India’s intelligence agency has targeted an adviser to Prince Charles and British activists in a campaign against Greenpeace and other foreign groups it claims are a threat to its economy. The Indian government last week banned direct foreign funding of local campaign groups, after a report by its Intelligence Bureau warned that organisations funded by Greenpeace and other international institutions were growing throughout the country and “spawning” mass movements which now pose a “significant threat to national economic security.” Much of their work, it said, is funded by the US-based Centre for Media and Democracy, which the report described as a Democratic Party-oriented group supported by liberals like George Soros and “multiple far-left foundations”. --Dean Nelson, The Daily Telegraph, 22 June 2014
In what may be a strong signal to rich nations on the issue of climate change, New Delhi on Tuesday said the developing countries, including India, have a “right to grow” and in the process their “net emission (of greenhouse gases) may increase”. The statement [by environment minister Prakash Javadekar] assumes significance in the light of a meeting of ‘governments, leaders from finance, business, local government and civil society’ in New York in September this year to “bring bold and new announcements and action” to keep the earth below the globally agreed two degree temperature rise. --Vishwa Mohan, Times of India, 17 June 2014
