India investigating Bloomberg charity
China, India rivalry looms
NEW DELHI, Aug 30, (RTRS): India has been investigating how Bloomberg Philanthropies, founded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, funds local non-profit groups for anti-tobacco lobbying, government documents show, making it the latest foreign non-government organisation to come under scrutiny.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has since 2014 tightened surveillance of non-profit groups, saying they were acting against India’s national interests. Thousands of foreign-funded charities’ licences have been cancelled for misreporting donations.
Critics, however, say the government has used the foreign funding law as a tool to silence non-profit groups which have raised concerns about the social costs of India’s rapid economic development.
The intelligence wing of India’s home ministry last year drafted a note on Bloomberg Philanthropies, raising concerns that the foundation was running a campaign to “target” Indian tobacco businesses and “aggressively” lobby against the sector.
Though the three-page note, reviewed by Reuters, said the Bloomberg initiative’s “claimed intention to free India of tobacco cannot be faulted” given the known risks from tobacco, it highlighted the sector’s importance, noting it brings in nearly $5 billion in annual revenue for governments, and provides a livelihood for millions of people.
“Foreign interests making foreign contributions ... for purposes of lobbying against an established economic activity raises multiple concerns,” the note said, including, it said, an “adverse economic impact” on 35 million people.
The June 3, 2016 note, marked “SECRET” and circulated to top government officials, including in Modi’s office, has not previously been reported. The probe continued until at least April this year, another government document showed.
Rebecca Carriero, a spokeswoman for Michael Bloomberg and New York-based Bloomberg Philanthropies, declined to comment as they were unaware of any investigation.
A home ministry spokesman said “queries which relate to security agencies cannot be answered.” Modi’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The ministry’s note was one of the factors behind the rejection of a foreign funding licence renewal of at least one Bloomberg-funded India charity last October, said a senior government official aware of the investigation.
Michael Bloomberg, one of the world’s richest people and a former New York City Mayor, has committed nearly $1 billion to support global tobacco control efforts. One of his focus countries is India, where tobacco kills 900,000 people a year.
Other than funding Indian NGOs, Bloomberg’s charity has in the past worked on improving road safety and supported federal tobacco-control efforts. In 2015, Modi called Michael Bloomberg a “friend”, and the two agreed on working together on India’s ambitious plan to build so-called smart cities.
Rivalry looms over BRICS summit:
China and India may have ended a tense border standoff for now, but their longstanding rivalry raises questions about the possibility of meaningful cooperation at an upcoming summit of major emerging economies.
The annual summit of the BRICS grouping encompassing Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa gets under way this weekend in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen, hoping to advance its vision of an alternative to the Western dominance of global affairs.
The leaders of all five nations are expected to attend, offering the best opportunity for Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to talk since the border tensions flared in June. While both their countries view BRICS as a significant forum for progress, their rivalry for global influence and fears of containment by the other threaten to overshadow those aspirations.
The two countries’ militaries are “prowling the same spaces” along their land borders, in the Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean, said Sreeram Chaulia, dean of Jindal School of International Affairs in the Indian city of Sonipat. Even beyond the region, they are vying in Africa and Latin America “for the leadership of the developing world,” Chaulia said.
“There is a contest, whether it is acknowledged or not, and it is because of the ambitions of both nations to be superpowers and to be inheriting the Asian century,” Chaulia said.
Attempting to start the BRICS summit off on a positive note, Beijing and Delhi on Monday announced a resolution of their most protracted and potentially explosive border standoff in years. The saber-rattling had raised fears of renewed conflict between the nuclear-armed Asian giants, who fought a bloody border war in 1962 and remain locked in disputes over extensive chunks of territory along their border.
Lockheed closing in on deal for F-16:
Lockheed Martin is closing in on an international deal for F-16 fighter planes, and has offered to eventually build all the jets at a proposed plant in India if it wins a bigger order to supply the Indian Air Force, a top executive said.
The US defence giant and Sweden’s Saab are in a two horse-race to equip the Indian military with at least 100 single-engine jets that have to be produced locally under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Makein-India’ plan.
Randall L. Howard, who leads F-16 business development, said Lockheed is offering to make India the sole F-16 production centre, so eventually it will make the planes not just for India, but also for other countries.
Lockheed is closing its F-16 production line at Forth Worth, Texas and will supply new orders from a new facility at Greenville, South Carolina. But the plan was to eventually build the planes in India, Howard told Reuters.
“Our next customer, which we believe to be very soon ... we will produce those aircraft out of that (Greenville) facility,” he said. “As you look beyond that, the opportunity for India is to then move all of that into India and that’s what’s being proposed ... to have a single production line in India that would service the new production requirements of global demand, the global market.” (RTRS)