Clampdown on NGOs strangles India’s public health services

In April 2021 the Bombay Sarvodaya Friendship Centre, a non-government organisation (NGO) working in health and wellbeing, committed to establish and run an operating theatre at a public hospital in Anjanwel, a coastal village 300 km south of Mumbai.

At the time, Anjanwel’s population of about 2500 and the residents of surrounding villages were dependent on a government hospital about 50 km away in Chiplun for the surgical treatment of hernias, polyps, and appendicitis; trauma cases; and hysterectomies, says Anil Hebbar, managing trustee of Bombay Sarvodaya. Hebbar was involved in the recruitment of staff and the renovation and equipping of the operating theatre at a cost of about £20 000 (€24 000; $24 900), all of which was sponsored by a donor in the US.

“Creating surgery infrastructure in the village would help save lives in cases of trauma and other emergencies, as well as allowing the community to have elective surgeries done locally,” he says.

A local member of parliament inaugurated the operating theatre, which was set to serve a population of around 30 000, in February 2022. Yet barely a month after opening, it had to close.

The problem is bureaucratic. The theatre’s ongoing costs were heavily subsidised by Bombay Sarvodaya, which at the time was getting 100% of its funding from overseas donors. Hebbar had been working towards renewing his trust’s registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), the act which allows NGOs in India to accept foreign funding.

But delays that he attributes to “operational disruptions because of the pandemic” led to the registration expiring before the renewal could happen, leaving initiatives like the operating theatre …