After Greenpeace, govt may act against more NGOs

The government is set to act against some anti-genetically modified NGOs named in the IB report, a day after it cracked down on foreign funding received by Greenpeace.

Updated on: Jun 20, 2014, 24:46:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government is set to act against some anti-genetically modified (GM) NGOs named in the IB report, a day after it cracked down on foreign funding received by Greenpeace.

Official sources said Vandana Shiva of Navdanya, Suman Sahai of Gene Campaign and Kavita Kuruganti of the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) – all named in the Intelligence Bureau report – are next in line for prohibition of foreign funding.

Home ministry sources said it was examining whether these organisations also violated norms of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) that say foreign funds can only be used for the purposes they had been provided. “Funds meant for education cannot be used for advocacy,” a government functionary said.

Read:NGOs under govt scanner following IB warning

A second leaked IB report on Wednesday said that opposition against mining and GM was a “significant threat to national economic activity”.

The home ministry had earlier revoked the permission to receive foreign funds of Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), an organisation associated with ASHA. INSAF had filed a petition against the order in the Supreme Court.

Reacting to the move, Kurunganti told HT that the government should investigate the foreign hand behind the IB report.

The document had also named Aruna Rodrigues and Prashant Bhushan for filing PILs in the Supreme Court against GM crops. Rodrigues called the IB report an insult to Parliamentarians who had recommended a moratorium on GM crops. Bhushan said that the government will use the IB report to create a public opinion against organizations fighting destructive projects.

Read:NGOs slam IB report, rubbishes allegations of 'threat'

On Wednesday, the home ministry had asked the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to not allow the flow of funds into Greenpeace India from two international organizations — Greenpeace International and ClimateWorks Foundation — without its prior approval. The IB report had alleged that 97% of Greenpeace India’s Rs 45 crore foreign funding in the last seven years had come from these two organizations to campaign against coal block allocations countrywide.

The report, however, didn’t specify if Greenpeace had violated provisions of the FCRA, under which the ministry issued instructions to RBI. It only alleged that the NGO is assisted by US-based anti-coal organizations and had carried out protests at “iconic” backdrops for publicity.

Greenpeace India’s executive director Samit Aich said the ministry action was part of its strategy to discredit the organisation and thereby remove obstacles for pushing fast clearances. “Discrediting Greenpeace will not save the world from climate change,” he added.

Ministry officials, however, stressed that the move didn’t bar Greenpeace from receiving foreign funds, citing the case of Netherlands-based NGO Cordaid, which received funds despite being on a prior-approval list. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had also been put under the prior-permission category earlier, officials added.

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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