Tuesday 2 June 2015

War of a different kind



Freedom, democracy, adult franchise, are these enough to ensure that a country is free? But our experience with all these proves that for ensuring a fair administration and safeguarding a nation’s sovereignty something much more than these are needed. The modern day wars are not necessarily fought on turfs where it used to be. Instead a surreptitious  means to destabilize economy, fund groups which are rebellious and secessionist in nature, and thereby wreck the strength of your enemy, are the norms of this war which is fought by homebred ‘Civil’  Society activists.

When the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report, in which it has placed India in tier -2, meaning that the religious freedom violations in India are serious, one can understand that the war is on. USA has never acted in Similar fashion against Autocrats, Dictators, Mass Murderers, Ethnic Cleansers, Usurpers of power, Murderers of Democracy, War Criminals Terrorists Al Qaeda-ISI-LeT-TTP-Boko Haram-Hamas-PLO-IM- Taliban etc. Then why they are so much agitated about the violation of religious freedom, which in reality is violation of freedom to exploit the masses?  Any growing economy is viewed as a threat and India is no exception.  That this foul cry comes immediately after the government announced curbs on more than ten thousand NGOs rips the secret open as to who is the boss for all these civil society soldiers. Government action is nothing but an acknowledgement of this war and a fitting constitutional response to it.  Several thousand crores are being pumped into our country through these pseudo activists and many development activities are put on hold by these mercenaries leading the country to choke. According to a report given by Ministry of home affairs there are more than 20 lakh NGOs in India, supposedly working for the welfare of the society. Around 43000 of them receive foreign funding for their ‘activities’. Nearly 11500 crores were received in the year 2012, practically making them a parallel economy. One may wonder with this many organisations working to alleviate poverty, bring medical assistance to poor and education to the needy, why our country doesn’t seem to show any signs of its impact. A report by IB says that many of the NGOs which receive foreign funds are aimed at stalling development projects in India. It further says that, “A significant number of Indian NGOs (funded by some donors based in the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries) have been noticed to be using people-centric issues to create an environment which lends itself to stalling development projects.” According to the report, the negative impact on GDP growth is assessed to be 2-3 per cent per annum. The 21-page report calls the NGOs’ activities “anti-development” and has highlighted their plans for 2014. These include a campaign against palm oil imports from Indonesia and disposal of e-waste of Indian IT firms, organising construction workers in urban areas, protests against identified projects such as Gujarat’s Special Investment Regions, Par-Tapi Narmada River Interlinking Project and the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. These dangerous conspiracies on the one hand exploit and harm the vulnerable villagers and on the other hand weaken the entire nation’s economy. In a troubled economy the scope for soul harvesting is more and the soul hunting churches are always lurking behind these activists to exploit the masses. In cases like Koodankulam power plant agitation church was seen prominently and in fact leading the agitation, hoping that it would bring in lot more faithful gullible people.

 The fact remains that for many of these NGOs their noble objectives remain only in their deed of memorandum and their actual deeds will be to undermine the sovereignty of the nation.  Government should follow a hot pursuit against these NGOs and find where the money has actually gone. Exposing their misdeeds is of paramount importance as these ‘activists’ were all these years just hobnobbing with our corrupt politicians to get favors, but are now directly entering the political arena and with a corrupt media they will be shown as messiahs to the gullible society. There is dire need to enlighten the society about these NGOs and their anti-national agendas.


V.V.Balasubramanian.
YB-ET.