The Plot Against Indian Democracy 

RUSSIAN-ORIGIN MATRYOSHKA dolls are a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another. The gargantuan United States Agency for International Development (USAID) can be compared to them, working for decades through an intricate and complex nested web of civil society groups, NGOs and media organisa­tions, all involved in intriguingly grandiose word salad projects across sectors globally.

USAID was set up during John F Kennedy’s term, in the thick of the Cold War, as a standalone entity divorced from government bureaucracy and focused on furthering the American brand of “democracy” and reinforcing the soft power influence of the US to checkmate the former Soviet Union. And later, to counter the increasing influence of China. Its budget ballooned over the de­cades to $40 billion annually and without requisite monitoring or accountability on spending. Back home, USAID came under increasingly sharp scrutiny for its uncontrolled expenditure. Although its supporters maintain that a big chunk of its work is humanitarian, it is widely known that it works to further Ameri­can interests elsewhere.

It comes, therefore, as no surprise when US President Donald Trump, a critic of USAID, aired the sentiments of a vast majority of US citizens. “Why do we need to spend $21 million on voter turnout in India? I guess they were trying to get somebody else elected. We have got to tell the Indian government… This is a total breakthrough,” he said at a summit in Miami on February 19, once again lashing out at the Biden administration’s priorities.

For his part, the Department of Government Expenditure (DOGE) head Elon Musk called it a “criminal organization” in the wake of Trump freezing USAID’s funding to the tune of $486 million recently and sacked thousands of its employees. DOGE described the billions in American tax dollars spent by the agency on programmes globally as “extravagant absurdities.”

USAID had spent $15 million for condoms and other birth control in Afghanistan, $20 million for Sesame Street in Iraq, $2 million for Moroccan pottery classes, $2 million for sex changes in Guatemala, and $1 million to tell people in Vietnam not to burn trash. Another $70,000 was spent on an Irish DEI musical, $47,000 on transgender operas in Colombia, and $32,000 on a transgender comic book in Peru, all supposedly to advance US foreign policy interests. DOGE’s recent posts on X (formerly Twitter) that USAID had financed several projects in South Asia through a complex net­work of organisations and NGOs, including $29 million to trans­form Bangladesh’s “political landscape” and another $29 million on improving “fiscal federalism” in Nepal, have sent shockwaves in the region. But it is the disclosure that USAID paid $21 million in 2012 to promote “voter turnout in India” that has exposed ideo­logical fault lines. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has warned of foreign interference in India’s elections during Congress rule and has demanded a probe. Economist Sanjeev Sanyal called it “the biggest scam in human history.”

Probing the USAID money trail may not be an easy job. Its funds go to layer after layer after layer of separate organisations and civil groups, many claiming to be nonprofits and NGOs committed to strengthening democracy and good governance practices. DOGE said USAID gave $486 million to the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS). The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) is one of the three organisations of CEPPS that work in 140 countries to connect with civil activists, citizens groups, political parties, peo­ple’s representatives, election process monitors (institutional and otherwise) and others to pursue and push its stated democratic agenda. USAID’s own fiscal year 2024 review says it gave $2 billion to CEPPS for its Election and Political Processes (EPP) programme.

In India, IFES, which is funded by USAID as well as by billion­aire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF), signed an MoU with the Election Commission of India (ECI) in 2012. It was signed by then Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi and IFES President and CEO William Sweeney, who had earlier advised the US State Department on South Asia policy. The revolving-door appointments between IIIDEM (established by ECI) and CEPPS affiliates were also evident in IIIDEM’s featuring trainers from NDI, a CEPPS member actively supporting Indian NGOs. Sweeney and Quraishi agreed to exchange information and experiences, facili­tate knowledge exchange, conduct joint training programmes, research, and capacity-building initiatives through IIIDEM, which may have also supplied voter data. In 2014, Quraishi, who has de­nied any wrongdoing, was awarded IFES’ Patricia Hutar Award.

USAID’s Democratic Elections and Political Processes (DEPP) programme, under which CEPPS functions, is empowered to align with specific political groups and strengthen them in an election. It gave $500,000 to IFES’ implementing partner CEPPS for Indian projects between 2013 and 2015. That was when Congress-led UPA lost and Narendra Modi came to power. Details of financial disclosures show that disbursement of funds to CEPPS peaked dur­ing election years. In FY2014, the $21 million that flowed to India for “voter awareness” was distributed monthly between January and May—the exact months of the national election campaign. Post-May 2014, funding dropped by 83 per cent, suggesting pro­grammatic objectives rather than institutional. This pattern was repeated in 2019, with $486 million allocated regionally, though Indian authorities blocked portions citing FCRA violation.

