coal — the dirtiest, most climate-destructive fossil fuel — sends out a loud message. India may talk of combating climate change and promoting renewable energy, but that’s just talk. India’s walk, its real dharma, is coal, the key to energy growth that will power “development”. The government will brook no dissent on coal; the millions of Indians vulnerable to climate change are dispensable, but not investors.

This perverse attitude won’t change unless pressure is mounted on the government by a conscious public, lawmakers and the judiciary. We must strengthen not weaken environmental laws, penalise bureaucrats who level malicious charges against NGOs, and subject FCRA to judicial processes which take away punitive powers from the administration.

The author is a writer, columnist and social science researcher based in Delhi