May12,2021

Anna Murray 

As of May 16th, the number of recorded coronavirus cases in India has surpassed 24 million. India’s Covid-19 crisis stimulated companies, non-profit organizations (NPOs) and individuals in the US to collect millions of dollars and medical supplies to the world’s second most populous country. However, law in India made by last year prohibited NPOs from providing oxygen concentrators to the suffering patients.

In order to enhance "greater transparency" and prevent “the misuse of foreign funds by some people", Indian government corrected the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) last year, when the first wave of the Covid-19 cases peaked, leading to NPOs and non-government organizations (NGOs) in India not being able to spread any foreign contributions to others, and ruled out that all overseas funding must be stored in a specific bank account in Delhi, the capital city of India.

As the Covid crisis gets further stronger, NGOs admonished the increasing bureaucracy would aggravate delays in the treatment and survival in this critical time. Some worry about smaller NPOs in remote districts of India would suffer the most due to short of the support of funding from larger organizations.

Photo:webshot.