The CEPPS website went offline soon after DOGE dropped the bombshell and its X handle was deactivated as was that of the USAID. Vasu Mohan, senior country director for Nepal and India programs at IFES, the man responsible for redistributing money received from USAID, also deactivated his X account. But the Advancing Electoral Democracy in Asia website lists Lokniti- CSDS as its local partners. Human rights organisation Odhikar is the Bangladesh partner. In 2023, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called on the then Sheikh Hasina government to create a safe and enabling environment for hu­man rights defenders such as Muhammad Yunus and Odhikar activists to carry out their work for the welfare and protection of Bangladeshis without persecution.

USAID’s head in India since 2021, Veena Reddy, who left the country soon after the 2024 elections and monitored the “voter turnout” strengthening mission, ducked questioning by Indian probe agencies on the recipients of funds distributed in India . Post­ing on X sarcastically, advocate and Rajya Sabha BJP MP Mahesh Jethmalani said, “So #DOGE has discovered that #USAID allocated $21million for ‘voter turnout’ in India, a euphemism for paying vot­ers to cast their votes to effect regime change….. it’s up to our agencies … to protect the integrity and sovereignty of India and seize USAID’s accounts in India, follow the disbursal trail of the $21 million ear­marked for the voter turnout project and unearth the stooges of the Democratic Deep State. They should then be visited with the full force of the law dealing with subverting the Indian State-in com­mon parlance TREASON.”

The connection between USAID and OSF since the 1990s has sparked much debate in India with BJP putting both Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi in the dock, questioning their association with Soros. In recent years, Soros has been accused of anti-India activi­ties aiming to destabilise the Modi government. He is also one of the big private funders of IFES. OSF has been repeatedly accused by Indian intelligence agencies of undermining national inter­ests through “civil society capture.” In December last year, BJP alleged that Sonia Gandhi was associated with a group financed by OSF. This accusation came days after the party claimed that the US ‘Deep State’ had collaborated with Rahul Gandhi to de­stabilise India. In a post on X, the official BJP handle posted, “This thread underlines a connection between the Congress party and George Soros, implying their shared goal of diminishing India’s growth. Sonia Gandhi, as the Co-President of the FDL-AP Founda­tion (Forum of Democratic Leaders in the Asia-Pacific), is linked to an organisation financed by the George Soros Foundation. Nota­bly, the FDL-AP Foundation has expressed their views that treat Kashmir as a separate entity.” It added, “Sonia Gandhi’s chairman­ship of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation led to a partnership with the George Soros Foundation, displaying the influence of foreign fund­ing on Indian organizations.”

The Gandhis have come under sharp attack for propagating Soros’ goals in India to the detriment of domestic democratic pro­cesses. In May 2023, IFES came out with a report on caste-based voter categorisation and the role of Dalit voters in Indian elections. The report, now inaccessible, said, “This report comprises an analysis of survey data of Dalits across South Asia with questions on elections-related issues…” Key words in the White Paper were similar to the ones that Rahul Gandhi himself used in his speeches on a nation­wide caste census. On X, he posted, “Jitni abadi, utni hissedari, yeh hamare OBC bhai, behnon ka haq hai… (caste-based population-pro­portionate representation)”. Interestingly, cross-cutting cleavages such as those based on caste have been upheld by several Western think tank studies as a key reason why “Hindu majoritarianism has failed to destabilise the secular and democratic Indian state thus far.” This only lends further credence to the belief that the narratives mouthed by the leader of Opposition are set and shaped, funded and curated by people sitting on foreign shores.

Since 2011, USAID’s DEPP programme allocated over $318,614 annually to CEPPS for India-specific initiatives. While operat­ing under a “democracy strengthening” mandate, it routed its aid through non-state actors. The 2012 MoU between the IFES and the ECI’s IIIDEM which continues till date, was pitched as a technical cooperation. But leaked audits reveal USAID’s ex­plicit focus on “increasing voter participation in marginalised communities”—a directive that Rahul Gandhi has amplified through his domestic political agenda.

