Democratic backsliding: On the state wielding the FCRA as a weapon
Curbs on financing of civil society bodies denote eroding civil liberties
Less than a year after suspending the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) licence of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), the Government of India has cancelled its FCRA licence. The justification for this move — CPR’s publications have been equated with current affairs programming, prohibited for an entity using FCRA funds — is nothing if not farcical. As a premier think tank, the CPR has been around for more than half a century, during which it has been an exemplar of public-spirited scholarship feeding into an ecosystem of governance and policy-making where multiple stakeholders and their often divergent interests need consensus-building through informed debates — the hallmark of a democracy. A decision to effectively shut down such an institution by crippling its finances is bound to send the message that India is no longer open to the free flow of knowledge and ideas. The move also fits into a broader, and sadly, by now all-too-familiar, pattern of the state wielding the FCRA as a weapon to silence entities whose work is not to its liking — typically those working on environmental issues, civil liberties and human rights. The use of the FCRA to target civil society for political or ideological reasons is perhaps written into its DNA. The legislation is the child of the Emergency, enacted by a regime paranoid about foreign governments interfering in India’s internal affairs by channelling funds through NGOs. Since then, it has been amended by successive governments, with the provisions becoming more stringent.
When the latest round of amendments was passed in 2020, the International Commission of Jurists denounced it as “incompatible with international law” and warned that it would “impose … extraordinary obstacles on the capacity of … civil society actors to carry out their important work”. It appears as though the government has been working hard to prove the ICJ right. Even before dust could settle on the FCRA cancellation of CPR, World Vision India, which works with children, has had its FCRA cancelled. On the one hand, India seeks recognition as a ‘Vishwaguru’. Its calling card as the G-20 host was ‘Mother of Democracy’. The government is hypersensitive to rankings on international indices, yet unwilling to acknowledge the link between perception and reality. When the U.S.-based non-profit, Freedom House, in its Democracy Index, downgraded India to an “electoral autocracy”, a reason it cited was erosion of civil liberties. Shutting off the finances of civil society organisations on flimsy grounds is a textbook example of civil liberties erosion, guaranteed to amplify the narrative of democratic backsliding. It would then be pointless to complain about bias or invoke “conspiracies” to tarnish India’s image when these actions get reflected in India’s downgrading in global indices of freedom and democracy.