US, UK top list of donors to NGOs

The US, UK and Germany are the biggest donors for Indian voluntary sector, but contributions from smaller countries like Luxembourg and Liechtenstein are on the rise.

Updated on: Jul 11, 2011, 22:37:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The US, UK and Germany are the biggest donors for Indian voluntary sector, but contributions from smaller countries like Luxembourg and Liechtenstein are on the rise.

Latest data available with the home ministry on annual donor wise details show annual donations from these two countries, known as tax havens, has increased between 70% to 90 % between 2006-07 and 2008-09.

Luxembourg, a country with a population of five lakh and spread in an area of 2,586 sq kms, donated Rs13.44 crore in 2006-07. In 2008-09, the annual donation from there to Indian NGOs increased to Rs23.30 crore despite the country fighting with debt-ridden economy.

Donations from much smaller Liechtenstein having population of 35,000 people were relatively less. In 2006-07, it was Rs3.58 crore, which increased to Rs6.36 crore in 2008-09.

In comparison, donation from the US increased from Rs2,949 crore to Rs3,433 crore and from UK dipped from Rs1,427 crore to Rs1,114 crore during the same period. Money from other European nations witnessed an increase of less than 5%.

India in 2009 had received a list of 15 persons from the German government who has alleged black money stashed in LGT banks in Liechtenstein under the India-Germany DTAA. Assessments have been made against total 18 individual and penalty proceedings for concealment of income have separately been initiated in the cases.

The sharp spike in FCRA inflow from tax havens raises suspicion about ‘round tripping’ of black money by Indian entities. Round tripping refers to routing of investments by a resident of one country through the other country back to his own country.

Another surprise package in the list of donor countries was Grenada, an island nation in Caribbean Sea. It gave Indian
NGOs a whooping Rs332.89 crore in 2006-07. The funding diminished in subsequent years with Rs35.99 lakh in 2007-08 and
Rs1.67 lakh in 2008-09, as per March 2011 data.

The home ministry, which regulates foreign funding to voluntary sector through the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, does not probe the source, but only whether the money is spent as per norms. “We can investigate only spending,” an official said.

With inputs from Gaurav Choudhury

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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