There's nothing in that article to suggest funding by the US Government. As I said, it's entirely possible that US NGOs are helping to fund antinuclear, environmental, and other movements in India. I'd be surprised if they weren't. That doen't mean the US Government is involved in any way. Most of these NGOs don't get government funding, and many have a quite adversarial relationship with the US government. The US Government can't stop them from sending money, unless they send it to someone designated as a terrorist organization.

Again, if you're looking at NGOs there has to be some distinction among Government-funded or approved foreign NGOs, foreign NGOs not funded by government, and local NGOs receiving assistance from foreign counterparts.

It would be an understatement to believe that the foreign funding was totally altruistic.


If you had read through the links, you would have realised the British anger at funding India, which does not require British aid. DFID is Govt funded and it supports the NGOs in India.


Here is an article from the UK

Dodgy development: DFID in India : Introduction: DFID in India

http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3655

Let us look at a similar situation from history.

Would anyone believe that colonialism was anyway related to evangelism of the Missionaries who can to ‘civilise’ the ‘savages’?


I am reminded of Desmond Tutu’s phrase on the missionaries.


When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.

And actually, while the missionaries were not funded by the Govt, but they assisted their Govt to change the minds of the people the missionaries ‘saved’.


Christianity and colonialism are associated because Catholicism and Protestantism were the religions of the European colonial powers and in many ways are taken as the “religious arm" of those powers.


I am not saying so but Edward Andrews has opined that Christian missionaries were initially portrayed as "visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery". However, by the time the colonial era drew to a close in the last half of the twentieth century, missionaries became viewed as "ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them", colonialism's "agent, scribe and moral alibi."


Some more reference material are:

1. ^ Melvin E. Page, Penny M. Sonnenburg (2003). Colonialism: an international, social, cultural, and political encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 496. "Of all religions, Christianity has been most associated with colonialism because several of its forms (Catholicism and Protestantism) were the religions of the European powers engaged in colonial enterprise on a global scale."

2. ^ Bevans, Steven. "Christian Complicity in Colonialism/ Globalism". Retrieved 2010-11-17. "The modern missionary era was in many ways the ‘religious arm’ of colonialism, whether Portuguese and Spanish colonialism in the sixteenth Century, or British, French, German, Belgian or American colonialism in the nineteenth. This was not all bad — oftentimes missionaries were heroic defenders of the rights of indigenous peoples"

3. ^ Andrews, Edward (2010). "Christian Missions and Colonial Empires Reconsidered: A Black Evangelist in West Africa, 1766–1816". Journal of Church & State 51 (4): 663–691.doi:10.1093/jcs/csp090. "Historians have traditionally looked at Christian missionaries in one of two ways. The first church historians to catalogue missionary history provided hagiographic descriptions of their trials, successes, and sometimes even martyrdom. Missionaries were thus visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery. However, by the middle of the twentieth century, an era marked by civil rights movements, anti-colonialism, and growing secularization, missionaries were viewed quite differently. Instead of godly martyrs, historians now described missionaries as arrogant and rapacious imperialists. Christianity became not a saving grace but a monolithic and aggressive force that missionaries imposed upon defiant natives. Indeed, missionaries were now understood as important agents in the ever-expanding nation-state, or "ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them."

4. ^ Comaroff, Jean; Comaroff, John (2010) [1997]. "Africa Observed: Discourses of the Imperial Imagination". In Grinker, Roy R.; Lubkemann, Stephen C.; Steiner, Christopher B.. Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. p. 32


Therefore, the correlation between Missionaries and Foreign funded NGO is quite similar. They are basically the ‘ideological shock troops in guise of moral, bleeding heart Pollyannas’.


I think this is a subject that can be debated on a separate thread.


How does supplier liability work out in the case of a Russian-built nuclear power plant? The Russian nuclear industry isn't noted for having a perfect safety record. In any event the idea that the US Government is funding anti-nuclear protests in India because a US company didn't get the contract seems pretty far out on the conspiracy-theory scale. What are the specific NGOs involved? Is there any evidence that they receive US Government funding?

I think the term, “Conspiracy Theory” has been overused and is but a cliché and cover all for anything that does not suits one’s own perceptions.


One the Russian nuclear project, Wiki sums up the issue.


An Inter-Governmental Agreement on the project was signed on November 20, 1988 by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, for the construction of two reactors. The project remained in limbo for a decade due to the political and economic upheaval in Russia after the post-1991 Soviet breakup. There were also objections from the United States, on the grounds that the agreement does not meet the 1992 terms of the Nuclear Suppliers Group(NSG).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudanku..._Power_Project


While there were protests in India, where the US oriented PM of India was equally livid about the protests being foreign funded, it also found widespread sympathy in western nations.


Protest in Britain over Kudankulam nuclear plant
They claimed support from five British MPs and one British Member of the European Parliament who have signed a letter addressed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh which will be handed over to the High Commission……..

They claimed the construction violated the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safety guidelines as Kudankulam is in a tsunami and earthquake prone region which has also experienced small volcanic eruptions and is affected by water shortages.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/protest-i...42-62-128.html

It sure makes one wonder as to what prompts far away western nations to be livid about India’s development plans when they are not funding the same? Should they not be more concerned about themselves acquiring nuclear submarines and adding to their nuclear stockpile? I am sure those are more dangerous for proliferation in case of accidents inside their country or while traversing across the oceans than a nuclear power plant!


One wonders as to why there was no western outcry that Japan should close down all its nuclear power plants since it is an earthquake and tsunami prone nation and disasters like the last nuclear plant accident due to the tsunami could affect the world.

Odd, to say the least.


On the issue of whether or not the NGOs or those providing the funds have the support of foreign Govts, would any organisation claim that they are being funded to pursue an agenda that has covert aims tweaked in its moralist and altruist façade? I would be very surprised if a person of the US Embassy should walk up and shout from the rooftop stating ‘Hey, I am a CIA agent!’

I am sure you have heard of the Raymond Davis case in Pakistan. He was a retired Special Forces soldier, who carried out scouting and other reconnaissance missions as a security officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. The US Govt would not go to the extent that it did, if he was not a CIA agent. And what was his official designation?


I certainly wouldn't say they are "a Mary Poppins", but they aren't tools of the US Government either; they've shown that enough times. Over the years they've come in for quite similar criticism from the US Government

Amnesty International is an over rated organisation with its own agenda.


They trot out their ‘findings’ which are one sided, perfectly satisfied that they need not give the facts of the terrorist/ Maoist atrocities!


Amnesty International, medecins sans frontiers, the Peace Corps et al, all very noble organisation have been accused to pursuing foreign agenda or spying. To believe that one would not use such organisations would be disingenuous.


Soft power is a concept developed by Joseph Nye to describe the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce and rather than using force or money as a means of persuasion (to pursue the agenda).