It’s not only dissident community members who thwart philanthropic efforts to assist others. The government of India does so too. The draconian and mischievous Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) first introduced by one authoritarian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, and now further tightened by another dictatorial head of state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with his right-hand strongman home minister Amit Shah, has delayed, hindered and even possibly blocked humanitarian aid coming to India.
The World Zoroastrian Organisation Trust Funds (WZOTF) chairman Dinshaw Tamboly, when responding to Parsiana’s queries (see "Relief restrictions," Zoroastrians Abroad, pg 16) noted: "The second wave has created a rather peculiar situation where individuals and institutions located overseas are ready to remit funds but many trusts including the World Zoroastrian Organisation Trust and WZOTF have been unable to receive them due to FCRA rules having been changed in 2020 requiring all the 80,000 odd official NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) in the country to fill in new forms and open new bank accounts with State Bank of India, New Delhi Main Branch…"
The B. D. Petit Parsee General Hospital (PGH) has noted that all their beds are occupied and appealed for funds to upgrade their facilities and purchase new equipment (see "PGH: Full utilization," Events and Personalities, pg 10). The money raised overseas to alleviate their situation may not make it to the Hospital’s coffers for quite some time.
In order to receive foreign contributions and aid, a trust or establishment must have a FCRA registration certificate. As it is these are hard to come by but now the money has to be routed through a specified banking channel. Even after complying with all these cumbersome procedures, the Ministry of Home Affairs has to give its approval before funds can be transferred to India.
The ostensible purpose of the restrictive Act was to curb the inflow of foreign funds to bodies termed as terrorists by the government of the day. But in reality the legislation was aimed at preventing any monetary aid reaching those viewed as being critics of government policies or their associates. The NGOs targeted by the present government include the Ford Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Amnesty International and Greenpeace.
Hence philanthropic Zoroastrians abroad who have raised funds and other urgently required equipment required by their co-religionists and others in India, find their channels blocked for the present. (The government relaxed the rules on May 18, to permit inflows till June 30, 2021.)
It’s one thing for government red tape to sabotage development in normal times, but quite another when people are dying. As the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet noted in an editorial, the government "seemed more intent on removing criticism on Twitter than trying to control the pandemic." Veteran columnist Coomi Kapoor noted in an opinion piece in The Indian Express of May 17, 2021: "Orchestrating the narrative seems to be a national obsession." Basic requirements like oxygen are not available with hundreds of resultant deaths reported or unreported in the media. In Uttar Pradesh and some other states corpses are floating in the rivers because there is not enough firewood to cremate them or the family is too poor to afford the wood. Many patients are sleeping in corridors or are turned away by hospitals because sufficient beds are not available. A flourishing black market exists to procure drugs, oxygen, plasma, hospital beds, pilfered or spurious vaccines... A front page article in The New York Times of May 17, titled "Profiteers Pounce to Exploit India’s Covid Misery," states how scamsters and tricksters are risking people’s lives in the pursuit of a quick buck.
Even those who are engaged in fighting the pandemic, especially vaccine manufacturers, are being "vilified and blamed," states Adar Poonawalla, the chief executive officer of the Serum Institute of India (SII). Poonawalla told The Times of London that he was receiving threats in India from "‘powerful people... Threats are an understatement’ to describe what he faced from people demanding ‘instant supplies’ of the vaccine," noted the paper. "‘It’s not foul language. It’s the tone.’" The firm founded by his father Dr Cyrus is the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines by volume. Accorded Z category security by the Indian government, the family is at present in the United Kingdom.
When the pandemic first broke out over a year ago there were persistent rumors that the government of India had not placed orders with SII for the vaccines. Quite possibly at that juncture the firm had accepted foreign orders in addition to what it may have committed to AstraZeneca and Oxford University who created the vaccine. But when the government finally realized its lapses, these orders were diverted to Indian consumers before finally banning the export of the vaccines. Not surprisingly, SII collaborator AstraZeneca has sued the company for defaulting on its commitments.
The Poonawallas had also generously offered to set aside 60,000 or so vaccines for the Parsi community. But the distribution of the vital lifesaving product is determined by the government, not by SII. That did not deter social media buffs from inventing a flurry of posts claiming the community had rejected the quota, magnanimously stating they would wait their turn!
PGH and the community would have been far better off today had the generous offer by Pervin and Jal Shroff of Hong Kong been accepted and a new state-of-the-art, cosmopolitan hospital constructed in the PGH compound. A percentage of the revenue of the new institute, to have been managed by the prestigious north India based Medanta Group of Hospitals, would have accrued to PGH, in addition to a fixed sum. Parsis would have been able to utilize the diagnostic facilities on a preferential basis. A ground breaking ceremony had even been held over five years ago. A few dissidents, however, moved the Charity Commissioner’s office to thwart the USD 22.5 million (Rs 165 crore) proposal. The donors, fed up with the delays and the vilification campaign against them, withdrew their bounteous offer.
Similarly, the proposal to develop the Parsi Lying-In Hospital (PLIH) into a state-of-the-art orthopedic hospital with 10% of beds being kept aside to treat Parsis free or at subsidized rates and with an annual payment being made to the trust, was mired in litigation till the developer and his backers lost interest. Now a proposal has been made by a former chairman of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet to turn the defunct Hospital into a Covid isolation center for Parsis. But the lack of funds, staff and time required are a deterrent to any such project. Even the Surat Parsi Panchayat had to restrict the number of Covid beds their hospital could offer on account of shortage of qualified staff. And this in a functioning hospital; PLIH closed its doors around 30 years ago.
Politicians and dissident Parsis should do well to follow a part of the Hippocratic oath that states, "first do no harm (Primum non nocere)."