Mohan Guruswamy
The Modi government has all but wiped out Indian supported and managed NGOs and think tanks. Today all the prominent policy thinktanks in Delhi like Brookings, Carnegie are foreign funded. The few that exist in cracks, like IDSA, CLAWS, CAPS, ICS, USI etcare government funded and seldom miss the cue of the masters. The independent thinktanks have all but disappeared because critical comment scares away would be donors. The only Indian thinktanks that flourish in Delhi like VIF, India Foundation etc are RSS, BJP and foreign (mostly Israeli) funded. They can hardly be called thinktanks and are really thought tanks pushing their zany ideas. Of the rest ORF has chosen to mainly function as an event organizer for the MEA and CPR lives precariously and vicariously on state funding that limits its independent discourse.
NGO's like GREENPEACE too are not averse to resorting to untruths and half truths sometimes to suit the objectives of rival corporate interests. The Brent Spar case is a good example. The activities of many NGO's in curbing indigenious oil production is also well known, as India is now the world's third largest importer of oil. Any reduction of this will have an impact on the profitability of several corporate and brokerage interests. And NGOs and self styled crusaders.
The role of the Dutch Government' funded CORDAID in trying to stoke opposition to oil exploration and drilling in northeast India is well known. The Dutch government's interest in this too is quite discernable. Shell is a Dutch company and is among the world's biggest oil producers and refiners.
Lastly, we must worry about the entry of foreign think-tanks such as BROOKINGS into India, supported by major Indian corporates like Reliance, Mahindras, Tatas and others, as is not without implications on domestic agenda setting. Does Brookings march to the tune of its masters in Washington DC or to those of its Indian funders is a question we must ponder over? And how removed is Brookings agenda from the Washington Consensus?
Its not that NGO's dont do good work. Many of them contribute hugely to the public discourse and cause. But many more are just parasites living off the credulity or feeding off the troughs of their motivated funders. Incidentally, CAPART, a Government of India organisation, is the biggest funder of the most number of bogus NGO's.
I have always had a discomfort with western NGO's like Greenpeace, Amnesty International and other such with their lily white leadership full of inherent western biases and prejudices. To compound this, we now have a huge influx of Saudi funds for sectarian causes and NGO's. But will this government also investigate the role of certain shadowy western organisations in funding several RSS NGO's? And the flow of such funds to political parties, as we saw in the recent elections?
I have given below a summary of the famous Brent Spar case where Greenpeace was caught fudging data and acting in the interests of certain corporate lobbies hostile to ceratin Shell Oil plans. MG
"Brent Spar was a North Sea oil storage and tanker loading buoy in the Brent oilfield, operated by Shell UK. With the completion of a pipeline connection to the oil terminal at Sullom Voe in Shetland, the storage facility had continued in use but by 1991 was considered to be of no further value. Brent Spar became an issue of public concern in 1995, when the British government announced its support for Shell's application for disposal in deep Atlantic waters at North Feni Ridge (approximately 250 km from the west coast of Scotland, at a depth of around 2.5 km).
Shell proposed that deep sea disposal was the best option for Brent Spar. Shell argued that their decision had been made on sound scientific principles and data. Dismantling the platform on-shore was more complex from an engineering point of view than disposal at sea. Shell also cited the lower risk to the health and safety of the workforce with deep sea disposal. Environmentally, Shell considered that sinking would have only a localised impact in a remote deep sea region which had little resource value. It was considered that this option would be acceptable to the public, to the United Kingdom Government and to regional authorities. Shell acknowledged that sinking the Brent Spar at sea was also the cheaper option.
Four Greenpeace activists first occupied Brent Spar on 30 April 1995. In total, 25 activists, photographers and journalists were involved in this stage of occupation. At this time, activists collected a sample of the contents of the Brent Spar and sent it for testing to determine the nature of the pollutants which the platform contained. This sample was collected incorrectly, leading to a large overestimate in the contents of the facility. Although Greenpeace quoted Shell's own estimate of the amount of heavy metals and other chemicals on board, they claimed there were more than 5,500 tonnes of oil on the Spar – far more than Shell's estimate of 50 tonnes.
Towing of the platform to its final position began on 11 June. By this time the call for a boycott of Shell products was being heeded across much of continental northern Europe, damaging Shell's profitability as well as brand image. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl protested to the British Prime Minister, John Major at a G7 conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Support from within the oil industry was not unanimous. Although oil production companies supported Shell's position, influential companies in the offshore construction sector stood to make money from onshore dismantling if a precedent could be set, and consequently supported the Greenpeace point of view.
Having moored the Brent Spar in Erfjord, Shell commissioned the independent Norwegian consultancy Det Norske Veritas (DNV) to conduct an audit of Spar's contents and investigate Greenpeace's allegations.
Greenpeace admitted that its claims that the Spar contained 5500 tonnes of oil were inaccurate and apologized to Shell on 5 September. This pre-empted the publication of DNV's report, which endorsed Shell's initial estimates for many pollutants
The overestimation of the contents of the Brent Spar damaged the credibility of Greenpeace in their wider campaigns. They were criticised in an editorial column in the scientific journal Nature for their lack of interest in facts."
Comments
Post a Comment