Suzie's shenanigans

It wasn't much of a surprise to see Arundhati Roy come out all guns blazing against the Anna Hazare movement. In an insinuation and innuendo laden interview with CNN-IBN, she "alleged" that the key members of the movement had received $ 400,000 from the Ford Foundation.

Arundhati Roy: [...] Just in order to point to the fact, a short article can just indicate the fact that it is in some way an NGO driven movement by Kiran Bedi, Arvind Kejriwal, Sisodia, all these people run NGOs. Three of the core members are Magsaysay award winners which are endowed by Ford foundation and Feller. I wanted to point to the fact that what is it about these NGOs funded by World Bank and Bank of Ford, why are they participating in sort of mediating what public policy should be? I actually went to the World Bank site recently and found that the World Bank runs 600 anti-corruption programmes just in places like Africa. Why is the World Bank interested in anti-corruption? [...]

[Link: Jan Lokpal Bill is very regressive: Arundhati Roy / CNN-IBN Interview transcript]

On this blog, we have always taken the position that fund inflow to NGOs, especially the undisclosed / underhanded variety is highly dangerous. So, we decided to investigate. The Ford Foundation keeps a detailed list of grants and provides a search page.

Some of the interesting grants:

Centre for Study of Society and Secularism

2007: $110,000

2009: $191,000

Interesting members: Ram Puniyani

Center for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)

2008: $350,000

2008: $200,000

Interesting members: Ashis Nandy, Madhu Kishwar, Yogendra Yadav

Sabrang Trust

2009: $250,000

Interesting members: Teesta Setalvad

Ford Foundation also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Milia Islamia, Center for Policy Research, Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Christian Dalit Liberation movement and many other NGOs. Their funds appear to reach practically the breadth of India's Left-Liberal-Secular establishment.

In other words, in terms of taking monies from the "evil" Ford Foundation, Suzie's friends aren't doing too badly.