Greanpeace Gaga

The 26-page reply filed by Greenpeace India to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) makes for both grim and amusing reading. Grim because it does a thorough job of exposing bureaucrats in the MHA as we have known them since at least the Emergency in 1975, diabolical, mean, one-eyed and too clever by half. And amusing because bureaucrats are made to look comically incompetent.

One can only imagine how many babus the reply has left fuming. But since the MHA is unlikely to accept its own mistakes and because chances are that it would now hit back at Greenpeace India even harder, it is worth looking at the mischief that this all important ministry of the Government is capable of.

The MHA, for example, had righteously declared that the NGO's claim of a 'typographical error' in its accounts was not tenable. In its reply the NGO cheekily points out not one but several 'typos' and errors in the order issued by the MHA freezing the NGO's bank accounts. It shows how the MHA tried to enforce rules framed in 2011 to transactions made in 2008. The reply points out that several points made by the MHA had actually been explained earlier by the NGO but the ministry deliberately fails to mention them and explain why they are not acceptable.

The MHA accused Greenpeace India of shifting its 'functional office' to Bengaluru while its registered office is in Chennai. The MHA claimed that this was done without either intimating or after seeking the approval of the Government as required under the law. The NGO's reply points out that its balance sheet, annual reports etc all bear the registered address in Chennai, that the MHA's inspection itself was carried out in its registered office and that the NGO has several offices and 'hubs' in the country but the registered office has remained in Tamil Nadu and Chennai. While the reply makes no mention of it, it is still worth remembering that the law does not even mention anything about 'functional' offices. So what's the fuss all about?

Yet another absurd accusation leveled by the MHA is that the NGO 'replaced' 50% or more of its executive committee members without informing the Government. The NGO in its reply cites the law which requires it to inform the Government and obtain its approval only if 50% or more of the members are replaced "at any point of time". One does not have to be a legal eagle to infer that the NGO is not required to inform the Government every time a member is replaced because of resignation, relocation, death or any other reason. It is required to do so if it chooses to replace 50% of the members or more in one go. But the MHA took a 10-year-long period and arrived at its 50% figure.

A seemingly serious charge leveled by the MHA referred to the sum of Rs 6.60 crore worth of foreign donations which had not been mentioned in the opening balance for the year 2008-09. What the order fails to mention is that the amount appears in the closing balance and also in figures uploaded on the ministry's own website. The reply hints that the MHA wanted audit certificates for the previous seven or eight years, the accountants who were there in 2008 were no longer with the NGO in 2014 and the inadvertent error was made by the Chartered Accountants. But the accounts reflected the amount and no attempt was made to hide the figure as implied by the ministry.

The MHA also objects to the NGO spending money in furnishing bail bonds to its activists, engaging lawyers and filing writ petitions. These activities, the ministry believes, "do not fall under the aims and objectives" of the NGO. In its reply the NGO points out that Greenpeace India is engaged in advocacy, lobbying, research, training, campaigns to protest policies and projects affecting the environment. If its activists are arrested while achieving its goals, it is duty-bound to provide legal assistance. It suggests that paying lawyers and offering bail bonds for activists who get arrested are legitimate expenses. It also argues that bail bonds should not be deemed to be expenditure at all. "It is like a security deposit" and is returned with interest once the cases are dismissed.

For good measure the reply informs the MHA that the NGO had deposited Rs 30,000 in court to furnish bail bonds for six of its activists. The cases against them had all been dismissed by courts however and the money refunded to the NGO with interest. "But we cannot deposit the money because you have frozen our bank accounts," it points out.

One can go on. But the short point that emerges is that the MHA was tasked to build up a case against the NGO. It carried out inspections, called for accounts of the previous five to seven years, pounced on some discrepancies, interpreted rules to justify its draconian decision of freezing the NGO's bank accounts, threatening its closure and jeopardising the livelihood of around 400 activists who work full time for Greenpeace in India.

What's even more remarkable is that none of the discrepancies, even if they were correct, seem serious enough to threaten the nation. At the cost of sounding flippant, it seems more like the case of a bureaucrat who felt slighted because of a favour denied.

A Government which is so concerned about the 'ease of doing business' and facilitating business in India, a Government which believes in repealing laws that create a clutter, a Government which swears by simplifying rules and Income Tax Returns, is invoking any which rule to muzzle an NGO, which it projects as a menace to national security. The spin doctors clearly need to do a far better job in order to be convincing.

While the government blames Greenpeace India of using 88 per cent of its foreign donations on administrative expenses, the reply contests the figure, claiming it to range between 12 to 16 per cent even by the Government's own account. Referring to the charge of underreporting foreign contributions, it says that with 70% of the donations being made by Indian citizens, it has no reason to 'underreport' foreign contributions.

Tragically there is no law to force the MHA to respond to the reply within a reasonable time-frame. There is no law to ensure that the NGO is paid exemplary damages as and when the courts dismiss the charges against it. There is no law to ensure that the Home Minister, the Home Secretary or the Joint Secretary are made responsible for the exaggerations, misinterpretations and mistakes contained in the order and made to pay for them.

So Greenpeace India will shut down its operations. It will challenge the order in court, where the Government will do everything to drag and delay the matter with no questions asked about the payments it makes to lawyers. And maybe, just maybe the appeals etc will be exhausted in five to seven years. By then most of the activists and employees of Greenpeace India would have scattered and taken up other jobs. Is this the kind of good governance that we have been promised or we need?

And just as an aside, while Greenpeace depends on individual donations and does not accept donations and grants from governments and corporate bodies, there is the world's largest NGO which accepts donations and grants from both the Government and business houses. And yet its accounts are never audited or inspected. It runs schools, training centres, owns properties across the country and pays an unknown number of people. It brings out no annual report and its balance sheet is presumably not submitted to the Government of India. It is the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), in case the MHA has not heard of it.