The stark irony is that some of the worst riots against Dalits in India happened under the watch of a Congress government at the Centre and in states governed by allied parties. These include the Keelvenmani massacre of December 25, 1968, when 44 Dalit la­bourers protesting against landlords for higher wages were burnt alive; the Karamchedu massacre in Andhra Pradesh on July 17, 1985, when Dalits from the Madiga caste were murdered by men from the Kamma caste; the Behmai massacre in Uttar Pradesh on Febru­ary 14, 1981, when the then bandit queen Phoolan Devi shot down 20 Thakurs of Behmai village in Kanpur Dehat in revenge for her gang rape by two Thakurs. Again, on July 15, 1987, an angry mob of Kamma caste men entered Neerukonda village and killed five— four from the Mala caste and a 60-year-old elder—forcing many to flee. Then, there is the chilling massacre of 58 Dalits at Laxmanpur Bathe, Jehanabad, Bihar, on December 1, 1997, by the Ranvir Sena, apparently in retaliation for the Bara massacre in Gaya where 37 upper-caste men were killed. In the Laxmanpur Bathe case, a trial court convicted all the 26 accused, sentencing 16 men to death and handing life sentences to the other 10 in April 2010. But the Patna High Court freed the convicted in 2013, maintaining insufficient proof. The list of gory and gruesome caste-based massacres of Dalit communities that happened under the Congress’ reign goes on but there is little acknowledgement by the party leadership or by Rahul Gandhi, for whom caste-based census, a highly volatile and divisive topic even today, is a drum to beat in sync with the likes of IFES to regain political relevance.

The OSF-USAID connection has come under scrutiny anew in the aftermath of Trump’s axing of funds to the latter. USAID’s own engagement with India dates back to the 1960s, involving food security assistance programmes. The priorities later shifted to governance reforms.

The strategic alliance between USAID and OSF started in East European countries transitioning from communism to democ­racies, and moved subsequently to developing economies and emerging democracies in Asia and Africa later. The economic, political and ideological objectives of the two clearly overlapped. The relationship grew more complex and intertwined in the Obama years, with the OSF’s ‘philanthropic’ goals soon firmly latched on to the foreign policy objectives of the US, both socio-political and economic. But while some view positively the role of OSF and Soros himself in emerging economies and developing democracies, most see them as interfering directly in domestic policies. OSF recently dismissed as utter falsehood suggestions that it receives any funding from USAID, stressing that it func­tions on its own funds and to achieve its own objectives.

But it is common knowledge that under the guise of promot­ing democracy, the duo has fomented protests, disturbances and dissidence, especially in nations where the governments are not kowtowing to the US government’s foreign policy interests. The $29 million USAID spent to “strengthen the political landscape” in Bangladesh led to the ouster of the government of Sheikh Hasina and the installation of Muhammad Yunus in Dhaka. That govern­ment, now virtually captured by Islamist groups, is seen as hav­ing been engineered by the Biden administration through a string of US-funded NGOs and civic organisations. This was both to cut down India’s influence on the Hasina government and to get a firm foothold in the Bay of Bengal (Saint Martin Island) to counter China.

THE REGIME-CHANGE programme of USAID, called “Promoting Accountability, Inclusivity, and Resiliency Sup­port Program” (PAIRS), started in 2019 until January 2021 as part of the Biden government’s plan to remodel Bangladesh’s political landscape. But foreign policy analysts view this as a dog-eared page from the US’ Cold War regime change playbook, expos­ing deep flaws in the US’ South Asia policy which is due for review and likely to create trouble in a region where China is increasing its influence directly through loans and infrastructure building.

The sudden freezing of aid funds from USAID to various non-profits and NGOs has led to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), together with over 60 civil society organisations, putting out an urgent appeal to EU leaders to immediately address the global development aid crisis it reportedly triggered. But the scepticism with which it is being met in Europe was expressed by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who posted on X: “WARNING! Our fears have come true: the globalist-liberal- Soros NGO network is fleeing to Brussels, after President Trump dealt a huge blow to their activities in the US. Now 63 of them are asking Brussels for money, under the guise of various human rights projects. Not going to happen! We will not let them find safe haven in Europe! The USAID files exposed the dark practices of the globalist network. We will not take the bait again!”

