6 min readJul 23, 2026 06:30 AM IST
First published on: Jul 23, 2026 at 06:30 AM IST
Successive governments have proclaimed their vision for India to become a powerhouse of scientific research. The current NDA regime has launched new initiatives to catalyse the science ecosystem — these include the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, the introduction of national rankings of research institutions, and the institution of fellowships to attract diaspora scientists to work in Indian institutions. However, India continues to be a laggard amongst its peer nations in high-impact research productivity. None of the country’s institutions figures in the top 100 of any global ranking. Many of our brightest minds continue to seek opportunities abroad, and the work of scientists is powering the rankings of their adopted institutions and, by extension, the countries in which they are located. The success of the national science ecosystem requires not just the talent of individual researchers but also a global outlook and an inclusive culture. At the heart of such an ecosystem is collaboration and partnerships between institutions within and across countries. The Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) has been a singular obstacle to India’s science ecosystem.
First, a bit of history. The Act’s genesis lies in the late 1960s, when the government suspected foreign agencies, such as the CIA, of funding trade unions, student bodies, and political organisations to undermine India’s democracy. This prompted the then home minister to raise the issue in Parliament in 1969, leading to a consensus that foreign money should not be allowed to undermine the state behind the mask of charity. After due parliamentary process, the FCRA came into force on August 5, 1976 — it aimed to ensure that voluntary organisations functioned “in a manner consistent with the values of a sovereign democratic republic”. Since then, successive governments have tightened the regulations through multiple amendments, culminating in the most recent ones, which have ramped up the regulatory compliance for NGOs and amplified the powers of the state to terminate FCRA approval and seize the assets of organisations. It is not my intention in this article to question the rationale or legality of the FCRA, but to highlight how the FCRA, from its inception, has been throttling the work of NGOs whose work is related to science.
Readers may wonder what NGOs have to do with science in the first place. After all, many of us think of NGOs as primarily concerned with the provision of services such as education or healthcare or promoting rights-based activities (the latter being, unsurprisingly, the most sensitive sector for governments). I believe that those formulating the FCRA rules in government don’t seem to recognise that many globally renowned research institutions in India are categorised as NGOs and, as such, fall under the purview of the FCRA. Examples include both institutes which have diverse scientific portfolios such as the Public Health Foundation of India, Christian Medical College (Vellore), St John’s Medical College, Ashoka and KREA universities, as well as niche institutions that work in specific fields such as Sangath, the Schizophrenia Research Foundation and the Centre for Mental Health, Law and Policy in the mental health field; the Centre for Chronic Disease Control and Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Centre in the non-communicable diseases field; and M S Swaminthan Research Foundation and ATREE in biodiversity and environmental science. This vast and diverse ecosystem is, perhaps inadvertently, experiencing collateral damage from regulations designed to prevent foreign interference in India’s democratic polity in multiple ways, not least through strangling the opportunity for these institutions to collaborate internationally and with each other in the country.
I offer two concrete examples to illustrate these observations. The first is the rule that foreign funds received by an NGO in India can never be repatriated out of the country. This regulation flies in the face of the reasonable requirement by international funders that unspent funds from a research project must be returned upon completion of a project. But, even more worryingly, it also means that no Indian NGO can ever be the lead institution in an international collaboration because it cannot fulfil the obligations of a lead institution to transfer funds from the parent grant to a foreign institution. The second example is the 2020 change to the FCRA, which stopped NGOs receiving foreign donations from sharing those funds with any other NGO in India, even those legally registered to receive foreign funding. This was a deliberate shift from a “regulated transfer” model to an outright prohibition on sub-granting. In effect, this meant a shutdown of collaboration within the country, not only hurting smaller, grassroots NGOs that historically relied on larger NGOs re-granting foreign funds to them, but also hindering science, which requires engagement with communities, as is the case with many studies concerned with health and development.
It is important to note that the source of the funds for NGOs working on scientific endeavours are not donations but grants from renowned international research bodies such as the Wellcome Trust or the National Institutes of Health. These are hard-earned in globally competitive bids with selection through a transparent process of peer review; it is for this reason that such awards are highly prized by institutions such as mine because they reflect world-class scientific minds. In India, on the other hand, instead of honour and prestige, such foreign grants are viewed with suspicion.
There is an easy remedy to this matter — to bring nuance into the classification of NGOs in India and recognise the immense diversity of the roles that they play. In the case of NGOs engaged in scientific activities, this role can be readily identified through existing regulatory procedures such as recognition by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and FCRA rules can be tailor-made for this sector of NGOs. Such a measured strategy would not undermine the goal of the government to regulate the NGO sector. At the same time, it would also not cause collateral harm to the globally renowned institutional ecosystem for science in India.
The writer is the Paul Farmer Professor at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Sangath, which works on mental health
