After Greenpeace, is Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation next on the MHA hit list?

After Greenpeace and Ford Foundation, is the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation set to be the next prominent NGO to fall afoul of the MHA? Media reports today indicate that the organisation, which has been active in India for around ten years, is under preliminary investigation over a donation it made to the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). A report in the Ahmedabad Mirror said that the MHA had stepped in over an anonymous tipoff that “there is an alleged discrepancy in the amount the Gates Foundation has said it donated to the PHFI, and what the PHFI has said it received.” The Economic Times quoted an unnamed MHA official as saying, “It is not a formal inquiry. It’s only a look into the affairs after certain information has come to our notice and we are in the process of checking it out,” [caption id=“attachment_2230222” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image fro PIBfp[/caption] The ET report added that the official had also insisted that the exercise was also different in intensity and scope from the ministry’s recent actions against Greenpeace India and the Ford Foundation. As of now, the organisation says it has not received any official summons from the MHA with regard to an investigation. Although MHA officials have been quick to downplay its investigation, the ministry’s recent track record with regard to NGOs will undoubtedly give cause for concern. Greenpeace India has come out and said that it may well have to shut down its India operations after the MHA froze access to its international and domestic funds. Greenpeace executive director Samit Aich told _Firstpost_ that  “On 9 April, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) blocked our domestic accounts due to absurd technicalities, which we are challenging in the court. Over 68 percent of our funds come from more than 77,000 Indians. These funds have been frozen and our work to protect India’s environment and people is being forced to stop. We are in discussion with lawyers on our line of defence,” Ford Foundation has been accused of funding a political party and profit making organisations “illegally” which could well result in the banning of the organisation. Despite its recent track record however, the focus on the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation still comes as a surprise, given the good rapport it enjoys with the Indian government at both the Centre and state levels. In fact, the organisation was awarded the Padma Bhushan award by the Modi government earlier this year. PM Narendra Modi has also spent a considerable amount of time with both Bill and Melinda Gates, and has often expressed a desire to work more closely with the foundation. Bill Gates himself had high praise for the Indian Prime Minister, writing in his blog that “Prime Minister Modi has done more to raise the awareness of the need for toilets than any other leader since the country gained independence.” The foundation has also managed to largely steer away from any international controversy, apart from coming under fire by some health experts in India, over trials for a vaccine that had been carried out in India, which is thought to be responsible for the death of five girls in Andhra Pradesh. However that incident, which occurred last year, has not seen any direct blame affixed to the organisation, and has since been dropped from discourse. It is difficult therefore at this stage to say if there are any other factors that may have prompted the MHA course of action, apart from what has been written on the box itself. One possible factor could be that the foundation’s stated objectives are at odds with the ambitions of the Modi government that itself has been focusing on a self sustaining ‘Swacch Bharat’ campaign. It could well be that the constant highlighting of discrepancies by a highly respected organisation could undermine the perception of the government’s ambitions in this regard. There are already a number of eloquent arguments in this regard, one of which is that philanthropy is the enemy of justice. On the other hand, it could be a pressure tactic on the foundation to step up and do more for less. Then again, the politics of development are complicated. International organisations that want to work in other countries need to have multiple conversations and negotiations with governments. Every action is as much a transaction as anything else. The incident could also turn out to be a giant case of nothing. For all we know, the organisation on the radar could well be the PHFI. As noted in the Mirror article, “The Delhi-based PHFI was launched by then prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 to train public health professionals. The people who developed the PHFI included former McKinsey chief and - and now convicted insider trader - Rajat Gupta, and former AIIMS cardiology department chief K Srinath Reddy. For now, all we can do is watch and wait.