What exactly is PM CARES hiding?

Noah saved for the Great Flood. Manu prepared for the deluge. Joseph stored grain for seven years of famine.

And then there is our Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

By the end of 2024–25, the PM CARES Fund had a closing balance of Rs 8,452 crore. During that financial year, it spent just Rs 87.85 lakh. That’s 0.01 percent spent.

So, what exactly is all that money being saved for? A disaster of biblical proportions that perhaps only the PM knows about? 

Because, honestly, nothing else explains it.

If you follow the news, you probably know this by now. After a long delay, the receipts and payments of the PM CARES Fund for 2023–24 and 2024–25 were finally released.

And what do they show? That PM CARES spent hardly any money and transferred 93 percent of it into fixed deposits.

But the real story of PM CARES is not just that it barely spent money. It is much more dubious.

It is about avoiding scrutiny. It is about taking foreign donations. It is about having no stated policy on how much has to be kept in reserves. And it is about depriving India’s civil society organisations.

I’ll take you through all of it in this week’s Let Me Explain.

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