Soumashree Sarkar 
New Delhi: The Union home ministry has cancelled the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act registration of the institute which runs the Centre for Financial Accountability – a non-profit which critically analyses, monitors and critiques the role of national and international financial institutions and their impact on development, human rights and the environment.
The Centre functions under the India Institute for Critical Action Centre in Movement, which was informed of the cancellation of the FCRA licence online.
Joe Athialy, the executive director of the Centre, told The Wire that the move is going to affect close to 40 employees of the Institute who work at the Centre and in other projects under the institute, some of which look at Dalit and Adivasi issues.
“The cancellation of the registration affects us very seriously because as a result of it, at the end of this month we won’t have money to pay the salaries of our employees,” Athialy says.
Loss of an FCRA licence not only means that the organisation cannot accept money from foreign sources but also that it cannot access its foreign contribution bank account, Athialy notes.
“The government is unable to create new jobs but is happy to take away existing ones,” he adds.
Hours earlier Athialy told The Hindu that they had been told that the FCRA licence cancellation is over the fact that the Institute had made incorrect income tax return filings for the financial years 2018 and 2019. To The Wire, he said that this was no reason at all.
“What if in the corporate world, one corporation’s filings contain a mistake – does the firm get shut down? No, right? This is part of this regime’s special treatment for NGOs – you commit one small mistake and the entire thing is shut down,” he says.
The Narendra Modi government and the Union home ministry under Amit Shah has often wielded the FCRA to stifle the work of non-profit organisations. A Hindu report points to the fact that it cancelled the FCRA licences of more than 6,600 NGOs in the last five years and of 20,693 NGOs in the last decade.
In January this year, the government cancelled the FCRA registration of the Centre for Policy Research, a 50-year-old policy think-tank.
Athialy says that these cancellations are sparked by the government deciding to take action against a NGO or a critical think-tank and then looking for reasons to justify it.
“It is not like there are different levels of violation and the government notes them all and decides that they need to cancel a registration – nothing like that,” he says, adding that rightwing organisations have been able to thrive in the world of the FCRA with little interruption from the government.
Athialy says that the institute could have appeared on the government’s radar because of the recent report on environmental risks posed by the Adani Group in Gujarat’s Kutch. In addition, a July 7 report by the CFA had said that administration of Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh was arresting people displaced by an Adani coal mine “under pressure from the Adani company.” But, Athialy adds, it must be the overall work done by the institute in the last several years that has led to the cancellation of the registration.