Regulate, don’t strangle NGOs

There are certain hallmarks for most of the doings of the Narendra Modi government: a popular, presentable reason that can be easily sold to the public to achieve certain motives outside and a halfboiled, unworkable plan that will put a lot of people to inconvenience inside. Demonetisation, the Citizenship ( Amendment) Act, 2019, and the bills to rework the functioning of Indian farming are the classic examples. The latest to join the league is the amendment to the Foreign Contribution ( Regulation) Amendment Act, 2020, that Parliament has passed now.

The government is sure the piece of legislation is a must to control the waywardness of non- governmental organisations, including the religious ones. The main feature of the new bill is that it makes it mandatory for all the key people of the organisations to present their Aadhaar numbers to the authorities for getting the registration. The government, which got the Aadhaar Act passed in Parliament as money bill, had assured the Supreme Court that Aadhaar numbers will be made mandatory only when a person receives government largesse. It will be interesting to note how the government will defend this provision in the bill, should it be challenged in court. It defies logic when the government mandates the recipient organisation to open an account at a particular bank in the national capital at a time when banking has become a mobile application and the regulators get real time information on any transaction of agencies on their watch if they wanted. The bill empowers the government to make the organisations use the fund after a summary inquiry, whereas the existing law allows such an action only if the organisation concerned is found guilty of violating the law. The bill has many such crippling provisions. Regulating a sector is part of governance, but strangulating it is not. The government must realise it.