In March 2023, Meeta, who labored as a neighborhood mobilizer and community coordinator with a distinguished Delhi-based Indian NGO, misplaced her job of 15 years. Meeta was fired lower than a month after her group misplaced its standing beneath the International Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), which governs the receipt and use of international funds by nonprofits in India. Organizations with no legitimate FCRA certification are barred from accessing worldwide donations.
Meeta’s employer is only one of a number of nonprofit organizations and human rights leaders who’ve been dismantled or had their work obstructed by the Indian authorities’s free reign to revoke their FCRA standing.
Within the U.S., a latest legislative proposal, HR 9495, threatens to impose a familiar type of restriction on nonprofits. Very like the FCRA permits India’s Ministry of Residence Affairs to strip nonprofits of sure fundraising standing, the proposed invoice in the USA would enable the treasury secretary to take away the tax-exempt standing of any nonprofit that they unilaterally deem to be a “terrorist supporting group” with out due course of or proof necessities. Whereas the invoice was handed within the U.S. Home of Representatives within the final legislative session, it by no means made it via the Senate; now, with a Republican Senate, there are issues the invoice could possibly be reintroduced and extra simply develop into regulation.
The invoice’s critics say this might have far-reaching penalties for organizations engaged in politically delicate advocacy, and have nicknamed it the “nonprofit killer” invoice.
As U.S.-based teams brace for a possible shift in nonprofit funding, India’s expertise serves as each a cautionary story and a stark instance of what the U.S. nonprofit sector could endure if HR 9495 is carried out.
Human Rights Work Affected
After shedding her job, Meeta, who requested to make use of a pseudonym in an effort to communicate candidly about her former employer, remained unemployed for 9 months. A single mom of two, after years of renting she had simply purchased a home on a private mortgage a month earlier than being let go. However with no job, repaying the mortgage turned a battle.
In the meantime, her former employer, which works on sustainable livelihoods, local weather resilience and concrete homelessness, amongst different points, is one in every of hundreds of nonprofits in India which have misplaced their means to obtain international funds beneath the FCRA over the last several decades, both on account of cancellations or nonrenewals of their certification. With out that funding, sources say the group has needed to dramatically downsize.
Among the most high-profile organizations affected by FCRA restrictions embrace the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Save The Children and World Vision, whose licenses have been canceled. A number of rights organizations, like Amnesty International India, Environics Trust and Oxfam India, in addition to particular person activists, like environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta and human rights advocate Harsh Mander, are additionally dealing with prison costs beneath fraud and monetary irregularities allegations. This has additionally impacted employment in India’s huge social sector, which consists of three.3 million nonprofits that make use of over 18 million folks. For instance, Amnesty Worldwide has ceased all of its operations inside India.
The Citizen for Justice and Peace, led by Teesta Setalvad, has been a longtime critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his alleged function within the 2002 Gujarat riots, wherein greater than 1,000 folks, largely Muslim, had been killed. That group additionally lost its FCRA license in 2016. Setalvad stated the revocation of the license is a part of the “witch hunt” that the Modi authorities is conducting to focus on her for talking towards the perpetrators of the riots.
Civil society teams see this as a part of a broader crackdown on dissent in India, particularly after a 2020 modification to the FCRA imposed even additional restrictions on organizations. In accordance with the CIVICUS Monitor, a world analysis platform that tracks and assesses the state of civic freedoms, India’s civic area is classed as “repressed.”
Lately, the Illegal Actions (Prevention) Act (UAPA) has been more and more used along with the FCRA to target human rights activists and journalists. The UAPA, India’s major “anti-terror” regulation, grants sweeping powers to the state, permitting authorities to designate people and organizations as terrorists, detain them with out cost for as much as 180 days, and impose strict bail situations. Critics argue that its obscure definitions and low conviction charges make it a instrument for suppressing dissent, with journalists, activists, poets, Kashmiri civilians, and college students ceaselessly focused beneath its provisions.
Earlier, the regulation was primarily used to ban organizations deemed a menace to nationwide safety. Nevertheless, a 2019 amendment to the UAPA made it much more highly effective by permitting the federal government to designate people as terrorists. Its utility surged within the wake of protests round among the Modi authorities’s extra controversial insurance policies, with a number of scholar activists, journalists and attorneys jailed beneath its provisions.
