In 2002, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, honoured former IAS officer Harsh Mander with the Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavna award for what it called his “commendable work” in Gujarat after the riots. In September last year, the Cong-led UPA’s Home Ministry sent him a letter denying his organisation Aman Biradari foreign funding saying “your association is engaged in political activities.” Mander filed an RTI application asking what those “political activities” were. He got a reply saying sorry, we can’t reveal that because of “national security concerns.”

Mander is a media-savvy activist who gets his voice heard in several fora but for countless NGOs across the country, the Home Ministry’s proposed Foreign Contributions Regulation Bill 2006 — it’s currently before a standing committee, chaired by Sushma Swaraj, which meets next week — has come to stand for a draconian licence raj, giving a raft of discretionary powers to bureaucrats (see below) and, in the name of national security and checking terror, threatens to choke the voluntary sector.

It also imposes five-year permits for getting foreign funds, permits which have to be renewed by officials in the Home Ministry. And in a bizarre provision, leaves it to the babu to decide what quantum of foreign funds can be used for the NGO’s “administrative” work.

This, ironically, from a government that showcases its secular, tolerant credentials and announced a draft policy on voluntary organisations that argued the exact opposite of what the proposed law entails: it called for a process to “evolve a new working relationship between the government and the voluntary sector, without affecting the autonomy and identity of voluntary organisations.”

... contd.