Civil Society groups in the Northeast in particular are agitated over the draconian amendments proposed to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) and the changes to its rules published in the Gazette Extraordinary of June 22, 2026. Under these rules, an organisation applying to renew permission to receive foreign funds must declare its social media posts and publication of books and articles by the association and its key functionaries during the preceding year. They also have to specify the exact activity they will undertake within their sector.
The threat posed by the amendments has been temporarily delayed with the Bill being sent to a joint parliamentary committee. This is the right time to ask not whether foreign funds should be used but why Indian funds are not available for health, education, research, and other NGO work among the marginalised. Studies, including our own, in the hill areas of the Northeast indicate that the miserable health and educational infrastructure is a major reason for tribal land alienation and the ethnic conflicts that follow. Good health and educational institutions are concentrated in Guwahati and Shillong. To access them, or those in mainland India, families have to sell their best land, their only resource and centre of tribal identity and sustenance, to richer tribal and non-tribal persons. A reasonable price can be negotiated when selling it for educational purposes. In a health emergency, they sell the best land at a throwaway price. The impoverishment it causes is basic to many ethnic conflicts.
A recent study of ours confirmed the miserable state of the healthcare infrastructure. Two-thirds of the tribal population relies on traditional systems because public health centres are in poor condition. Most centres have a single nurse who is often absent and they lack basic testing facilities, medicines, and electricity. This forces patients to travel long distances for routine tests. The poor cannot afford the cost. But the State refuses to integrate traditional systems into the modern system.
As for education, most schools have a single teacher, and very few attend classes regularly. The mid-day meal, which can keep children at school, often exists only on paper. Few good health and educational institutions are not accessible because of poor rural transport infrastructure. Neglect of rural transport limits access to good schools and health centres.
In this situation, many civil society groups that run dispensaries, health centres, and schools in remote areas do the work that the State should be doing. Health and education are fundamental rights, and the State has a duty to ensure people can access them. Civil society groups fill the gap left by the State’s failure to provide good schools and health centres but they receive no State aid and must rely on foreign contributions. Schools levy fees since they get no State aid. Most keep fees low to admit poor children, so teachers’ salaries are low, which leads to high staff turnover.
Instead of aiding them, the proposed amendments to the FCRA threaten to create a “Designated Authority” to take over assets built, in whole or in part, with foreign contributions since 1976 if an organisation is denied permission to receive foreign funds or decides not to renew it. Permission is often denied on flimsy grounds. A study of more than 15,000 organisations denied permission from 2020-22 shows that only a dozen of them were denied because of corrupt practices. The rest lost it on technical grounds such as delays in presenting their accounts or some mistakes in account-keeping. This amendment will force them to withdraw from these areas, thereby depriving the poor of their right to services the State is not providing.
This is a dog-in-the-manger policy, and the State should replace it with a public-private partnership to fund such NGOs through a grants-in-aid scheme that integrates traditional and modern healthcare systems. The southern states have done this in education since the 1960s. The State pays the salaries and the pensions of private school teachers and even helps maintain their buildings by paying their rent. This scheme and the well-run mid-day meal retain poor children in school. That is one reason for their high level of education. Making health and education accessible in remote areas can also prevent land alienation, a major cause of ethnic conflict.
Instead, the trend over the last decade has been towards restriction rather than regulation even though today’s challenges require government-civil society collaboration. Transparency and reporting are required, but not in a way that views most NGOs with suspicion. They are partners that contribute to policymaking through advocacy and to health and educational activities in areas where the State does not reach. Foreign funding should be regulated, not restricted.
The main question is not the denial of permission, which is usually arbitrary. Dissent can be a criterion for such denial. The procedure lacks transparency. The NGO is not given an opportunity to defend itself. Instead of remedying that procedure, the amendments propose draconian controls. This could be the death knell for dissenting voices and adversely affect educational, religious, health, and other institutions. Services to marginalised communities will stop.
This is a human rights issue, so civil society bodies must join hands and ask, ‘Where do we go from here?’
Walter Fernandes is Director, NESRC, Guwahati