Compassion International is a ‘non-profit’ (aka ‘charity’) with worldwide presence, and headquartered in Colorado, USA. It has been sending approximately Rs. 220 Crore p.a. to several FCRA-NGOs in Bharat.

For a background on Compassion International (CI) as well as on a full identification of all FCRA-NGOs recipients from it, read the following two seminal Posts:

Part-1: http://fcraanalyses.blogspot.in/2016/07/compassion-there-aint-any-free-lunch-in.html

Part-2: http://fcraanalyses.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-claws-of-compassion-part-2.html

The current Post is motivated by a recent news story in The Hindu. Headlined “The Kerry Effect: Centre lifts curbs on fund transfers by NGO”, it started off as follows:

Thus, both the headline as well as the first paragraph imply that Government of India (GoI) allowed CI to transfer funds to FCRA-NGOs only after the US Secretary of State met our External Affairs Minister in September 2016.

What is Prior Permission category in FCRA?

Any Charitable Trust/Society/Company can register for FCRA. For the sake of convenience, let us call such entities as NGOs. Based on background checks and rationale etc., GoI can grant an FCRA registration to an NGO. Such FCRA-NGOs can receive foreign “donation” (donations are in quotes as nothing comes for free in this world, according to this Author) in a seamless manner. Such FCRA-NGOs need to file quarterly and Annual reports to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). That is it. The Quarterly returns mandate was instituted via the FCRA Amendments-2015.

There is another category of NGOs who can receive foreign donations, once in a while. Such NGOs can seek the permission of MHA for every remittance that they wish to receive, a priori. Such NGOs are not FCRA-NGOs (in my parlance), as they do not have an FCRA Registration number.

What is Compassion International’s status?

On March 28, 2016, MHA moved CI into the Prior Permission (PP) category. Let us not get into the reasons why they did so. Consequently, any remittance from CI to any FCRA-NGO has to be approved by MHA, on a case by case basis. CI continues to be in the same category until today (October 19, 2016).

The US Secretary of State arrived in India on August 29, 2016 and held discussions with our Ministers.

Did any  FCRA-NGO receive donations from Compassion International between April-September 2016?

As mentioned earlier, The Hindu’s story implies that the US Secretary of State’s visit was instrumental in getting MHA to ‘remove’ curbs on CI’s remittances. What if FCRA-NGOs were receiving funds from CI in the period intervening March 28, 2016 and August 29, 2016? (on a case by case basis).

This can be easily verified by an examination of the Quarterly returns filed by FCRA-NGOs with MHA. FCRA-NGOs need to file this either with MHA or they can host the same on their websites. 6187 FCRA-NGOs had filed these returns for the first quarter of 2016-17, i.e., April-June 2016. The same can be accessed here.

Among these 6187 Quarterly returns, 65 FCRA-NGOs have received grants from Compassion International during the period April-June 2016, totalling to a sum of Rs. 22.3 Crore.  The Table at the end of this Post provides the list of these 65 FCRA-NGOs.  FCRA-NGOs likely would have received funds from CI, post June 2016 as well which can be studied once the July-September 2016 Quarterly returns are made available online. Nothing unusual about it.

Conclusion

We have thus demonstrated that FCRA-NGOs were indeed receiving donations from Compassion International-Colarado, USA, after CI got into the PP category and even before the visit of the US Secretary of State.

Acknowledgments

The FCRA Wing of MHA is sincerely thanked for making publicly available the Quarterly and Annual Returns of FCRA-NGOs, without one having to use the RTI route.

P.S.: Our own views on FCRA (beyond this story): It is largely a conduit for Evangelism and causes a change in our religious demography (won’t be reflected in Census). Thus, it should be scrapped.

Table 1. List of FCRA-NGOs who have received remittances from Compassion International-Colorado during the period, April-June 2016. [Secondary remittances via Compassion East India-Kolkata are not presented in this Table].

This article first appeared at https://indiahap.wordpress.com/2016/10/19/compassions-fcra-what-happened-really/ and is being reproduced with the consent of the author.

The data unearthed by the author brings into question the efficacy of the Home Ministry putting questionable FCRA-NGOs on their watch list (PP category). Despite CI being on this list, it was able to disburse Rs 22.3 crores to 65 NGOs in just one quarter! And just a casual glance at the names of beneficiary NGOs will tell us what kind of ‘social work’ they do. 

Disclaimer: This article represents the opinions of the Author, and the Author is responsible for ensuring the factual veracity of the content. HinduPost will not be responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information, contained herein.