Now, the tightening of FCRA limitations has additional contributed to shrinking this already restricted area.
A number of NGOs advised Truthout that shedding entry to international funds has drastically affected their means to maintain human rights work at scale.
Talking on the situation of anonymity, a spokesperson for one more distinguished NGO that has been working in India since independence — engaged on sustainable livelihoods, training, well being and gender points amongst marginalized communities — revealed that it has been pressured to close down operations throughout all states. Equally, the NGO that Meeta used to work for notes that 95 % of its operations have needed to be scaled down, impacting a majority of its beneficiaries together with the city poor and the homeless, particularly from Dalit, Adivasi and non secular minority communities.
Whereas the rationale for the FCRA nonrenewal of Meeta’s employer was not specified, the opposite NGO’s reject discover talked about involvement in actions deemed prejudicial to the general public curiosity ongoing authorized instances involving figures within the group. This falls beneath Part 12(4) of the FCRA, which states that if any workplace bearer has a pending prosecution, it will probably affect the group’s eligibility, and Part 14(c), which grants the federal government the authority to cancel an FCRA certificates if it deems it needed within the public curiosity. Nevertheless, the regulation doesn’t outline what constitutes public curiosity. In try to realize renewal, the second NGO stated it promptly changed the board members and submitted an up to date listing, however this didn’t change the end result.
Anisha*, a Supreme Court docket lawyer who has dealt with instances involving NGOs and their FCRA licenses and in addition spoke with Truthout beneath situation of anonymity, notes that as a result of Part 14(c) is so broadly worded, it makes it straightforward for authorities to situation obscure orders alleging that a corporation is performing towards public curiosity and cancel its registration.
Curiously, Part 14(2) of the regulation says that no order of cancellation shall be made except the individual involved has been given an affordable alternative to be heard. The organizations Truthout spoke to stated this has not been the case for his or her teams when their FCRA registration was canceled or not renewed.
After a number of organizations appealed to the Ministry of Residence Affairs for clarification on their FCRA denials, the federal government, on November 8, 2024, launched a notice that cited the explanations for rejection. These included involvement in “anti-development actions,” “inciting malicious protests” and participation in “induced/forceful non secular conversions.” But once more, none of those phrases had been particularly outlined. “This denial has restricted improvement efforts in reaching essentially the most marginalized communities, and hinders progress on persistent points resembling malnutrition, training, livelihoods, gender, and caste-based discrimination,” stated Annie Namala, govt director of the Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion (CSEI). Whereas CSEI is among the many NGOs whose FCRA has been renewed, there continues to be uncertainty about making long-term plans for the group’s work.
“It has additionally curtailed work that sheds mild on important coverage gaps. Within the quick time period, it will immediately affect susceptible populations; in the long term, it would gradual nationwide improvement and progress. This goes towards the very improvement we’re all hoping to realize,” continued Namala.
Even earlier than the mass cancellations, the 2020 amendment to the FCRA had already made it considerably more durable to hold out human rights work, say consultants. The modification launched a number of restrictive measures, together with barring NGOs from sub-granting international funds to different FCRA-registered organizations.
“Sub-granting was an important a part of most NGOs work. It allowed us to collaborate with grassroots organizations, and smaller organizations and attain the bottom extra strongly. Now that we are able to’t subgrant, we’re unable to do any of these,” says Namala. The modification additionally capped administrative bills at 20 % of a corporation’s international funds, making it tough to cowl operational prices.
Sambhavna Belief Clinic, which has been an important supply of free specialised medical take care of over 37,000 survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy, was pressured to shut down on December 31, 2024, after extended delays in renewing its FCRA registration. Based in 1996 with assist from donors around the globe, the clinic has been the one facility in Bhopal devoted to offering long-term well being care to these affected by the Union Carbide fuel catastrophe of 1984. (Survivors of the catastrophe are persevering with to combat for remediation and reparations from Dow Chemical, which took over Union Carbide in 2001.) Since shedding its FCRA registration in 2019, the clinic has confronted mounting challenges. Its each day affected person depend has dropped from 180 to 200 to simply 80 or so over the previous 5 years. “Many important medicines needed to be discontinued, together with the Nirgundi oil, which we developed as a safer various to dangerous painkillers,” says Satinath Sarangi, managing trustee of the clinic.
