Internal strategy documents accessed by The Sunday Guardian show that a pledge of up to US$50 million, approximately Rs 455 crore at current exchange rates, was earmarked for work in India by the Open Society Foundations headed by controversial billionaire George Soros under the Asia Pacific Regional Office Executive Strategy that was built for 2021-24.
The Asia Pacific Regional Office functions as the regional arm of the Open Society Foundations for the Asia-Pacific region. It develops strategic plans, allocates regional funding and coordinates grant-making and programmatic activities across the region. The strategy document accessed by this newspaper forms part of that regional planning framework.
The document states that George Soros pledged up to US$50 million for work in India under an initiative titled “Endow Lasting Power in India.” The strategy indicates that the funding would be deployed in collaboration with the Economic Justice Program to use impact investment for building sustainable infrastructure for open society advocates and strengthening independent media.
The Economic Justice Program is a thematic program within the Open Society Foundations that focuses on economic justice and equitable development. It combines grant making with impact investment approaches aimed at building financially sustainable institutions aligned with open society principles. In this context, its involvement suggests that the India allocation was designed not only as traditional grant support but also as capital-backed, long-term ecosystem financing.
The document describes India’s secular democracy as being under strain and characterizes the environment as politically hostile for civil society actors. It refers to funding restrictions, litigation pressures and public delegitimization of advocacy groups.
It also discusses exploring the possibility of creating a domestically endowed trust capable of making grants within India without triggering foreign funding restrictions.
As per the “Executive strategy” covering 2021-2024, the document said that the “pandemic has provided a handy pretext to the region’s authoritarian leaders to double down on draconian measures and settle political scores. Economic prosperity was always the Asian autocrat’s rejoinder in defense of repression, but with ‘factory Asia’ shuttered and overseas employment remittances at a standstill, the cheap and abundant low wage and migrant labor that fueled Asia’s economic boom is now a liability.”
“As China struggles to regain its global footing, this is the moment to build a political counter-force for social justice across Asia and beyond.”
On India, the strategy document, under the subheading “Big bets”, claimed that “Recognizing that India’s secular democracy is under attack as never before, George Soros pledged a substantial contribution of up to $50 M for work in India. In collaboration with the Economic Justice Program (EJP), we will use impact investment to build a sustainable infrastructure of support to open society advocates and strengthen independent media.”
It further goes on to say, “Open Society advocates in India face a combination of internal capacity and funding constraints as well as external pressures such as restrictions on funding, spurious litigation and public de-legitimization. We will support business entities providing seven critical ecosystem functions—fundraising, communication, campaigning, culture and arts collectives, technology adoption, compliance and access to legal services—to overcome those constraints and better empower open society advocates. In pursuing this ecosystem approach, we believe that new actors can emerge, existing actors can grow and actors with similar ambitions can better collaborate. We will also explore the possibility of endowing, from the generated profits, a domestic trust with the capability of making grants in India free from foreign grant restrictions.”
The document called India a “test case”. “India will be a test case for working in a politically hostile environment using new ways of presence, funding and impact that look very different from our previous modes of operation, building self-sufficiency.”
The timing of the strategy document is significant. It was drafted in the 2020-2021 period, a phase marked by heightened political and regulatory developments in India that saw the Citizenship Amendment Act and NRC protests, Amendments to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act in 2020 which tightened restrictions on foreign funding to NGOs and reduced administrative expenditure limits. It also saw large-scale farmer protests against agricultural reform laws which were eventually withdrawn. Allegations related to surveillance and the Pegasus spyware controversy also surfaced during this period.
While the strategy document does not mention CAA, NRC, farm laws or specific legislation by name, its references to shrinking civic space, funding constraints and a hostile political climate correspond to the broader environment prevailing at the time.
No specific Indian government body is named as a recipient of the proposed funding. The document frames the allocation as ecosystem-level support for civil society and independent media rather than direct engagement with state institutions.
A response was sought from the Open Society Foundations and the Economic Justice Program regarding the funding commitment in India, its intended beneficiaries, timeline of deployment and safeguards against political or electoral influence. The organization, in its response, shared the factsheet on India available on its website.
