US lawmaker’s FCRA criticism validates India’s foreign-funding concerns: Report

US Republican Congressman Riley Moore’s criticism of proposed amendments to India’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) illustrates the type of external intervention the legislation seeks to address, according to a report published by the European Times.

Moore had argued that the changes could give the Indian government greater control over churches and Christian organisations and potentially damage relations between India and the United States.

The report dismissed the congressman’s intervention as propaganda, contending that comments by a foreign lawmaker on India’s regulation of overseas funding reinforced New Delhi’s position that external influence over domestic institutions was neither hypothetical nor outdated.

It said the debate surrounding the FCRA had once again produced claims that the law targeted civil society groups and Christian organisations and reflected an erosion of democratic values in India.

However, the publication questioned why India should be denied the sovereign authority to regulate foreign influence when several major democracies have introduced comparable oversight mechanisms.

“As the Indian Parliament prepares once again to debate the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), a familiar narrative has re-emerged. Critics portray the legislation as an attack on civil society, an assault on Christian organisations and yet another sign of India’s supposed departure from democratic norms,” the report said.

It argued that this criticism ignored the wider international shift towards greater scrutiny of foreign funding and influence.

The report cited the United States’ Foreign Agents Registration Act, Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme and the United Kingdom’s Foreign Influence Registration Scheme. It also pointed to measures being developed by the European Union to counter foreign interference and covert influence operations linked to overseas actors.

According to the publication, the underlying principle across these regulatory frameworks is that foreign funding should not be allowed to shape a country’s political, social or institutional environment without adequate transparency and supervision.

The Indian government has maintained that the proposed FCRA amendments are consistent with international regulatory practices and are not intended to create an exceptional or discriminatory framework.

The report also highlighted the size of India’s civil society sector, estimating that the country is home to between 3.3 million and 3.7 million non-governmental organisations.

It claimed that India accounts for more than half of the NGOs operating across G20 countries and far exceeds other members of the grouping. By comparison, Italy has approximately 360,000 third-sector organisations, it said.

Given the scale of the sector, monitoring foreign contributions was not merely an administrative or political matter but also a national security concern, the report argued.

“India therefore administers by far the largest NGO ecosystem on the planet. Regulating foreign funding in an environment of this magnitude is not merely a bureaucratic exercise or a political choice; it is a matter of national security,” it said.

With IANS inputs