By November 2024, the clinic ran out of funds and confronted liabilities of greater than $1.4 million. Employees salaries had been slashed by 30 % and operations ceased, says Sarangi. On January 1, 2025, clinic members led by the leaders of the Union Carbide Poison Victims Healthcare Rights Entrance, started a sit-in protest.
Happily, on the third day, they obtained their FCRA registration renewal. Sarangi says they’re grateful for the choice, and operations have resumed. Nevertheless, he stays uncertain about what prompted the federal government’s swift motion.
Silencing Civil Society
A supply who labored on the similar group as Meera notes that phrases like “human rights” and “advocacy” needed to be faraway from their official paperwork due to concern of additional intervention.
Anisha, who’s utilizing a pseudonym for issues over skilled retribution, says that she has seen an increase in persecution of organizations that undertake advocacy work that doesn’t align with authorities pursuits and insurance policies. “NGOs that purportedly current India in a nasty mild or NGOs selling pursuits of minority teams are significantly focused,” she provides.
In 2022, U.Ok.-based NGO Save The Youngsters’s Indian counterpart Bal Raksha Bharat, one in every of India’s main youngster rights organizations, got here under the federal government’s radar after the Ministry of Ladies and Little one Growth objected to its fundraising marketing campaign on malnutrition, on the bottom that the problem was already being addressed by the federal government. In 2023, Bal Raksha Bharat misplaced its FCRA standing. India has a excessive prevalence of malnutrition, ranking one hundred and fifth out of 127 nations on the World Starvation Index in 2024.
Authorized Initiative for Forest and Setting (LIFE) is one other NGO that misplaced its FCRA standing in 2023. Ritwick Dutta, an environmental lawyer and a founding father of LIFE, is at present mired in a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case towards him; the federal government alleges he was using international donations to fund authorized activism to “take down India’s current or proposed coal tasks,” and “hurt India’s nationwide safety.”
LIFE has performed a key role in defending environmental regulation and serving to communities impacted by environmentally dangerous tasks. Many of those tasks are pushed via by bypassing rules, threatening folks’s livelihoods, well being and native ecosystems.
Dutta says that neither he nor LIFE has ever been a litigant in any authorized case. LIFE relied on international funding for 75 to 80 % of its price range, Dutta says, however with that assist now completely reduce off, its work has come to a halt. “We’re not conducting capacity-building applications, workshops, conferences, or different actions,” he provides.
Within the case of Oxfam, LIFE and Environics, Dutta shares that the federal government first focused them by revoking their nonprofit standing beneath 12A of the Earnings Tax Act, which grants nonprofits tax exemptions. “That is the sample. As soon as your 12A standing is revoked, organizations additionally lose their means to safe home funding, as a result of it disincentivizes donors from contributing as their donations are not tax-exempt,” says Dutta.
Just lately, the Earnings Tax Division revoked the nonprofit standing of the Reporters’ Collective, a digital media outlet identified for its investigative journalism, saying that their journalism doesn’t serve any public function. The collective performed all kinds of investigations important of the ruling authorities, together with reporting on the federal government’s function in serving to coal miners greenwash their violations of environmental legal guidelines, in addition to on a questionable solar power auction orchestrated by the Modi authorities that laid the groundwork for an notorious bribery scandal.
Dutta feels that there’s a sample to all these selections — shutting down voices important of the federal government. “The simplest solution to silence a corporation is thru FCRA. When you’ve got FCRA, you will be shut down at any time. No group with FCRA will dare to talk towards the federal government.”
Dutta, who’s difficult the fees, anticipates a protracted authorized battle. When requested about its affect on organizations, he notes that the repercussions prolong past his case. “It has affected coaching and capability constructing round environmental regulation. Now there’s a way of concern amongst organizations and they’re going to suppose twice earlier than continuing with their work,” he says.
That sense of concern can be palpable within the U.S., the place rights teams take into account what could possibly be coming if HR 9495 turns into regulation beneath a Trump administration, providing what the ACLU has called, “a clean examine for presidents to close down organizations that criticize them.” Oxfam has even warned that the invoice follows the identical “playbook” that different governments worldwide use to crush dissent. If India’s expertise is any indication, the passage of this invoice may result in a extreme contraction of civil society area, mirroring the shrinking panorama of activism and advocacy in India.
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