[In April, the government suspended Greenpeace
India’s registration for foreign funding and froze its bank accounts. And
despite the group’s assertion that its work would continue, its legal battles
and lack of access to foreign funds have hit it hard, cutting its budget by
about 30 percent, Ms. Gopal said. It has had to cut its staff by about 20
percent, and Ashish Kothari, the chairman of its board, said there had been “some
amount of downsizing of the campaigns.”]
By Nida Najar
NEW
DELHI — Greenpeace India
said on Friday that it would continue campaigning for clean air and against
coal mining in protected forests in the country despite the government’s
revoking its permission to receive foreign donations.
In an order canceling the group’s
registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, the Ministry of
Home Affairs said that Greenpeace had “prejudicially affected the economic
interest of the state.” Greenpeace India learned of the cancellation on
Thursday.
The government, led by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, has declared economic development a priority and has been
cracking down on nongovernmental organizations like Greenpeace, whose work
often runs counter to its aims.
“I think all along this is not about
Greenpeace alone; this is about what’s happening to the space for dissent in
India,” said Vinuta Gopal, the interim co-executive director of Greenpeace
India. “The clampdown has not been just against us. It’s been against a number
of NGOs.”
In April, the government suspended Greenpeace
India’s registration for foreign funding and froze its bank accounts. And
despite the group’s assertion that its work would continue, its legal battles
and lack of access to foreign funds have hit it hard, cutting its budget by
about 30 percent, Ms. Gopal said. It has had to cut its staff by about 20
percent, and Ashish Kothari, the chairman of its board, said there had been “some
amount of downsizing of the campaigns.”
Particularly affected, Mr. Kothari said, will
be the organization’s high-profile efforts, exemplified last year by activists
who scaled the Mumbai office building of an energy company involved in mining
with a banner that read, “We Kill Forests.”
The moves against the group have also
compelled it to change strategic course and try to increase its domestic
contributions, which it receives from about 75,000 donors, even as it has had
to trim its fund-raising staff because of the legal dispute, Mr. Kothari said.
In its cancellation order, the government
cited a litany of accounting infractions against the organization, including
misreporting of funds from abroad, infractions that Greenpeace has disputed.
The group’s public troubles with the
government began in January, when one of its campaigners was barred from flying
to Britain to brief members of Parliament about the adverse environmental
effects of possible coal mining projects in central India. The government later
said that the woman’s actions were prejudicial to the national interest and
could have led to economic sanctions against India.
In May, Greenpeace took the government to
court over the suspension of its registration and the freezing of its bank
accounts. The court later unblocked two domestic bank accounts.
India’s actions against nongovernmental
organizations have spread well beyond Greenpeace — it recently demanded
preapproval of grants made by the Ford Foundation, which has given $500 million
to Indian organizations over the past six decades. The government has also
ordered a federal investigation of one of the organizations the foundation had
funded, which is run by a prominent activist who campaigned against Mr. Modi
when he was the chief minister of Gujarat State.
The United States ambassador to India,
Richard Verma, said in May that he was worried about the “potentially chilling
effect” of difficulties faced by such organizations in India. The State
Department said in April that it was concerned over the use of the Foreign
Contribution Regulation Act.
Many in the nongovernmental organization
sphere have expressed concern about the reverberations of a tightening of
control over foreign funds, which thousands of NGOs in India receive.
Critics say that the Foreign Contribution
Regulation Act treats nongovernmental organizations with unnecessary suspicion.
“It gives another tool to the government to
constantly interfere in the business of NGOs,” said Kabir Dixit, a lawyer who
represented the Indian Social Action Forum when its registration under the act
was suspended in 2013, also on the grounds that its activities were prejudicial
to the national interest. “The spirit of the law, it seems paranoid.”
Despite the setbacks, Ms. Gopal of Greenpeace
India said she was confident that the Delhi High Court would rule in the
organization’s favor in a case over what Greenpeace calls the government’s
arbitrary action against it. The government’s moves, she said, are a sign that
“we’ve asked the right questions of what’s happening in terms of how it’s
impacting the environment.”
Swati Gupta contributed reporting.