That outrage at the manipulative practices and outright hood­winking adopted by a select coterie of Western organisations with deep pockets such as the Soros Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, in the name of gauging and certifying “healthy democratic practices”, was the subject of a study by economist Sanjeev Sanyal and Aakanksha Arora in 2022 and presented to the EAC-PM. Sanyal blew the lid off the subjective opinions on emerging economies and democracies like India that were rou­tinely passed off as legitimate, methodical and well-researched inputs to the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators (WGI). In turn, these “entirely perception-based” indices had concrete implications on sovereign ratings, where they have an 18-20 per cent weightage. These biased inputs to the World Bank’s WGI showed up in a “noticeable trend in recent years [of] decline of India’s rankings.” The paper looked at indices used by WGI and put out by organisations such as the Freedom in the World Index, Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Democracy Index and the V-DEM indices. “All three indices are almost entirely perception-based,” the study noted, referring to significant drops in India’s score on issues such as civil liberties, political rights, and so on.

The EIU Democracy Index, arm of the firm that publishes The Economist magazine, places India in the category of “Flawed Democracy” with its rank dete­riorating sharply from 27 in 2014 to 53 in 2020 and improving only (farm sector reforms) a little in 2021, mainly on account of perceived declines in the civil liberties and political culture categories. Democracy (V-Dem) indices are produced by the Varieties of De­mocracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. In fact, India has been termed as an “elec­toral autocracy” in the 2021 report, same as it was dur­ing the period of Emergency, the study says. Sanyal said the US State Department and the government entirely funds the Freedom House. A tiny coterie of PLU billionaire foundations, one or two government departments, and the European Union backed the institutions that come up with such highly subjec­tive indices. On the Happiness Index, Indians came up less happy than even Palestinians!

“So basically, the North Atlantic gives out certifi­cates to various people. These certificates are in var­ious combinations, given weighted averages and then they are given legitimacy by the World Bank by putting it on its page—this world governance indicator—for which they have the sly disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying that actually it’s not there,” Sanyal said. “I looked through the methodologies of this. These are the opinions of between five and 30 people. Even in college elections, a survey of 30 people wouldn’t be a statistically significant thing. You can easily do it on an Excel sheet. And they are ranking all countries based on this. So this is obvious garbage,” he added. The studies and the institutes involved were all funded by the same people, such as the George Soros’ Open Society Foun­dation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, a few EU institutions and the US government.

The involvement of the US government in India’s electoral processes and policies, ostensibly to “promote voter turnout”, is intriguing, apparently even to US President Donald Trump. Turn­out refers to the extent of popular participation in elections and the propositions are that one, higher turnout reflects the health of a popular democracy and higher inclusivity; two, ease of voter reg­istration means less restrictions on voters exercising their rights; and three, electoral competition should drive up turnout when the stakes in elections are higher. The US’ own track record on this, or even the time gap between counting votes and declaring winners, hasn’t exactly been exemplary. According to data from the University of Florida Election Lab, approximately 245 million Americans were eligible to vote in the 2024 presidential elections. Close to 90 million of these reportedly did not turn up to vote. Only 64 per cent of the voting eligible population came out to cast their ballots, compared to a higher 66 per cent in 2020 and a much lower 60 per cent in 2016 and 2012 (59 per cent).

In comparison, India has a robust election process and sys­tems in place. Despite a voting population that is four times larger, election results are declared in a single day, thanks mainly to elec­tronic voting machines. With 96.8 crore eligible voters in 2024, the country’s electorate is also 20 times larger than the UK’s, and seven times larger than that of Pakistan. India’s voters are actively involved in the election process, signalling a vibrant democracy. While the Opposition parties have raised questions over results of late, especially when the results do not favour them, there has never been a time when results have been drastically contested, as when Donald Trump lost in 2020.

Despite being among the biggest voter population in the world, India has traditionally registered a voter turnout percentage of 60 per cent. In 2014, voter participation in the Lok Sabha election reg­istered a peak high of 66.4 per cent, an 8.3 percentage increase over 2009. In 2019, voter participation went up even higher by one per cent. In contrast to the centralised voting process under ECI here, the US relies mostly on paper ballots and counting can go on for days, and take even weeks at times in specific states before the last vote is counted. In the 2020 presidential elections, over 101 million early or mail-in ballots were cast, compared to the 33 million in 2016 which overwhelmed the system. In contrast to India, the US does not have a centralised election monitoring body and states draw up their own schedule. India adopts the first past the post system and voters participate directly in voting a government to power.

The US’ system of Electoral College has triggered debates over the lack of direct voter participation in the election of their president and the relevance of the popular vote. USAID’s claim—that its vari­ous programmes are aimed at strengthening the democratic insti­tutions, processes and practices— sounds as vain as it is hollow.

CEPPScivil society captureDonald TrumpElon MuskGeorge SorosIndian electionsThe Plot Against Indian DemocracyUSAID