From The Indian Express, 11 June 2014
Priyadarshi Siddhanta & Amitav Ranjan
An Intelligence Bureau report on foreign-funded NGOs “negatively impacting economic development” in India has called Greenpeace “a threat to national economic security”, citing activities ranging from protests against nuclear and coal plants and funding of “sympathetic” research, to allegedly helping out an Aam Aadmi Party candidate in the recent Lok Sabha elections.
The allegations are part of the IB’s report, dated June 3, submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office. As reported first by The Indian Express, the IB claims the negative impact of the NGOs’ role on GDP growth to be “2-3 per cent per annum”.
The report, signed by IB Joint Director S A Rizvi, accuses Greenpeace of contravening laws to “change the dynamics of India’s energy mix”. The bureau says Greenpeace’s ‘superior network’ of numerous pan-India organisations has helped conduct anti-nuclear agitations and mounted “massive efforts to take down India’s coal fired power plants and coal mining activity”. Greenpeace will take on India’s IT sector over e-waste among other “next targets”, the report says.
While several NGOs are named in the IB’s 21-page report, that lists seven sectors/projects that got stalled because of NGO-created agitations against nuclear power plants, uranium mines, coal-fired power plants, farm biotechnology, mega industrial projects, hydroelectric plants and extractive industries, the main international one singled out for criticism is Greenpeace.
Throughout, the IB report sees Greenpeace as the prime mover of mass-based movements against development projects. “It is assessed to be posing a potential threat to national economic security… growing exponentially in terms of reach, impact, volunteers and media influence,” it notes. The efforts are focused on “ways to create obstacles in India’s energy plans” and to “pressure India to use only renewable energy”.
The report also accuses Greenpeace, “actively aided and led by foreign activists visiting India”, of violating the provisions of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act of 2010 (FCRA), and financing “sympathetic studies” at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and at IIT-Delhi.
While FCRA provisions debar organisations getting foreign funding from political activity, former Greenpeace consultant Pankaj Singh stood as an Aam Aadmi Party candidate from Sidhi Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh in the recent general elections. Mahan coal mines, against which Greenpeace has been protesting, fall under this constituency.
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Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
I’ll stand in support of India. Greenpeace is a threat to every individual not on their payroll, and some of them too.
I lived in India for a while. One of its great virtues is that it is ‘old-fashioned’ – it does not buy into all the trendy political and cultural fashions of the West and views them with a mixture of wry amusement and amazement that supposedly sensible people in the West fall for such claptrap.
It is also ‘old-fashioned’ in that it has an education system like the US used to have. Children are expected to behave and are punished if they do not. The assumption is that a problem lies with the naughty child, not the teacher or the schools or the system. Similarly criminals are punished and the fact that the criminal grew up in poverty or their mother did not love them are not considered extenuating circumstances when sentence is passed.
So I am not surprised that they see Greenpeace as yet another crazy Western import that must be controlled.
Greenpeace is more threatening than Greenhouse Gases?
That can’t be good news for the following.
Interesting.
The EU is not an empire. It is an organisation devoted to international brotherhood and world peace. And yet it has recently destabilised the international situation and come close to starting a major war.
Greenpeace is not a terrorist organisation. It is a group of concerned people dedicated to saving the planet. And yet it has been declared a threat by the Indian government.
Whatever next?
I once shared a lift with a Greenpeace delegation coming away from a meeting with the UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. They couldn’t stop congratulating themselves for having got exactly what they wanted without having to negotiate. Who needs ‘reds under the bed’ when there are already watermelons in the cabinet?
If the founders of an organization want it to remain true to their ideals, they should not allow the entire membership to elect its officials. Rather officials should be either elected by the original membership (or their designated successors) and/or “co-opted” from above by the original inner circle of founders.
India understand that the CAGW global movement, despite having Barak Obama as its de facto Pope, is fundamentally racist. It is about wanting to keep Europe and America richer and the rest of the world poorer, and driven by disquiet over globally equalising economic growth. They wish to stamp on economic growth of south Asia, south America and Africa. They label their opponents “deniers” with all the ugly implications of that word. However it would be truer to their own racist nature if they were to label carbon-emitting enemies of the people whom they despise as “carbonniggrs”, or “co2ns”. That is who they are.
Greenpeace Canada, July 28,2009
“Thanks to the Steelworkers Toronto Area Council (the owners of 33 Cecil Street), Greenpeace Canada has found a new home that not only reduces overhead costs but also allows us to work in a great, green place.”
http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/recent/open_house