Saw an article in the Guardian by Anish Kapoor about “India being ruled by a Hindu Taliban.” In the article he mentions with great angst,
Nine thousand NGOs have been “de-registered” in a concerted effort to force out these “nuisance” groups … (quotation marks are from the article)
Every time I see a number being tossed around, I like to understand what the denominator is. That is, how many total NGOs are there in India, and what percentage do these 9,000 represent.
A quick google search gave me this relatively recent article. It states India has about 31 Lakh NGOs, with an additional 82,000 in the Union territories. The number does not include NGOs in three states, which had not yet reported their numbers. That translates to about 3,182,000 (3.182 million) NGOs in India.
Reuters reports that 8,975 NGOs were deregistered in India as they had not filed mandatory annual returns and had not reported their foreign funding for three years starting 2009/2010.
These delinquent NGOs represent 0.282 % of the total number of NGOs in India. This percentage will be lower once we add in the number of NGOs in the three states not yet reported. To me, this number does not represent a major assault on any personal freedoms, or NGOs. Besides these organizations had NOT filed returns since 2009/2010. Please! Try not filing your tax returns in the United States or United Kingdom for three years and see if the IRS does not throw you in jail and fine you a hefty amount. You will be thankful, if the IRS only de-registers you.
What is with Anish Kapoor? Why doesn’t he do his research before writing? What axe is he grinding?
As the Indian Express article states, the number of NGOs in India is
more than double the number of schools in the country, 250 times the number of government hospitals, one NGO for 400 people as against one policeman for 709 people.
The government should perhaps force a lot more NGOs to start teaching in schools. Note: Got the feature image from mirror.co site linked above.
Arun Shanbhag 
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