USAID and the Modi government

After the spree of 6,000 NGO dispossessions in 2022—30% of the 20,000 NGOs that were stripped of their foreign funding licenses since 2011—it was the Indian government that gained from USAID.

USAID gave the Government of India $97 million (₹825 crore) in FY24 for seven projects that's are still operational. USAID promised a total of $750 million (₹6,500 crore) to these projects.

The disbursement of USAID funding in India in FY25 stood at $151.9 million.

Following the dismantling of USAID, we should expect this dollar funnel to be plugged (with the aid to India now locked inside DOGE's financial charnelhouse).

And that bit about $21 million to enhance voter turnout as asserted by DOGE first and then Trump? Never happened. Those monies were for Bangladesh. In 2008-24, USAID disbursed $23.6 million for elections to Bangladesh. (What Sheikh Hasina, a serial election-fixer, did with the monies is anybody's guess.)

USAID funding to India rose from $83 million in 2020 to $228 million in 2022, just two years before the 2024 general elections.

It had also risen from $121 million in 2001 to $154 million in 2002—when the Vajpayee government was in power.

In the near-quarter-century 2001-24, USAID disbursed a total of $2.9 billion to India—an average of $119 million annually. $1.3 billion (44.4 %) was granted during the BJP-led NDA (2014-2024). During the Congress-led UPA (2004-2013), the grants totalled $1.2 billion in grants (41.3%).

Nearly a quarter of that money was sent in the past four years. USAID gave $650 million (23%) in US FY2021 and US FY2024 (the US fiscal year is October-September), with the highest grant, $228.2 million (35%), given in US FY2022 alone.

USAID partners with government, NGOs and the private sector—but, crucially, the Indian government monitors every paisa through the Union home ministry's Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), which a nongovernmental entity has to apply to in order to receive even a dollar of foreign funding.

So, NGOs and private entities could not have received USAID funding without FCRA clearance. The government knew to whom every USAID greenback went. The saffronists might rant about USAID funding the antigovernment types, but the government does not allow untrammelled external funding (especially after its banning spree of 6,000 NGOs in January 2022, which was 30% of NGOs stripped of their foreign funding licenses since 2011, most of them during the Modi dispensation).

Ergo, the vast majority of USAID funding in the Modi years was utilised by the Indian government itself.

So, what are our saffronists saltating madly about, again?