New Delhi, June 23 -- Two months ago I wrote an article, Regulating Foreign Funds: A Necessary Tightrope Walk, about the proposed Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026. I argued that the debate was fundamentally about balancing transparency, sovereignty and civil society freedoms. Available on LinkedIn here, and in the newspapers here. Subsequent developments make the issue worth revisiting.

Since then, Indian investigations and revelations of a foreign-funding network operating in sensitive regions; the use of overseas-issued debit cards and cross-border financial transactions for opaque purposes, are disconcerting to say the least. Worse, the alleged deletion of backend electronic records hosted abroad highlights the g...