[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
DAM-L LS: Union Home Ministry Announcement Targets NBA? (fwd)
----- Forwarded message from owner-irn-narmada@netvista.net -----
From owner-irn-narmada@netvista.net Mon Nov 13 19:04:57 2000
X-UIDL: 80469b2cc5721b4fb31e6882db133a7f
Return-Path: <owner-irn-narmada@netvista.net>
Received: from DaVinci.NetVista.net (mjdomo@mail.netvista.net [206.170.46.10])
by lox.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca (8.8.7/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA11119
for <dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>; Mon, 13 Nov 2000 19:04:56 -0500 (EST)
From: owner-irn-narmada@netvista.net
Received: [(from mjdomo@localhost)
by DaVinci.NetVista.net (8.10.0/8.8.8) id eADNNcs03993
for irn-narmada-list; Mon, 13 Nov 2000 15:23:38 -0800 (PST)
(envelope-from owner-irn-narmada@netvista.net)]
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 15:23:38 -0800 (PST)
Message-Id: <200011132323.eADNNcs03993@DaVinci.NetVista.net>
subject: LS: Union Home Ministry Announcement Targets NBA?
Sender: owner-irn-narmada@netvista.net
Precedence: bulk
DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Foreign Funding for NGOs Under Review
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Nov 10 (IPS) - Having won a prolonged judicial battle against
the anti-Narmada dam campaign, the Indian government is getting tough with
people's groups, which it accuses of acting on behalf of 'foreign interests'.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has declared that it would
closely scrutinise the sources and use of foreign funds received by
hundreds of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the country.
However, the decision, announced by junior Home Minister Vidyasagar Rao, is
said to be 'targeted' mainly at the nearly two-decade old popular movement
against the four billion-U.S. dollar Sardar Sarovar dam.
Supporters of the scheme, which is to be the first of 30 big and hundreds
of medium and small dams planned on the central Indian Narmada River, have
long accused the anti-dam Narmada Bachao Movement (NBA), of being
anti-national.
A huge advertisement in the leading national daily 'Indian Express' Friday
accused famous NBA leader Medha Patkar of sustaining her campaign with the
help of foreign money received through illegal channels.
''NBA has established various support groups in different names and parties
are pursued to donate to such support groups instead of the NBA directly,''
claimed the advertiser, the National Council for Civil Liberties, a group
based in western coastal Gujarat state, where the dam is located.
Last month, India's Supreme Court rejected an NBA plea to scrap the Sardar
Sarovar, after hearing both sides for six years. The apex court allowed
work on the partially-built dam wall to resume, more than five years after
it was suspended under the court's order.
Gujarat, ruled by the BJP, is the main beneficiary of the scheme, which is
supported by all political parties in the state. The Sardar Sarovar is
described as the 'life-line' of the arid state, where tens of thousands of
peasants were forced to leave their homes by a chronic water scarcity this
summer.
The NBA has also been accused, in the advertisement, of ''passing on
confidential documents related to national importance to foreign people
with the sole objective to halt the progress of the nation.''
Home Minister L. K. Advani, who belongs to Gujarat, too has accused the NBA
of acting on behalf of unnamed ''foreign interests''.
Speaking during a Nov. 1 public ceremony at the dam site to mark the
symbolic start to the resumed construction, Advani also observed that it
was ''more than a coincidence'' that the same people were opposing both the
Sardar Sarovar dam and India's nuclear weapons.
Without naming, Advani was referring to famous Indian author Arundhati Roy
who has championed the NBA's cause and is also a strong critic of India's
May 1998 nuclear tests ordered by the BJP-led government.
Roy, who has won the British Booker Prize, also come under attack in
Friday's anti-NBA newspaper advertisement for ''criticising the nuclear
blast by the country''.
The home minister, who is the second most powerful man in the BJP and the
government after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and is known for his
hawkish nationalist views, subsequently said that foreign funds received by
NGOs should be properly accounted for.
Announcing this at a press conference, Advani's junior minister Rao said
the government was planning new legislation to regularise use of foreign
contributions received by NGOs. The government expects Indian NGOs to
receive more than one billion dollars in foreign assistance this year, Rao
said.
''Tightening the laws has become necessary because some organisations were
receiving foreign donations without the permission of the home ministry,''
he said.
The NBA leader has challenged the home minister to prove that her movement
has used foreign funds. Patkar has declared that if this could not be
proved, Advani should quit office.
She has welcomed a probe on the NBA by the federal sleuthing agency, the
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), requested by the Gujarat state
government.
''The NBA is a mass organisation of the people of this country and it draws
its initiative from this country itself. It is expected of Mr. Advani that
as home minister, he should rise above party politics and avoid making such
baseless statements,'' said NBA spokesman Shripad Dharmadhikary.
Existing legal regulation of foreign funds for NGOs in the country has been
under fire from the groups for a long time. The Foreign Contribution
Regulation Act (FCRA) is criticised for being too rigid and reflecting the
mindset of the authoritarian government which ruled the country during the
national emergency a quarter century ago.
The FCRA was further tightened in the year 1985 on the ground that some
NGOs were using foreign funds for 'anti-national' purposes.
Under the law, the government can reject NGO applications for receiving
foreign assistance if this is found against ''the sovereignty and integrity
of India, the public interest, freedom or fairness of election to any
legislature, friendly relations with any foreign state, harmony between
religious, racial, linguistic or regional groups, castes or communities.''
''More than two decades have passed since the Act came into existence and
the allegations have been proved wrong,'' says Anil Singh, chief of the
Voluntary Action Network of India, an umbrella grouping of NGOs in the country.
The NGO's grouping is trying to persuade members of parliament to get the
law repealed. Singh alleges large-scale official corruption in the
registration of NGOs. Many foreign donors even set aside a small percentage
to be paid to corrupt officials to get necessary clearances, he says.
[c] 2000, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights reserved
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to majordomo@netvista.net
with no subject and the following text in the body of the message
"unsubscribe irn-narmada".
----- End of forwarded message from owner-irn-narmada@netvista.net -----