The NDA government’s decision to put Ford Foundation, the well-known US funding agency which finances many social and developmental activities in India, on the home ministry’s watch list, is of a piece with the hostile and vindictive attitude it has persistently adopted towards non-government organisations. There is also a specific axe to grind in the action against Ford Foundation. It is meant to hit two NGOs run by Teesta Setalvad, who is in the bad books of the Gujarat government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Setalvad, who has worked to bring justice to the victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots, has been harassed and hounded by the government. She has escaped arrest only because of judicial intervention. The Gujarat government has told the home ministry that the Ford Foundation was “abetting communal disharmony” in the country by aiding the NGOs run by Setalvad. The government action means that any transfer of funds by the Ford Foundation will now be through the ministry which has to give prior approval for it.
There are two aspects to the government’s action. Both are wrong. One is the painting of all funding organisations and NGOs black, and putting restrictions on their activities. The other is the dubbing of organisations and individuals, who are critical of the government or differ from its policies and actions, as anti-national. The Ford Foundation is internationally respected for its activities for poverty alleviation and social uplift. Its funding has promoted many important causes and supported the research activities of eminent persons like Amartya Sen and Norman Borlaug. Action against such well-reputed agencies only brings infamy to the government. It is ironical that the Ford Foundation has been charged with abetting communal disharmony for supporting the work of organisations which tried to extend help to the victims of a communal conflagration. The charge of interference in the country’s internal affairs is equally strange.
A more serious issue is the implicit statement that critics of the government, like Teesta Setalvad, are anti-national elements and their activities are threats to national security. It is a situation that should never be seen in a democracy: branding of a critic of the government as an enemy of the people, and harassing him or her and anybody who supports him or her. It is only recently that Greenpeace was made to suffer for its advocacy. The government has taken such actions against 16 other organisations. They should be condemned and the civil society should strongly oppose them. The official policy to harass NGOs is wrong; it is worse when it becomes personal vendetta dressed up in national interest.